Why Hands-Free Faucets May Be a Risk to Some Hospital Patients
5 April 2011
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Automatic faucets use an electronic sensor to start and stop the flow of water when people wash their hands. These faucets save a lot of water, which is one reason they are found in busy public bathrooms. Another reason is because of concerns about the spread of infection by people touching the handles on traditional faucets.
Hospitals started using automatic faucets about ten years ago. But a new study at one hospital finds that these devices may not always be worth the savings in water use.
Researcher took apart twenty automatic faucets at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. They found that half contained Legionella bacteria, compared to fifteen percent of manual faucets.
Healthy people rarely get sick from the bacteria. So the study should not concern most users of automatic faucets in public bathrooms.
But Legionella bacteria can cause a form of pneumonia in people with weakened immune systems. These include patients with diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS, and those who have recently had an organ transplant.
After their first tests, the researchers cleaned the water system with chlorine dioxide. But they found that twenty-nine percent of the automatic faucets were still contaminated with bacteria. That compared to seven percent of the manual faucets.
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