When it comes to public areas like airports that see so much traffic on a daily basis, it’s not surprising to hear that there are some pretty germ-ridden spots within these locations. Handing over information that’s guaranteed to make you cringe, Texas-based insurance website InsuranceQuotes.com released the results from their most recent study.
Thomas Hawk/Flickr
Cathay Pacific/Facebook Determined to find the dirtiest places in airports, the company ran a total of 18 tests across 6 different surfaces within 3 major airports. In order to find out which spot was the dirtiest, the company swabbed each surface at least three times and then came up with the average number of colony-forming units per square inch. If you’re unfamiliar with CFU, it pretty much means fungal cells and viable bacteria.
According to their tests, the dirtiest place in an airport is… the self check-in kiosk screens! An object within airports that the majority of travelers come in contact with, the average screen was home to 253,857 CFU. To put things in perspective, the average CFU found on a toilet seat in a household only has a level of 172. And to make matters worse? This was only the average of all the screens swabbed. The study showed that at one Atlanta airport, a kiosk had over one million CFU per square inch. Let those germs sink in!
Wondering what other places in airports were deemed to be breading grounds for germs? The other two dirtiest spots were the gate bench armrests and water fountain buttons – which had CFU levels comparable to your average dirty kitchen sink.
Thomas Hawk/Flickr
Cathay Pacific/Facebook
Determined to find the dirtiest places in airports, the company ran a total of 18 tests across 6 different surfaces within 3 major airports. In order to find out which spot was the dirtiest, the company swabbed each surface at least three times and then came up with the average number of colony-forming units per square inch. If you’re unfamiliar with CFU, it pretty much means fungal cells and viable bacteria.
According to their tests, the dirtiest place in an airport is… the self check-in kiosk screens! An object within airports that the majority of travelers come in contact with, the average screen was home to 253,857 CFU. To put things in perspective, the average CFU found on a toilet seat in a household only has a level of 172. And to make matters worse? This was only the average of all the screens swabbed. The study showed that at one Atlanta airport, a kiosk had over one million CFU per square inch. Let those germs sink in!
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