Hands Free Faucets have been become very popular in recent years. Especially in public facilities, they save alot of water because they turn off automatically when there is no movement under the stream. It was also thought that because you don't have to touch the faucet to turn it on and off, they were good at keeping away nasty germs as well. Earlier in May this year, researchers at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, discovered that this is not always true.
The team actually found that Legionella bacteria was more prominent in the new hands free faucets than in the old manual type faucet. Originally the team was testing to see how often the the faucets needed to be cleaned out using treated water to kill off waterborne bacteria. There testing found that Legionella was present in 50% of the water samples of the hands-free faucets and only 15% of the manual faucets. It is believed this is because of the complex valve system of the hands-free faucets that makes them hard to clean with the hospital treated water.
