Hi, we've got the latest and greatest from Curiosity.com to help it get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why hand dryers are blowing bacteria all over your hands.

Body parts you probably don't know you have, and what different

colors mean around the world.

We'll also answer a listener question about whether it's possible to lose your foreign accent.

Stay tuned for the answer.

We'll satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning

Curiosity Daily. Have you used a public restroom lately? Well according to recent research,

hot air hand dryers are basically the last place you want to put your hands.

This is why I always bring my own paper towels into the bathroom here at work.

Do you really?

Yes.

Wow, I just learned something new about you.

It's actually mostly because of the noise, the excruciating, ear-splitting noise of a screaming

hand dryer. I have strong feelings about this clearly. Well, anyway, this comes from a new study published

in Applied and Environmental Microology. It says the jets from hot air dryers

are pulling in bacteria from the bathroom air and blowing it out again all over your hands.

For this study, researchers used hot air dryers on a variety of

Petri dishes with no hands involved. Some sat undisturbed for two minutes beneath an

inactive hand dryer and others were directly exposed to 30 seconds of the hot air.

The ones that had set in peace grew a maximum of one colony of bacteria,

but those exposed to a blast from the hand dryer, most grew about 18 to 60 colonies and some had as many as 254.

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