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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).
Yes, but it's a Dyson which means it cost twice what any other solution cost, so it's go to be good, right?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It actually gets my hands dry, unlike traditional air dryers ("press button, wipe hands on pants").
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
But... But... It's the "world's most hygienic hand dryer!" It says it right on the thing!
But I tend to wash my hands instead of dunking them in vats of bacteria before drying them, whichever method of drying I use.
Typically when the dryer starts up, I can feel a fine spray of water hit me in the face. I avoid these dryers now, even if it means using my pant legs to dry my hands.
At least the old fashioned blow dryers that take forever to dry your hands don't direct a spray of water into your face.
Evidently, that's not a joke any longer. As James Dyson says,
"Like everyone we get frustrated by products that don’t work properly. As design engineers we do something about it."
Shouldn't the premise for testing hand dryers be that the hands are washed with soap and are "clean" but wet? If we taint the water itself and measure how far that spreads, is that really a realistic test of how hygienic the dryer is?
That is why I go to stall and pre open door so I can grab some toilet paper to dry my hands.
Tim, the Toolman's" theory of "More Power" seems to have failed in this case.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
IIRC, The Mythbusters a couple years ago tested the efficacy of air hand dryers versus paper towels, and found that paper towels were more effective and more hygienic.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
You mean those jet-powered hand dryers that make so much noise that they give you tinnitus?
I hate those!
My anecdotal evidence has shown that men don't wash their hands often after doing their thing. That said, perhaps Dyson's numbers are much better than NOT washing your hands and using either paper or air.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
Own one for two seconds and I defy you not to realise this.
See that damp stain on the wall underneath? And the puddle on the floor? Yeah, you washed your hands about five times, and it looks like you've been having water fights in front of the thing.
And then there was me who was always told that, actually, washing your hands (the process of wetting them) does little anyway. It's the drying / wiping that actually scrapes the crap off. Otherwise you literally just have a slightly damper environment for the bacteria on your hands anyway.
There's a reason that surgeons "scrub" up. It has little to do with the water itself, which just acts as a lubricant to assist the soap (which sticks to dirt and water) in sticking to the dirt and then providing a way to know where you've washed and to remove those parts that might have captured the dirt. It's the wiping / scrubbing / vigorous rub-down that actually removes that crap from you (and onto the floor / towel / soap / sink, obviously).
Like the Romans - who bathed in oil and then scraped it off, knowing the OIL took the dirt with it, not that smelling like a pizza for the rest of the day actually did anything in itself.
The reason we have hand-driers is because such scrubbing in public is considered... "wrong" somehow. You can't share a towel without transfer of bacteria, and people think individual paper towel is somehow killing the planet. Like blowing your nose - don't put it in a handkerchief and carry it around with you. Wipe it off on a tissue and throw the fucking thing away.
But, to be honest, it barely matters. Bacteria don't last long in those kinds of environments so long as they're cleaned occasionally, you can't really avoid spreading them anyway (it's not a question of some precisely contained particles - watch one of the slow-mo videos of a sneeze, it doesn't matter what you do it's like someone sneezing a handful of flour - it goes fecking everywhere, but, yes, put your hand up because it does stop quite a lot of your snot landing on someone else), and gadgets like this are quick and convenient which means more people might bother to wash their hands just to try it out.
But if you ever used one of these, I defy you to not have seen the crap and water on the floor underneath and around it that gets blasted off everyone else's hands.
Like all things Dyson (and Apple), half-decent idea, pretty aesthetics, fucking terrible design, but add a premium and be different and people buy it.
One of the authors of the study works for Kimberly Clark, omnipresent maker of paper towels. How convenient.
I hope this is sarcasm, toilet flush spreads germs too; you'd be wiping your hands with shit germs.
Who dips their hands in virus water? This is a pointless expirement. Who cares if it splashed clean water after you wash with soap? Sheesh.
pretty sure people didn't switch to be "more efficient", wasn't the idea to save paper ?
Yes, it was to save paper.
That stuff doesn't grow on trees...
For the next study, I recommend they compare the decibels of the Dyson Airblade dryer, as experienced by the user, to the decibels of a jet engine on the tarmac, as experienced by a baggage handler wearing ear plugs.
