by Katie Mcgreal

Created on: June 29, 2010   Last Updated: June 30, 2010

It is true that if hand dryers are not provided in public toilets there is a huge waste build up with paper towels. But I find it amazing that we live in such a germ-a-phobe world yet not many people seem to realise how many germs can be spread through the use of hand dryers.

The fact that germs and bacteria thrive in warm conditions is something we all learnt as part of basic science in school. That is why we freeze meat to avoid it spoiling, why we keep things like cheese, milk and eggs in the fridge and why when cooking we should always make sure the oven is hot enough to kill off any bacteria that may be living on whatever is being cooked. Therefore is it not very clear that blowing warm air into an already germ infested space is just asking for trouble?

While looking up this topic online I found many articles on the one study done in 2008 by the University of Westminster in England. This study compared the use of paper towels, the traditional warm air hand dryers and the newer jet air hand dryers in the spread of bacteria. The number of bacteria on each test subjects' hands before and after they used the different drying methods was checked and the results came back confirming that the paper towel was by far more hygienic then either of the other two. The study stated that the paper towel reduces the amount of bacteria on your hands by 77% whereas the warm air dryers increased it by 192% on the finger pads and 254% on the palms and jet air dryers increased it by 42% on the finger pads and 15% on the palms. The study goes further to show that the paper towel causes no significant spread of micro-organisms whereas the jet air dryer can blow bacteria from the hands to anything up to 2 metres away and the warm air dryer blows it up to 25cm away from the hands (source;http://kcprofessional.com.au/news/Electric-hand-drye rs-pose-health-risk.asp, also Wikipedia and europeantissue.com)

So if you are one of many germ-a-phobic people our society has recently produced avoid using hand dryers! It is increasing the amount of bacteria not decreasing it. In effect, using a hand dryer to dry your hands is a waste of time. if you have just washed your hands, you probably have double the amount of bacteria and germs afterwards then you did before you even began.

Learn more about this author, Katie Mcgreal.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.