Bathroom hand dryers spray bacteria on your hands
A recent study found bathroom hand dryers are pretty gross.
A study by the scientists at the University of Connecticut found hand dryers in men’s and women’s bathrooms blew bacteria onto hands including fecal matter, foxnews.com wrote.
The study, published in the Applied and Environmental Microbiology Journal, stated scientists came to the conclusion after they placed data-gathering plates under hand dryers at 36 bathrooms on the University of Connecticut’s campus.
The researchers said they placed the plates under the dryers for about 30 seconds and found between 18 and 60 different colonies of bacteria on each plate.
The study said, “These results indicate that many kinds of bacteria, including potential pathogens and spores, can be deposited on hands exposed to bathroom hand dryers and that spores could be dispersed throughout buildings and deposited on hands by hand dryers.”
The scientists wrote it was not immediately clear what ‘organisms’ are dispersed by hand dryers and if hand dryers provide a reservoir of bacteria or simply blow large amounts of bacterially contaminated air, and whether bacterial spores are deposited on surfaces by hand dryers.
The researchers noted the hand dryers did not have the highefficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters that come in most Dyson models. Researchers said the HEPA filters helped decrease but not eliminate the bacteria.
The study said it was possible hand dryers are responsible for spreading pathogenic bacteria, including bacterial spores through an entire building as well.
Researchers also noted Bacillus subtilis PS533 was discovered in every bathroom they tested.
Peter Setlow, one of the study’s lead authors, said, “The bacteria will not potentially affect human health but it shows how easy the bacteria spread.
“The bathrooms they tested now offer paper towels.” Divorce, death in the family, money troubles and serious health problems don’t just stress you out — these negative life events may actually accelerate the aging of your brain, new research suggested.
According to UPI, study lead author Sean Hatton, a project scientist at the University of California, San Diego, said, “We used a new algorithm to predict brain aging after horrible life events — like divorce or death — and negative life events accelerate brain aging by about one-third of a year for each event.”
So, if you’re unlucky enough to have two serious issues, that means your predicted brain age will be eight months older, the study found.
How is it that these events that most people experience at some point in their lives can speed up the aging of your brain? The researchers don’t know for sure, as this study wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
But Hatton said other research has shown that stressful life events can speed up shortening of telomeres.
These are the caps at the end of DNA strands that protect them from damage. Telomeres shorten with age.
Dr. Daniel Kaufer, chief of cognitive neurology and memory disorders at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said that stressful life events may promote inflammation that increases aging.
He added it may be that it’s not the event itself that causes the aging, but a person’s response to it.
Kaufer said, “When people react negatively to stressful life events, they often don’t eat well or sleep well, and that can have an impact on your brain.”
The study included more than 350 men with an average age of 62. All were veterans who served in the military between 1965 and 1975.
About 80 percent never experienced combat situations. They were predominantly white (nearly 88 percent).
Researchers asked the men about negative ‘fateful life events’, which included death of a family member or friend, divorce, separation, miscarriage, financial difficulties and serious medical emergencies. The men answered questions twice, five years apart.
They were asked about certain lifestyle habits and questions to determine their socioeconomic status.
They were also given screening exams to look for memory troubles and tested for a gene that indicates a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Finally, the participants all had an MRI scan of their brain. The researchers then input all of this information into their algorithm to calculate predicted brain age.
The algorithm also controlled for factors such as heart disease risk, socioeconomic status and ethnicity because all these factors have been linked to increased aging.
Although this study only looked at men, Hatton said women and people of different races would likely experience ‘similar biological weathering’.
Kaufer said he didn’t have any reason to think other groups, such as women or people of a different race, would have different results.
He noted, however, that people from other cultures might react to some of these stressful events differently.
“For example, certain cultures may see divorce as more taboo.”
And, what about folks who live a healthier lifestyle? Do they have protection from stressful life events?
Hatton said these events likely affect everyone, but people who eat right and exercise have a reduced risk of accelerated brain aging and may be mitigating the impact of these events.
Kaufer said, “There’s a lot of individual variability in how people react to such events, and diet and other lifestyle factors could influence how the brain and body respond over the long term.
“This study also hints at possible therapeutic interventions. Helping people bolster their psychological resilience might boost their ability to constructively adapt to stressful situations.”