Hand dryers suck up bathroom air and spew it out at speed. So, in the brief moments your hands rest below the nozzle, they'll be exposed to far more air than usual—and far more bacteria.

The report, published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, found that air blasted out from the hand drying nozzles contains far more bacteria than normal bathroom air.

Hand dryers suck in fecal bacteria and blow it all over your hands, study finds. ... What's more, the inside of the dryer nozzles themselves had "minimal bacterial levels." ...