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Yet, the best hand dryers are still your trousers
Zero waste and zero bacteria spread, truly perfect.
Denim is naturally anti-microbial
TIL
Pants dry, trees die!
I can’t fathom how those dyson piece of shit blade hand dryers were chosen at so many places instead of like a Columbia Vortex.
Those nasty ass dysons near guarantee you touch the inside of them, all while misting water back up towards your face.
I always have to imagine I’m playing Operation and it’s going to buzz and light up a red light over my head if I bump the sides.
UV kills the germs. They should install lamps. Added bonus everybody gets tan hands.
And also an organization-wide statistical increase in skin cancer!
Is this true? Seriously curious.
Unfortunately it is very much true.
This is not hot air though, so the cited source does not apply.
Edit: but it does link to more relevant study towards the end, comparing different means of hand drying.
Findings: Air bacterial counts in close proximity to hand drying were 4.5-fold higher for the jet air dryer (70.7 cfu) compared with the warm air dryer (15.7 cfu) (P=0.001), and 27-fold higher compared with use of paper towels (2.6 cfu) (P<0.001).* Airborne counts were also significantly different during use of towel drying versus warm air dryer (P=0.001). A similar pattern was seen for bacterial counts at 1m away. Visualization experiments demonstrated that the jet air dryer caused the most droplet dispersal.
Isn’t the point to get bacteria off your hands? Isn’t it better to have them in the air than on your hands?
It’s a lot more likely I’ll eat something I touched than something that’s been sitting in bathroom air.
You’re right and I linked a fairly old study. I’ve edited my comment to add a more recent source.
Kudos.
They used a jet air dryer, those are the shitty ones that spray everything everywhere. Of course it’ll be worse. I’d like to see how a dyson air blade hold up under that kind of test.
Remember kids, when making graffiti, always cite your sources.
On the bathroom stall:
Here I sit all broken hearted,
Came to shit and only farted.
Then one day, just by chance,
Tried to fart and shat my pants.
- Anonymous
I kinda got that sense from the moment that “AirBlade” sprayed all my germy hand water up into my face
…how? I genuinely haven’t experienced this; I like airblades precisely because the water is blown directionally, away from you.
I’ll just leave this here:
Hygiene associated with the product has been questioned in research by the University of Westminster Trade Group, London and sponsored by the paper towel industry the European Tissue Symposium
It’s ok to be cautious, but if the data is accurate then it doesn’t matter much.
Also, how is their research any worse than the one sponsored by Dyson, who is trying to sell overpriced hand dryers.
Anyone who has ever seen one of these more than a few weeks old knows how disgusting they get because cleaning crews were never trained to clean them. I’m assuming that isn’t considered in Dyson’s version of the research at all. There’s one in a bathroom in my area that is covered in mold.
In both cases, it is the instance of conflict of interest and a moral hazard. Tainted and not to be trusted.
They always look clean in the malls I see them in.
That’s great, probably better for life happiness to just not look very closely, and ignore research like this. I doubt anyone is getting sick, even if it is certainly spraying stuff around.
Actual science is always good, but I’d like to see data on them with hourly vs daily vs weekly vs monthly washroom cleaning, and the same data on regular hand dryers and as well as paper towel.
Bet the airblades are best with a quick cleaning cycle, and worst with a slow cleaning cycle (except for paper towel if the cleaning cycle is slow enough; ‘no paper towel, dry your hands on what you can’ is certainly the least best option)
It sucks that the only device that works spreads germs. Will humanity ever find a hand drying method that not only dries hands but is also safe?
Paper towels? Lol
I thought it was the dumb ass shape of them and how it just mists and sprays the bacteria on and off the walls. The old ones were fine. Point it straight down. Who cares if a couple of drops touch the ground
Pants.
Machine should have a “blow” vent above a “suck” vent with a drip tray that drains away. Any air that passes in close contact with the heating element would be sterilized.
Paper towels?
BuT ThiNk oF tHe laNdFiLL!!!
That is such an american problem 😵💫. Reducing trash is a great motivation, but the reminder that the trash is just dumped and stored indefinitely over there just makes me want to scream.
Paper towels aren’t even trash, paper can be recycled and you’ll get new paper towels. But landfill it is…
They often are partially recycled material. But recycled paper isn’t like recycling aluminum or steel. There are limits to how often and how much of the cycled material you can add back to make useful paper products.
But paper towels can and does make great compost as most gardeners know. And a properly run landfill is a compost pile. But you need to keep the nasty garbage out.
Aluminium paper towels it is, then!
It’s a non-issue. Landfills are a negligible amount of land usage and the land can be repurposed after the landfill is decommissioned. I genuinely don’t get why people care.
Because the landfills produce methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than CO2. Once a landfill is closed, the methane can mostly be caught. There are always leaks, however. Containing the methane and other problems creates forever-costs. Recycling as much as possible and burning the rest, greatly reduces the problem. Remaining ash from burning still needs to be stored, but has less volume. And while burning trash does produce CO2, the energy is used for electricity and communal heating.
The strong bleached ones which pollute the environment or the brown ones which tear apart on wet skin and you have to pluck pieces of them from between hair on your hand?
I was about to ask how much hair you have on your hand but then i saw your username…
I particularly hate those airblade things even more than regular air dryers. I like that they’re faster and typically not as gross and warm but they are designed in a way where you feed your hand in to a narrow gap with powerful air jets on front of and behind your hands in this gap. Your hands are not a completely uniform symmetrical shape, the jets buffets your hand around and it inevitably touches the device where the jets are located, right where everyone else has had the same thing happen. It grosses me out.
And also incredibly loud too.
And they don’t dry as well, and the air moves faster so whatever is living in the water drops on your hands (depending really on how thoroughly you wash your hands) gets flung further, spread better in the space
Yeah after the first two times trying to use them and my hands got blown into one of the sides i said fuck it, I’ll use my shirt if no paper towels are available.
Japan doesn’t have paper towels or air dryers in their bathrooms.
Why?
Because everyone carries a handkerchief to dry their hands. They even sell them at airports when you land.
I’ve been trying to bring back the handkerchief in the States, but not as many places sell them
deleted by creator
It looks like a mouth, it needs eyes.
And some lipstick.
Inconclusive sauce here: https://mander.xyz/post/21607221/15388187
It’s insane we keep using those things after covid. They’re fucking disgusting.
But they’re the most hygienic! The advertisement says so…
The writing was on the wall.
Include the publishing year in your reference.
That’ll cost them two points off their grade on the paper, shame
My vandals get a zero if they don’t cite with MLA.
Wilcox et al were working in a hospital setting and just found that the air bacterial counts were higher around hand dryers than around paper towel dispensers, which doesn’t establish whether the hand dryers are actually a source of bacteria. A more recent meta-analysis found mixed outcomes. So both the sign and the graffito need to revise and resubmit, ideally with a more comprehensive survey of the published literature.
Inconclusive evidence tag?
Teach the controversy via whiteboard marker on the bathroom mirrors!
Done. :) Do you all think it should be a new rule to tag debunked or inconclusive evidence?
I think it might be nice as a guideline, but I don’t think it’s necessary to make it mandatory. I just thought it’d be funny to highlight the scholarly bathroom germ debate.
Paper towels can be recycled
They can. But they don’t…
I’ve often noticed people leaving theirs outside the waste bin so others can reuse them. Reduce, reuse THEN recycle.
![[Evidence Inconclusive] Germ Blaster](https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/aa903409-5673-47a1-a32e-db6cf31e13b9.png){kind=link}