During the 2017 holiday season, Insurancequotes.com fanned out at three major U.S. airports for a cleanliness study–or perhaps a lack of cleanliness study– within the terminals themselves and aboard planes.
Admittedly it was not the most comprehensive examination possible, but they identified several types of surfaces in all airports and tested them for “the average number of viable bacteria and fungal cells per square inch, or colony-forming units (CFU).”
The results are back from the lab. Here are the germiest, most disgusting places they found. They’re listed below starting with the dirtiest.
1. Self check-in kiosks
These were by far the worst offenders, which is a bit surprising at first–but makes sense when you think about it. On the one hand, it’s really only our hands that are touching these, but then again: Good Lord, our hands! On average, self check-in screens had more than 253,000 CFU’s per square inch.
To put it in perspective, that’s nearly three times as many CFUs as the second-nastiest surface they found.
2. Lavatory flush buttons
You thought this would have been the worst one, right? But they came in at just over 95,000 CFUs–still very nasty, but not as bad as the kiosks. Please remember to flush and wash your hands.