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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.
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?
But... But... It's the "world's most hygienic hand dryer!" It says it right on the thing!
It is.
All the germs which were on your hands are now up to 3 meters away from you.
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.
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...
Have you tried using one of them as a urinal while they were blowing?
Worst urinal EVER!!
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.
My life coach told me that urine is sterile, so i just take a whiz on my hands.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.