Hand dryers or paper towels?

Discussions about serious topics, for serious people
Post Reply
User avatar
Fishnut
After Pie
Posts: 2447
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:15 pm
Location: UK

Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by Fishnut » Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:18 pm

A riveting topic of discussion, and one that I'm sure sparks fierce debate whenever two or more people congregate in a public bathroom - which is better, hand dryer or paper towel? How do we even quantify 'better'? From an environmental perspective? Or disease prevention? Or speed of drying? Or something else I've not even thought of?

It's been something I've been pondering off and on for a while and I was hoping the hivemind might have some ideas and help me reach a definitive conclusion.

I've mostly been considering it from an environmental perspective but even then it's not easy. Working out how all-encompassing to go is my first sticking point. Do you just count the environmental cost of the components for the dryer vs the paper towels and dispenser or do you look at the environmental cost of the equipment needed to produce those construction materials too? (i.e. do you just look at the impacts of the mining and logging or also at the cost of producing the mining and logging equipment?). Then there's also the end of life to consider. Paper towels are incinerated or put into landfill. Do you just consider the direct environmental cost of the incineration/putting into landfill or do you include the environmental cost of creating and maintaining the incinerator/landfill? Do you assume that dryers are recycled or are just disposed of, their components destroyed? How broad a scope do you go? And even when you've decided on the scope, how exactly do you go about quantifying things like carbon emissions for each step in the production, utilisation and destruction of the dryer/hand towel?

From a disease perspective, I've seen some suggestions that dryers can spread disease by making viruses airborne. Is this a real concern based on evidence or just a theoretical one? Does an overflowing bin of soggy hand towels pose more of a risk than a dispersed viral load? Does it just turn a low risk that everyone is exposed to, to a higher risk that only really affects the cleaners? If so, which is preferable?

Then you've got the human angle - do most people even use these hand drying options or just stick with the tried and trusted method of drying on their trousers? Is giving people the option of hand towels or dryer a good compromise? Or one that leaves both going relatively unused? Is letting people walk out with wet hands something to even be worried about - are wet hands a higher risk for spreading disease than dry? If so, is it a clinically significant difference or just a statistically significant one?

I've had a little look at the literature out there on the topic and it is, maybe unsurprisingly, quite sparse from what I can tell. And a lot of the comparisons discuss older dryers rather than the more modern Dyson airblade and alternatives. Are their efficiencies enough to make them definitively better? Or are they still too slow to compete with a quick grab of the paper towels as you walk out?

Does anyone have an answer? Or even any idea of how to reach an answer? Do you know any useful literature?

Please help!!!
it's okay to say "I don't know"

User avatar
Boustrophedon
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2860
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 3:58 pm
Location: Lincolnshire Wolds

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by Boustrophedon » Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:33 pm

If like me, you find you face somewhat sticky in Nandos and so you go to wash your hands and face and then turn round and find a f.cking Dyson Airblade, into which you cannot insert your face.
So you go into the cubicle and retrieve a few meagre squares of tissue one at a f.cking time from a dispenser resembling a cats a..eh.le.

I hate the noise of high velocity hand dryers, the din in the toilets in Motorway service stations, where you can have up to ten going at once, is unbearable, I am sure it breaches H&S noise level limits. I have seen little kids turn and run screaming from service station toilets.

For me paper towels or cloth roller towels every time. But even then they have managed to make paper towels with zero moist strength, so you cannot pull them out of the dispenser and you have to resort to pulling little pieces off the end of the towel, til your fingertips are dry enough to pull out the remains of the towel.

TL:DR, f.ck Dyson.
Hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död.

User avatar
headshot
Dorkwood
Posts: 1414
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2019 9:40 am

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by headshot » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:03 pm

On paper towels: https://youtu.be/2FMBSblpcrc

How to successfully use only one paper towel.
Last edited by headshot on Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
bob sterman
Dorkwood
Posts: 1123
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 10:25 pm
Location: Location Location

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by bob sterman » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:04 pm

Paper towels win in hygiene grounds...

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/air-dr ... er-towels/

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/healt ... l-question

So for environmental cost - need to factor in the carbon footprint of the medical treatment for people who got ill when using hand driers vs paper towels.

Beaker
Stargoon
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2019 5:28 pm

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by Beaker » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:16 pm

I looked at this for work (pharma). In the change areas leading to the factory we went for paper towels, as the blowers aerosolised the bacteria.

monkey
After Pie
Posts: 1906
Joined: Wed Nov 13, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by monkey » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:25 pm

Pretty sure I've discussed this before.

Think the conclusion was Paper towels was best for hygiene, trousers was best for the environment and hand dryers was best for letting everyone else know you washed your hands and your not a dirty bastard (the louder, the better).

