TSA Bins Are Germs Hotbeds, Study Says

Airport TSA bins are teeming with more germs than the toilets, a study published last week in the journal BMC Infectious Diseases found.

It is widely known that air travel is a likely culprit for spreading infectious illnesses and disease, but very little research has investigated how these infections spread in flight, Gizmodo noted.

A separate study earlier this year found that despite popular belief, airplanes do not contain nearly as many germs as initially thought.

But what about outside of planes? At the airport?

To analyze this, a team in Finland swabbed 90 different surfaces inside the Helsinki Airport during the peak of the 2015-2016 flu season, ABC 13 reported.

They found that 10 percent of those samples held 10 different respiratory viruses, and half of those samples came from the security trays.

However, samples taken from toilet bowls, handles and stall door locks produced no germs.

The findings are unexpected but they are also in conflict with other studies.

A 2015 study by TravelMath found that tray table surfaces had more than eight times the amount of bacteria as the lavatory flush buttons, and that seatbelt buckles were also covered in germs.

Meanwhile, a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases suggested that people sitting in aisle seats of a plane were more likely to contract norovirus.

• Measles Exposure at O'Hare Prompts Travel Alert
• Measles Outbreak in Minnesota is Worst in Almost 30 Years