Are hand dryers better & safer than paper towels?

Check out this great MSN video - Are hand dryers more sanitary than paper towels?

The week was focused on learning more about the hand dryer. I learned that in 1948, George Clemens invented the hand dryer.  There are good things about hand dryers and there are some negative things.  In a match against paper towels to see which one is the best, I found some areas where paper towels were better and some other areas where hand dryers were the best.

Manufacturing.

Manufactures say that hand dryers are able to cut costs by as much as 99.5% when in comparison to paper towels.  Thus, for companies that might spend $2340 yearly on paper towels, they can spend $14 yearly with hand dryers. The difference between the two costs is due to the cost of paper towels and the cost of electricity.  Hand dryers require very little maintenance compared to how much we have to replace paper towels.

Environment.

Paper towels cannot be recycled. Hence, hand dyers are claimed to be better for the environment. Additionally, with hand dryers, there is a litter reduction and waste in comparison with paper towels.  102 hand dryers in the public schools of Topeka, Kansas and the study showed that hand dryers competing against paper towels showed an annual savings of 34.5 tons of solid waste, 690,000 gallons of water and 587 trees.  153 hand dryers were also studied in the Iowa state and their results showed an annual savings of 10.5 tons of solid waste and 176 trees.  These all goes to show that environmentally, hand dryers are better than paper towels. They save a lot of what we lose when manufacturing paper towels.

Sanitation.

Studies on hand dryers, cloth towels and paper towels have found how bacteria plays a role in each. Hand dryers were found to increase the bacterial count on the skin by 117%, cloth towels decreased the bacterial count by 4% and paper towels also decreased the bacterial count by 245. Many hand dryers do not filter the air they use when drying hands so the bacteria in the air ends up on our hands unsafe and unclean.  Also, jet-air hand dryers splash the bacteria on our hands at least two meters across the room when in the process of drying our hands.  In this case, paper towels would win the battle.

Drying Efficiency.

University of Westminster did a study on the drying efficiency of paper towels, hand dryers and cloth towels. Their results showed that it takes around 43 seconds to completely dry ours hands under a hand dryer while paper towels took 12 seconds.  Many people don’t have the patience to wait under a hand dryer for 43 seconds to get their hand dry so typically, we take paper towels as our best suggestion when we want to get our hands dry.  It’s faster and as suggested before, cleaner.  Additionally, from a personal experience, paper towels are less noisy. Hand dryers can be very loud and irritating.