I'm betting the dryer would win.
Because what they studied where the difference between the different drying solutions.
Experimental setup:
Real world equivalent of the experimental setup:
Actual bathroom operation:
Does anyone spot the little problem with what their experiment tests and what conclusions the draw?
I'm pretty sure they say it's "to save paper" while really meaning "we're sick of emptying the trash can all the time" or possibly "we think it's less expensive because the electric budget goes somewhere else".
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
The Mythbusters already confirmed that air powered had drying spread germs more than paper.
Have you tried using one of them as a urinal while they were blowing?
Worst urinal EVER!!
How to use one paper towel.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Uh, no, the warmth from a standard air dryer does not appreciably speed up the proliferation of remaining germs on your hands. The heat does not persist long enough to make a difference in bacterial growth. Bacteria do not multiply _that_ fast.
The purpose of a Dyson is to be _quick_ and thorough at drying your hands, which is something that standard air dryers are pitiably bad at.
I've been saying this for years. I refuse to use any sort of "germ blowing" device in the bathroom. If there are no paper towels... i simply just dry my hands on my pants or move on with slightly moist hands. Only takes a couple of minutes for them to dry anyway...
Sorry, unless you are blasting your hands with water as fast as this air dryer how do you even suppose to pretend that your hands are being cleaned to such a degree that the air dryer will not pull off more bacteria/dirt/other microbes than hand-washing.. never mind that most people dont wash their hands very well to begin with or the possibility that the soap has run out from the dispenser.
Then I will challenge you on how you think water and soap will kill a virus or even kill 100% of microbes that are susceptible to soap destroying their cellular membrane.
The bottom line is that Dyson invented a good hand dryer which is also much more effective at sharing disease with your follow bathroom compatriots. Sneeze into the thing while its on and share your cold with everyone around you.
-gov
Well, yes, paper towels might be more effective and more hygenic, but without Dyson Airblades or those obnoxious XLerator blow-dryers, how are we expected to damage our hearing in the restroom? If we don't have a 95-decibel mini-jet-engine firing up every few seconds in a small room covered in hard, echoing surfaces, we'll pretty much have to stick actual spikes in our ears to get the same result.
is that after you have dried your hands (or not) you have to pull on the contaminated handle to open the exit door. WHY DON'T THESE DOORS OPEN OUTWARDS THEN YOU COULD PUSH IT WITH SOMETHING OTHER THAN YOUR HANDS.
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Sure blowers may blast bacteria around and paper towels may already have bacteria on them. But how dangerous is this ? Billions of years of evolution has given us an immune system that deals with what is found in the environment., if now we would have died out centuries ago. I do agree that we are living in more densely populated communities and so germ control is more important than it was in times past; but I suspect that most of that happens through the guys who don't wash their hands after going to the toilet (and touch things that we later do - think: door handles) or those who cough and sneeze near others.
Paper towels beat air blowers and air blades in cleanliness?
Sometimes the old ways are better than the new ways.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
"we're sick of emptying the trash can all the time"
How about these other steps;
1. Purchasing paper towels.
2. Storing paper towels.
3. Refilling dispensers.
4. Storing waste till it can be picked up.
5. Filling solid waste dumps with used paper towels.
Emptying cans is only one step in the process. Every step in that process cost time and/or money.
I thought the point of the dryer was to dry the rinse water off of your hands after you thoroughly wash them, eliminating most of the pathogens.
That said, the problem here isn't the dryer. It's the idoits who don't know how to wash their hands. Perhaps in a hospital, we could make smart sinks that detect when you haven't washed your hands thoroughly enough and then curse at you or something... maybe the "red alert" sound. If it's obnoxious enough to get the attention of others in the room, then people will not ignore it so easily.
Or maybe they need to eliminate the sink, and just put the hand washing function into the dryer. I'm sure Dyson could power-wash the skin off of your hands. Wait, then blood-borne pathogens would get everywhere. Unless you cauterize the flesh after you take off the skin.
Maybe we should eliminate the sink and the dryer, and the bidet for those of you that like that sort of thing, and the toilet paper, and have an all-in-one commode that you sit on your hands on that washes, sanitizes, and drys your ass and your hands after you defecate. Ah, it'd feel sooo clean.
Or maybe we should just shit, wipe, flush, wash and dry like responsible people with what we've got.
So, your saying they DIDN'T wash their hands? If they washed their hands, how many germs would they spread then?
And the research concluded that increased air pressure blows water off the hands quicker?
I think the focus of this is skewed for more effect. They intentionally placed "infectious" material on the hands so they could claim that this think spreads germs. All it does is blow the water off the hands instantaneously. You need to actually wash your hands first.
Do they need another disclaimer on a sticker on it saying "Wash hands before drying" for the stupid people?.
So Dyson says: "Independent research shows that before they even reach the washroom, paper towels can contain large communities of culturable bacteria."
Yes, but those bacteria aren't likely to cause disease in humans. As I understand it, infectious viruses don't survive for long periods of time on dry surfaces, like paper towels. If one person having a cold or the flu uses a Dyson dryer, he aerosolizes the virus into tiny droplets hanging about in the air and splashing about on the doorknob. That's where the infection of the next visitor happens.
Actually, the proper term is 'atomized feces.' Not that it's reduced to atoms, but the fecal matter drifts around in the air.
So that's what the funny looking urinal is. I always wondered why it was over by the sinks............and why it blew my pee everywhere.
Last time I was in the toilets and used one of these things my piss went everywhere. Def not hygienic.
Yeah, and when you're president you're going to fix that too and make Dyson pay for it, right?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Ya know, now that you mention it, I never soak my hands in a virus either!
I think we would become a better nation if we learn not to pee on the hands ... No need for air dryers or paper.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This must be that study where they didn't wash their hands before drying them.
Dyson has a rebuttal; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKxT1k1cmXc
Other studies also published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology came to the conclusion that paper towels and the airblade were equally effective at spreading germs - assuming that there really are paper towels, and a proper place to dispose of them.
As a doctor I could suggest washing your hands with soap and water instead of virus and water. The former is the approved method whereas the latter is a little to new and usually frowned upon.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Probably because if they are going to compare the distribution rates of different methods of hand drying, they realized that they would need some sort of tracer, the presence of which could be quantitatively measured.
Their result isn't that blowing air over one's hands is a bad thing, just that it spreads what's on your hands around the room a lot more than wiping them on a towel would. As someone here noted earlier, flushing the toilet does the same or worse. So flush your crap, thereby aerosolizing your shit, and then use a Dyson Airblade to blow whatever is left on your hands around the room for good measure. It's a dirty world but we can pretend that we are clean.
1300, isn't that the number you multiply another product price to in order to get the price of a Dyson product?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
To be fair, most of the water in India is about as likely to get you sick as the unwashed hand that precedes it. Give some credit to a culture of people that recognize this, and try to use just one hand so that the other one is still clean for eating, etc. Saves an enormous amount of water, too.
The wheel it turns, around and around, with an ancient rumbling sound.
You forgot, "We can get rid of the guy who goes round replacing the towels and emptying the bins".
I first encountered these idiot things in my first overseas trip to London and Paris back in 2010 at many shopping centres and airports.
The stupid goddamn things have a very small slit to put your hands in, where the air is coming rapidly on to your hands in a very tight line / wave of air.
The problem is in the design that you put your hands inside this small gap and it's really bloody easy for your palms or back of your hand or your shirt to easily touch the top or bottom of the opening.
https://www.thememo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/dyson-airblade.jpg
It's simply too small a space to put your hands. Sure if you're careful you're fine but it reminded me of playing the old electronic board game 'operation' trying to not touch the sides.
I realise Mythbusters seemed to confirm that an air dryer IS worse than paper towel for germs, but I still prefer a combination of both (towel then dryer) but I'd take a regular hand dryer any day over the Dyson, stupid bloody thing.
