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Dyson Airblades 'Spread Germs 1,300 Times More Than Paper Towels' (telegraph.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: The Journal of Applied Microbiology published a report claiming Dyson Airblade hand-driers spread 60 times more germs than standard air dryers, and 1,300 times more than standard paper towels. The researchers from University of Westminster conducted their research by dipping their hands in water containing a harmless virus. Then, they dried their hands with either a Dyson Airblade, a standard hot-air dryer, or a paper towel. Their research shows the Dyson drier's 430mph blasts of air are capable of spreading viruses up to 3 meters across a bathroom. Typical driers spread viruses up to 75cm (about 2.5ft), and the hand towels 25cm (less than 1ft).
One of the authors of the study works for Kimberly Clark, omnipresent maker of paper towels. How convenient.
If we taint the water itself and measure how far that spreads, is that really a realistic test of how hygienic the dryer is?
No, it's not. But it makes for a better headline.
You may be interested in the TEDx talk "How to use a paper towel". Sounds stupid, right? Tons of people actually use those flimsy public restroom paper towels very inefficiently, so it's actually pretty informative.
Drying your hands with a towel of any kind isn't what cleans your hands.
Soap binds to the dirt AND to water. When you wash your hands the soap is effectively gluing the dirt to the water and when you rinse that water away you rinse away the dirt too.
Washing your hands with soap and water and doing a decent job of rubbing/lathering your hands together (i.e. do it for 20 seconds or so and hit all parts of your hand) is all that is required for good sanitation in most cases. Most people don't wash their hands properly.
You only need to 'scrub' with a brush or other implement if you need your hands _extremely_ clean or you have material on them that is not readily emulsified by soap & water. Unless you are a surgeon, you don't need your hands to be _that_ clean. You have an immune system for a reason. Give it something to do so it doesn't get bored and turn on you (allergies).
Honestly my junk is probably cleaner than my hands it's been locked up in clean underwear while my hands have handled money and all kind of other unsanitary things. Wash your hands before you take a whiz.
It almost always is - the exception is if you have a urinary tract infection. It can be used as an emergency antiseptic.
A sterile liquid isn't an antiseptic. It can help displacing some amount of bacteria (and water being a universal solvent, it does help more than most people give it credit for, although soap is for sure needed in most situations), but that's it.
The problem with urine is that it's not just sterile (in most cases). It's also full of nutritive components, and it's warm too, making it an ideal bacterial growth medium.
(And when a guy touches his penis, he can easily come into contact with precum, which is less sterile, and can transmit STDs if infected, including in some cases as an asymptomatic and undiagnosed carrier...).
If you have urine on your hands, you will ease bacterial growth on them and everything you touch for hours.
The "pee is clean so I don't need to wash my hands, you're just a clean freak with a sexuality complex!" idea is very typical of superficial thinking by phony skeptics...
(Intimacy is not a complex either... Trying to force one's one intimacy on others, is, though...).
You should clean your hand both before and after going to the toilets.
Washing your hands without soap at all is quite effective, assuming you do a reasonable job at it. See The Effect of Handwashing at Recommended Times with Water Alone and With Soap on Child Diarrhea in Rural Bangladesh: An Observational Study. Any soap will make the hand washing more effective. Anti-bacterial soap is no better than standard soap.
CDC recommends you sneeze/cough into your elbow. Less opportunity to touch something with your germy hands.
its all bollox. if you've washed your hands properly there will be no germs to spread.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Or just get rid of the door and have a little corridor with a bend in it so that you can't see in. That has the added bonus of allowing some air flow so the place doesn't get too ripe.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC