Hands Free Faucets Less Hygienic Than Manually Operated Ones

Hands Free Faucets Less Hygienic Than Manually Operated Ones

From the Marchg 31 2011 Medical news today item

You would have thought that an electronic faucet that you do not need to touch would be cleaner than a traditional one, apparently, the automatic ones are more likely to have a high build-up of bacteria, including Legionella spp, scientists from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine revealed at the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) annual meeting. Hospitals, clinics and other health care centers have been increasingly utilizing electronic-eye, non-touch faucets, with the aim of reducing contamination of the hands of doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff…

…The authors believe that the sophisticated valves that make up the electronic faucet encourage higher contamination levels. They eventually discovered, during the course of collecting water samples, that every automatic faucet grew Legionella spp.

Sydnor does not believe the general public should be concerned about electronic faucet use:

“The levels of bacterial growth in the electronic faucets, particularly the Legionella spp., were of concern because they were beyond the tolerable thresholds determined by the hospital. Exposure to Legionella spp. is dangerous for chronically ill or immune compromised patients because it may cause pneumonia in these vulnerable patients. The levels we found of both Legionella spp. and bacterial burden on HPC were still within the level that is well tolerated by healthy individuals.”

Related Articles

• Johns Hopkins study: Hands-free faucets harbor germs (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Don’t pull the plug on electronic faucets  (Medpage Today , 16 April 2011)