After reading this story, I disagree with the process and direction of the experiment. The use of any hand dryer is to dry your hands AFTER you wash your hands with SOAP and WATER. NOT after you dip your hands in known bacteria. The experiment is obvious, and misleading. I don't see how hand dryer manufactures, including Dyson have any relation to this. To put it more bluntly, I wipe my nose after a major sneeze, and hold my hands outside of a car window at 140mph. The result would be the same as this experiment. For the record, I'm an IT guru with 20 years experience, with physics, engineering, electrical, and electronic experience.
They are excellent for drying paintbrushes. Seriously, put the brush in sideways, the air disturbs the brush and dries it almost instantly. Very handy.
Oh, and I suppose they're ok for drying hands too.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
n/t
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
You're supposed to wash your hands before you dry them. If you wash them properly there are no germs to spread.
Germs get spread 60 time more by a Dyson than a normal hand-dryer.
In order to achieve that figure, we have to take the radius of dispersal and map it to the volume of a sphere. I'm afraid I've not seen a Dyson dryer mounted at least 3 meters above the floor, at least 3 meters from any wall, and at least 3 meters from the ceiling. I'm not entirely sure how I'd be able to use such a device -- having to climb a ladder after going for a pee would be pretty unhygienic.
But even in such a scenario, the figures are buggered, by the simple law of "what goes up must come down", as all of the germs are going to end up on the floor, no suspended in air uniformly across the volume. The 3m dispersal radius assumes a typically installation with the floor around 70cm below the nozzles, so if we raise the device, basic Newtonian mechanics is going to mean the dispersal radius will increase.
You could potentially argue the case for using 2D area as a legitimate comparison (1.76 square meters for hot air vs 28.3 sq m for airblade = approx. 16 times) by virtue of the floor describing a 2D plane, but I'm not sure that the linear comparison isn't the most accurate here -- "Dyson Airblade spreads germs 4 times further than standard hot air dryers.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Who the hell washes their hands with viruses instead of soap? If you just washed your hands, what are you going to spread? If the water is so bacteria-laden that you're going to spread them even after using soap, you and everyone else in the room have a lot more to worry about.
What if they added a small drain to the bottom for the water that pools down there, and integrate a UV light to kill the bacteria? I'm not sure if any of it is UV resistant.
Has anyone actually been sick lately? The most sick I've ever been was catching the odd cold in the winter but these days I take the flu shot, so, not even that. :)
Most bacteria and viruses are harmless, they're everywhere, you inhale and ingest them routinely.
That's why you have a strong acid in your stomach and antibacterial mucus lining your respiratory tract?
Gotta love that immune system!
The germs are nothing compared to the hearing loss due to putting your ear next to a get engine.
Joe cleans himself messily. "That's okay, I'll just wah my hands." He touches the faucet with his feces covered hands, washes them clean, then touches the feces covered faucet again to turn it off. Then he dries his hands with a dryer spreading feces to the button, and opens the door, spreading feces to the door handle and beyond. Everyone who washes their hands after him gets his feces.
USE PAPER TOWELS
Wash your hands, leave the water running, then use a paper towel to dry them. Then use the paper towel to turn off the water and open the door. There are people who don't wash their hands and that door handle is dirty!
The whole point of washing ones hands is to kill and remove the germs through the rigorous use of hot water and soap, the drying is just for comfort. The only thing that matters is which dries hands better and is more environmentally friendly from a resource perspective.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
If you washed your hands properly, there would be no virus left to spread this way.
Dog is my co-pilot.
The shit is really going to hit the fan ... Oh wait!
On the other hand, it's probably a good idea to wash your hands *beforehand*, as some of the skin on that particular part of your body is rather thin and you don't want to introduce nasties if possible.
But regardless of what your hands touch, combining thin skin and an area prone to being warm and possibly sweaty is still a good incubator for unpleasant things such as the bacteria/fungi behind jock itch etc.
Also, always rinse hands well after preparing habanero or other hot peppers or other extremely hot foods or you'll be doing a little pain-dance for quite awhile afterwards
You forgot, "We can get rid of the guy who goes round replacing the towels and emptying the bins".
God, I hope they're not thinking that.
In my neck of the woods, the person who replaces the towels and empties the bins is also the person who's responsible for cleaning the washroom.
..... wash their hands properly before using the drier it shouldn't be that much of an issue. But not everyone does unfortunately.