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7527
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by dyqik » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:27 pm

bob sterman wrote:
Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:04 pm
Paper towels win in hygiene grounds...

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/air-dr ... er-towels/

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/healt ... l-question

So for environmental cost - need to factor in the carbon footprint of the medical treatment for people who got ill when using hand driers vs paper towels.
Although you do also have to factor in people who don't wash their hands because the paper towels have run out, and the health hazards of piles of damp paper towels that haven't been cleared as well.

I'd guess that the usage load and cleaning model could make a difference either way on health grounds.

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by IvanV » Fri Mar 17, 2023 2:44 pm

Someone once said to me, never work for an organisation that provides hot air hand dryers, it shows they don't care about their employees.

I work in an office building in multiple occupation, where the toilets are the in the common areas, and the landlord drives toilet policy. When I arrived in my present job, they had cotton roller towels. After I had been there a while, they took the towels away and introduced hot air hand dryers. We didn't like it, but there was little we could do about it short of move.

So how was I to operationalise the maxim I started with? It wasn't really my employer's fault. Our lease did come up eventually, but as is often the case any other location for the office is worse than the one everyone has got used to, and we stayed. I'm afraid I compromised my principles, because it wasn't really my employer's fault.

After a while it turned out that they had installed really cheap hand dryers, which soon became cargo cult hand dryers. They make a loud noise, but very little hot air issues from them. I guess the fan blades broke up after a while. Or maybe the fan blades ceased to be attached to the motor. Or something like that. So the motor whizzes and nothing much moves the air.

Since standing there with a loud noise and very little hand drying is pointless, I now shake my hands briefly in the air, maybe and hope they will dry while I use the stairs back to our floor, where we have some kitchen towel or a tea towel or something in extremis.

So we complained and complained again. Eventually they put Dysons in the ground floor gents, which the landlords themselves use. So you can actually dry your hands in there, but not your face. Fine when you arrive or leave, but not when you are 5 storeys away from those loos. But they wouldn't change the cargo cult machines on other floors. Then covid. So eventually when people started to come back to work, they realised that people need to dry their hands, and now there are little stacks of paper towels intermittently available.

WFJ
Catbabel
Posts: 648
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2021 7:54 am

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by WFJ » Fri Mar 17, 2023 2:54 pm

For drying performance you can't beat a good old fashioned World Dryer Corporation hot air dryer for drying your hands, face or shirt/trousers after spilling your drink down them. Not sure they're the most environmentally efficient though, and certainly not the quietest.

noggins
Snowbonk
Posts: 572
Joined: Wed Nov 13, 2019 1:30 pm

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by noggins » Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:22 pm

What about: touch nothing, and use evaporating hand sanitizer ?

User avatar
jdc
Hilda Ogden
Posts: 1925
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:31 pm
Location: Your Mum

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by jdc » Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:31 pm

noggins wrote:
Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:22 pm
What about: touch nothing, and use evaporating hand sanitizer ?
I don't think sanitiser is quite as good as handwashing - e.g. they were warning people to wash their hands rather than use sanitiser when norovirus was going round this winter.

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7527
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by dyqik » Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:38 pm

jdc wrote:
Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:31 pm
noggins wrote:
Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:22 pm
What about: touch nothing, and use evaporating hand sanitizer ?
I don't think sanitiser is quite as good as handwashing - e.g. they were warning people to wash their hands rather than use sanitiser when norovirus was going round this winter.
And it's no good for removing actual dirt from hands - like machine oils, grease, etc.

User avatar
Fishnut
After Pie
Posts: 2447
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:15 pm
Location: UK

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by Fishnut » Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:31 pm

bob sterman wrote:
Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:04 pm
Paper towels win in hygiene grounds...

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/air-dr ... er-towels/

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/healt ... l-question

So for environmental cost - need to factor in the carbon footprint of the medical treatment for people who got ill when using hand driers vs paper towels.
Those are really useful, thanks! Seems pretty definitive that paper towels are better overall.
it's okay to say "I don't know"

User avatar
Grumble
Light of Blast
Posts: 4746
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:03 pm

Re: Hand dryers or paper towels?

Post by Grumble » Sun Mar 19, 2023 7:46 am

Fishnut wrote:
Fri Mar 17, 2023 8:31 pm
bob sterman wrote:
Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:04 pm
Paper towels win in hygiene grounds...

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/air-dr ... er-towels/

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/healt ... l-question

So for environmental cost - need to factor in the carbon footprint of the medical treatment for people who got ill when using hand driers vs paper towels.
Those are really useful, thanks! Seems pretty definitive that paper towels are better overall.
Also noting that “if soap is used there are essentially no bacteria left” so hand air dryers are fine if you wash your hands properly.
where once I used to scintillate
now I sin till ten past three

Post Reply