The Real Reason You Might Not Want To Use A Hotel Hair Dryer

ABC asked Microbiologist Chuck Gerba to carry out tests in different Los Angeles hotel rooms, which ranged in price from $98 to $500 a night. Together, they took germ samples from the same items across the different rooms, from glasses and toilets to sinks, irons, and hairdryers. Gerba says: "The biggest concern in a hotel room is picking up cold, flu virus or viruses that cause diarrhea," Gerba says (via ABC). "It doesn't take very many to make you ill."

While Gerba found that the germ count in most hotel toilets and bathrooms were not much worse than the germ count in our own homes (we don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing), the microbiologist raised a red flag over the hotel hair dryers. "There must be some things you can do with a hair dryer that I am not aware of because some of them were pretty germy," Gerba says.