Not only do vuvuzelas make sporting matches sound like they’re being attended by giant, angry bees, but they also emit more germ-carrying particles than regular screaming. Testing the amount of bacteria-sized particles emitted by a shout and by vuvuzela, researcher Ruth McNerney found the vuvuzelas a couple of hundred times more effective.

McNerney is from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and lacking any epidemiological data, decided to test the vuvuzelas on how well they distributed saliva and stuff, given that this is a pretty effective way of spreading infectious disease. So far as that goes, the evidence is pretty clear:

“With the vuvuzela, roughly 4 million aerosol particles were expelled every second an enthusiastic fan belts out the buzzing monotone, but the shouter sprayed only 7,000 per second. (For comparison, a cough releases around 5,000 aerosolized particles, while a sneeze expels about 900,000.)”

I’m just saying that this argument about whether or not the plastic trumpets are annoying is now moot because SCIENCE says they’re dangerous.

[Source: WIRED]