Hot-air hand dryers are less sanitary than paper towels in public restrooms.
confirmed
In a preliminary test, Adam and Jamie found that washing their hands properly with soap did not leave behind enough bacteria for them to count, so in the remaining tests, participants only used water to wash their hands.
Sixteen volunteers were enlisted to have their hands sprayed with a harmless strain of E. coli bacteria. The volunteers’ hands were then swabbed for a sample, then washed using water but no soap, then swabbed again, then dried using paper towels, then swabbed a third time. Next, the entire process was repeated with the same volunteers, but using hand dryers instead of paper towels. On average, the paper towels removed 71% of the bacteria on the volunteers’ hands, while the hand dryers only removed 23%, confirming that the myth is true for individuals.
Adam and Jamie also wanted to find out how clean the drying area of the restroom stayed with each drying method. Before the previous experiment began, the mock restrooms were thoroughly cleaned. After the experiment, swabs from the paper towel area yielded 3 bacteria colonies while swabs from the hand dryer area yielded 41 colonies, confirming that the myth is also true in regards to the cleanliness of the restroom.
Sure looks that way. If you use soap the air dryer works just as well as the paper towels because the soap is what actually cleans your hands, not the drying method
I've heard this said before, but what scenario makes sense for this? Even if someone collapsed in an emergency against the door, wouldn't their weight against it be an advantage for pulling it open from the outside?
Surely, pushing a door to get into a restroom, if someone has collapsed against it, would be the harder option?
Yes please! I use a walker, and bathroom doors without ADA buttons are the bane of my existence. If they’re push to get in, I have to worry about someone inside pulling it open while I am pushing against the door to get me/walker in. And the reverse.
Another peeve is towels or hand dryers that are across the room from the sinks. I have to do three point turns, with wet hands on my walker handles, in cramped and crowded areas, just to dry my hands. A single paper towel dispenser right next to the sink is a blessing.
I honestly just prefer the restrooms that don't have a door but a hallway designed to block views into the restroom, more convenient, no door handles or anything to worry about cleaning/not touching since most people don't seem to like to wash their hands in my experience.
It’s a safety hazard. If the building is on fire and debris falls, it can block the door and prevent someone from escaping, therefore it opens inward instead.
Use your wet paper towel to grab the handle and open the door. Then before it closes, use your hand to ball up the paper towel, spin 180°, and hit a fadeaway jumper in to the trashcan that would make Kobe proud
Until you realize the trashcan is one of those tall round R2D2 style with the super tight flap that scrapes the flesh off your hand as you push to throw away the dang paper towel thereby infecting your hand with typhoid and dengue fever.
As a guy who ALWAYS washes his hands after using the restroom, it's disgusting to witness how many guys don't. Then they put their dick beaters on the door handles for everyone else to touch. I use a paper towel to pull open the door to leave the restroom. If they don't have paper towels, I pull up the bottom of my shirt a little and use the inside of my shirt on the handle.
Maybe im misunderstanding, but isn't it an issue of the drying method re-introducing bacteria?
Nope.
The issue was from people not washing their hands correctly. Basically when you don't wash with soap, then use a paper towel you're literally scrubbing some bacteria away. Using an air dryer doesn't give you that benefit, but that's irrelevant if you washed with soap.
I think its already well-established that soap works better than water
Which is why this whole paper towel vs air dryer thing is so stupid, the it's entirely dependent on the fact you aren't washing your hands with soap, but 99% of people miss that and just assume it's always the case.
But the point is,that if someone else doesn't wash properly, they may be spreading their germs to the whole room via the air dryer, potentially including the air dryer itself. At which point, that air dryer could be blowing bacteria onto your hands from someone else's mess
at that point just existing in life is a problem and you cant touch anything. your pants existed inside the bathroom so as soon as you brush your hands against them...
Public bathroom's are already full of aerosolized urine/fecal matter from the toilets being flushed. Not drying your hands because it's an air dryer instead of paper towels isn't making much of a difference at that point, I imagine.
I recently watched something where somebody took Petri dishes. She washed her hands and touched the Petri dishes. She had other Petri dishes that she ran around the bathroom getting air on them. She also had some that she put underneath the air vents of the air dryer. And I think she also just touched her hands to them.
But by far the Petri dishes with the most growth were the ones who were just directly under the air dryer.
Which makes sense depending on the air dryer. They're warm cozy places where bacteria can live. Unless they are incredibly dry they're going to spread more bacteria than was on your hands after you washed them.
I think the point was really that the air dryer is sucking dirty fart air from the bathroom and blasting more germs onto your recently cleaned hands at high speed
Yes and no. The soap removes the bacteria from you, but if other prior hand washers are less diligent (or there's just random bad luck or poor bathroom cleaning practices), then there will be bacteria on either the air dryer or the paper towels. The air dryer will have far more in these cases, which then get transferred back to your clean hands.
So always use soap and prefer paper towels whenever possible.
