Study finds there are 27 times more germs in the proximity of jet air dryers than around paper towel dispensers

Nov 21, 2014 10:31 GMT  ·  By

True, hand dryers look way cooler than paper towel dispensers. There's a whole lot of technology going on there, what with the sensors that tell them when to kick into gear and the elements that heat air and direct it towards people's hands.

Still, it appears that, at the end of the day, it's paper towel dispensers that people should stick to. Unless they look forward to having all sorts of germs crawling on their body and all around their homes or offices, that is.

Experimenting with dryers and towel dispensers

Looking to determine whether it's safer to use hand dryers or run-off-mill paper towel dispensers, researchers with the University of Leeds in the UK got to work carrying out a series of experiments.

It a nutshell, they sprinkled a bacteria known to the scientific community as Lactobacillus over volunteers' hands and then had them dry themselves using regular warm air dryers, jet air dryers and regular paper towels.

Once the volunteers were done drying their hands, the University of Leeds scientists proceeded to analyze the Lactobacillus population in the proximity of the dryers and the dispensers, the Alpha Galileo Foundation reports.

The researchers behind this investigation chose to work with Lactobacillus because this bacteria is not normally found in public restrooms. This means that the microorganisms whose presence they documented could have only come from the volunteers.

Their discoveries are rather worrying

In a paper in the Journal of Hospital Infection, the specialists say that, after analyzing air samples collected both from around the dryers and the dispensers, and from areas at a distance of 1 or 2 meters (3.2 to 6.4 feet), they found the hand dryers to be way dirtier than the dispensers.

More precisely, the jet air dryers were found to have about 4.5 times more bacteria around them than the warm air dryers. When compared to the paper towel dispensers, the same jet air dryers were found to have a 27 times higher air bacteria count.

Besides, researchers say that, in the case of the jet air dryers and the warm air dryers, bacteria lingered in their proximity for at least 15 minutes after the volunteers were done using them. The paper towel dispensers, on the other hand, didn't seem very eager to hold on to any microorganisms.

Commenting on the outcome of these experiments, researcher Mark Wilcox wished to stress that, “These findings are important for understanding the ways in which bacteria spread, with the potential to transmit illness and disease.”

“Next time you dry your hands in a public toilet using an electric hand dryer, you may be spreading bacteria without knowing it. You may also be splattered with bugs from other people’s hands,” the specialist went on to explain.

Hand dryers stand accused of spreading germs (5 Images)

We all have all sorts of germs living on our hands
Apparently, hand dryers spread these germs aroundPaper towel dispensers, on the other hand, are fairly clean
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