The next time you stay in a hotel, you might want to stay far away from the hair dryer. We don’t know about you, but after we heard this news, we’re totally packing our own from now on.
According to an investigation by ABC News into the hygiene of hotel rooms, hotel hair dryers are hosting a lot more germs than travellers might think.
“There must be some things you can do with a hair dryer that I am not aware of because some of them were pretty germy,” said investigator and microbiologist Chuck Gerba.
Now, hotel guests might be wary of touching certain objects in their rooms, especially in the bathroom. But hotel hair dryers don’t exactly carry the same germy reputation as, say, the toilet. But maybe they should, especially since the types of germs present in a hotel room could potentially make you sick while you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself on a trip – quite possibly the worst time to have that happen!
Cleaners often focus on the toilet, sink and shower, but don’t usually classify hair dryers as dirty. So many hands touch it and it probably rarely gets wiped over. Ick.
“The biggest concern in a hotel room is picking up cold, flu virus or viruses that cause diarrhoea,” Gerba said. “It doesn’t take very many to make you ill.”
Word to the wise: Other objects to be wary of include hotel menus and ice buckets of all things – the latter of which was carrying five times the amount of bacteria that the microbiologist found to be acceptable.
Yikes! Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a very important item that we need to toss in our suitcase for our next holiday.
This story originally appeared in First for Women.
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