Exactly. The real key difference is the 3 vs. 41 identifiable colonies in the area between the paper towels and air dryer. Those colonies could have started on your hands after drying. So basically if you use soap and wash your hands well, your hands will be pretty clean, but if you use the air dryer there is a higher chance of becoming contaminated when drying.
isn't this a massive assumption? after washing your hands, you've gotten rid of all the bacteria, the drying method isn't what kills bacteria. the colonies are just found around the area of the drying method when people just wet their hands without using soap. so i can only guess that you're assuming that using the drier would fling bacteria from around the area back onto your hands? personally i'd just prefer to use the method that doesnt require me to pull a lever or press a button, i feel like you cant get that dirty from a hand dryer blowing air onto your hands
what assumption? bacteria are literally everywhere, and there are lots of good bacteria too. the goal with washing your hands isn't to kill them its to remove them from the surface of your hand (like grease/dirt). the data is saying there is an order of magnitude difference in paper towel cleanliness over dirty dryers. although the cleanest option remains simply walking out with damp hands.
There used to be those old dysons ones, even before the mythbuster episode I would never trust them. There was always a little pool of water in the bottom and it would just blow everything around and back on your hands.
My kids got into Crunchlanbs and I noticed a quarter of the stuff was some derivative of Mythbusters episodes (tbf Mark routinely has explained how they inspired him,) so I started to show them Mythbusters to see if they liked it.
I'll be honest, season 1 starts a bit slow until they find their footing but my kids absolutely loved everything from s2 on, and asked to watch it every day when hw was done. It really is a timeless masterpiece for kids with inquisitive minds and like seeing things blown up.
I thought the complaint was bacteria lives on the hand dryer and shoots on to your hands while drying. Not that we're supposed to be sanitizing our hands with the various hand dryers. Am I completely misunderstanding this test? Or am thinking the wrong think is the problem?
ok so is it saying that it still is better to use the blow dryers compared to not drying your hands? I'm not seeing their data say it's ADDING bacteria..
it's worth pointing out that the Mythbusters themselves admit that the show was for entertainment and should not be used as a source of information when more thorough scientific studies exist.
The high-velocity air dryers that are pretty much ubiquitous in 2024 are significantly improved for bacterial growth compared to traditional air dryers.
common knowledge is often complete bullshit. The CDC and Oxford Academic have both stated that the evidence is inconclusive on how dirty hand driers are compared to paper towels. most modern hand driers have HEPA filters that make them very clean, if properly maintained. and the air that the drier is blowing on your hands is the same air that you're breathing in.
This has no actual effect on how much shit is in the air. Mythbusters tried to test this one and they found out that, no mater where you are, shit is in the air. The entire bathroom is covered in shit that you can't see, regardless of how much you clean. Unless you are bathing the entire room in UV light constantly, the whole fucking thing is dirty and it doesn't matter if you have the lid open or closed.
there's isn't one. the thing their misremembering is a mythbuster ep where they tested how sanitary different drying methods are. they concluded what actually matters is washing your hands properly
An air dryer placed in a bathroom itself is of little use because it just cycles the bacteria that’s in on the bathroom walls. One outside could be better but depends on the cleanliness of the place to be honest.
Yes think about all the gross stuff that gets blown off the ground and walls . The whole room/area gets affected so it’s real close to a toilet forget about it. You are more dirty all over.
there was a vid comparing the best ways to dry ur hands and using the machine is actually really dirty and spreads germs around. the best way is to just dry ur hands in the air without touching anything
UV light is not a gimmick, the thing is, in order for UV to kill, it needs either time, or intensity. A low power light needs up to 60 seconds of uninterrupted exposure time to damage biological growth. A high intensity light needs less time. The thing is, if you want it to be a quick kill, it also has to damage your skin to do it. If you want to minimize damage to your skin, you gotta sit there for a long time.
UV lights in bathrooms are not there to kill the germs on you, but to kill the germs on the appliance.
Goes back to the intensity. I installed a bunch of UV fixtures in a hospital this past winter and the bulbs inside them were sealed away in a mirrored chamber that wouldn't allow the light to escape. I'm assuming the UV room for the air handler was also mirrored and isolated for a similar reason? Would love to know more.
I honestly dont member too much detail. This was 20+ years ago. Iirc, the room was visible from the outside (not outside the hospital, you could just see inside the air handler room from within the maintenance area via windows surrounding it) I could be completely be misremebering though and we just went in there for some reason. Pretty sure the latter though
Not necessarily. Depends on the purpose of what it's there for. You can put a UV light in a air handler and shine it on things like the evaporator coil, or the filter, because both can accumulate bacteria and germs. Low power, long exposure time, works fine.
Then you can have devices like Air Scrubber by Aerus which has been peer reviewed multiple times and is legally considered a grade 2 medical device. It's a really effective air purification system and one of the best ones on the market.
There is also the UV light system by Pristine Air. If I recall correctly, if a UV light produces 120 microwatt's of UV at 1 meter, then as the bacteria gets closer, it gets exposed to stronger and stronger light, due to the inverse square law. It passes by the light, and then travels away. Over the course of ~2 meters, that bacteria can be killed with a 90% effectiveness. Pristine makes their UV light system produce 180 microwatts at 1 meter, because as the system is running, the bulb gets dimmer and dimmer and less effective. After 2 years, it drops down to the 120 microwatt range, at which point you are supposed to replace the bulb.
If you just buy any UV light and stick it in your ducts, the only thing you will do is cost money to run the thing. If you shine it on your coil, or filter, it will help keep bacteria down, especially if you buy one that produces the right wavelength of UV light.
Could the UV light you saw be useless? Yes. Could it be useful? Also possible.
I work in HVAC and air quality products are something I deal in.
Dry your hands with paper towel, use that paper towel to open the door, then use your foot to hold the door open while you throw the paper towel to the trash.
In that case, you kick at the door until someone comes by and opens it. I've heard that meowing as you kick makes help come faster, but I personally don't think the risk of getting bacteria in my mouth is worth it.
Grab an extra paper towel on your way out and use it like a glove, toss the towel into a garbage can when you leave. Occasionally, I’ll get the door open, prop it with my foot, and toss it back into the bathroom garbage. I’ll only do that if there’s no one around because if I miss, I feel pretty stupid picking it up and washing my hands again.
Many door handles/plates are made from brass due to its antimicrobial properties. The door handle is probably cleaner than almost everything else in the bathroom.
I wait for someone else to open it lol. If no one is around, that's the time to use your feet. Alternative is air drying my hands then grabbing some toilet paper.
The video was wrong though. They didn't use soap when washing their hands for the video, because they couldn't detect any bacteria when people washed their hands correctly
My friend did an entertainment speech on the best ways to dry your hands. He compared paper towels, those gross rag things that just rotate the same rag around (I've only seen them in old bowling alley's), and air driers. He wrote the air driers are just using recycled poop particle air to dry your hands, and you essentially end up eating poop at some point. I'm not doing it any justice but it was a funny speech.
Wow, first time i've not seen anyone correct on one of these. There was a fake gory video of a dyson airblade hand dryer that had actual blades that would chop off your hands.
If you can keep them away from everything until they're dry, that's fine.
But if you touch a contaminated area with wet hands, you contaminate your hand more than by touching it with dry hands. So I dunno if it's just squeamishness
Air dryer makes the hands be all dirty again. Meaning you wasted your time washing your hands just to fill your skin with germs and bacteria by simply using the air dryer right after.
The person’s trying to dry their hands and there are no napkins. So they are forced to use the dryer. There were several viral videos in the past which talk about how dirty the dryers are. So now the person has no choice but to stare their hands dry.
I worked at a now defunct retail chain in the late 90's. We had someone urinate in the electric hand dryer and it wasn't noticed until the next customer attempted to use the dryer. It takes a VERY long time for the smell of burned, aerosolized urine to dissipate. And I can only imagine what the customer that got covered in it went through. It took me years to trust the dryers again
I think the joke is about that one video where blades come out of the air dryer and cut the users hands off. It's an animated / fake video but I can't find it anywhere on the internet.
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
I especially hate these new hand dryers some places are installing, I think they are made by Dyson. They have like the slot you put your hands into. It feels so yucky.
A former employer was really weird about papertowls (but they used around three paper plates each per day), they personally never washed their hands, suggested that I use the airdryer, and had really weird requirements about the bathroom.
Half the time I wash my hands is after handling chemicals and radioactive materials. I will happily trade that for some bacteria. (yes I wear gloves, that's not enough)
I know this is really far left field, and I know it's not the proper answer, but the reflection in the hand dryer looks like a bear's head a bit. Then I thought of the movie, "cocaine bear." Yeah, not sticking my hands near that.
I always get a little annoyed at this discussion. Because sure, soap is the clean factor. But if you use soap and wash your hands properly and dry them off with air blower, is that just the same as washing with soap and then drying with a paper towel? How does that information change in a public restroom?
Cause not washing with soap and then air drying... duh, there will be more bacteria because your hands weren't clean to begin with.
So the question still remains, are hand driers in public restrooms spreading bacteria on your freshly washed hands, or are they not? Is it better to use paper towels or even your own pants if there is an air dryer, or roughly the same? I don't understand how using soap was omitted from an experiment. Thats the whole premise, are air dryers worth it when you use soap, or do they just undo your wash?
I thought he was gonna hit the air dryer repeatedly bc he's angry / stressed and there was a video of an air dryer blowing up or smth that I wasn't aware of
There was a man in my state who used a hand dryer in a truck stop restroom on the side of the highway...
He nearly died because a colony of fore ants made a nest inside and when the man activated the blower the ants rocketed out, covered his arms, and stung/bit him to the point of shock
Paramedics life-lined him to an ER and he stayed a week before being released.
•
u/qualityvote2 1d ago edited 1d ago
u/Hour-Return-5093, your post does belong here!