We have Dyson driers at work. They have a fun design feature where all of the water that gets blasted off of your hands falls down onto the curved surface below. It then collects there over time and all sorts of fun things start to grow.
"Seems to me" that Dyson should put a small UV-C LED to kill off the bug in the accumulated moisture. It might also try to sanitize some of the air coming off your hands.
@@JonMartinYXD -- That's true. That's why is has to be concealed in a duct through which a fan draws the exhaust air. An "ideal" system would draw in fresh air and head and irradiate it in a duct. The air would be blown on the hands and most of the air would be sucked up into another duct where it would be UV-C treated again.
Mythbusters tested this and said they both work fine as long as you actually wash your hands. If you just rinse them, then air dryers are worse and spread more bacteria.
They completely neglect the fact that in the real world people suck at washing their hands, and some are purposefully nasty, pissing in them. Not just bacteria but disease aswell. Thats why i prefer paper towels, more maintanence = more cared after = less dirty.
I'm amazed that Sam and his team found so much stock footage of people using hand dryers and drying their hands. There really is a graphics library for everything.
The amount of stock footage is beyoung what you could ever imagine, there's tons of photo\video for any activity you can imagine. Also: @@T..C..M cringe
@@MrSkyl1ne The air dryer also works for blowin the blood off of the wound while you wrap it with some of your ripped off shirt (accidental double meanin there, but i mean it in both senses of those words xD)
There ought to be a simple rule for which bathrooms can use hand dryers and which MUST use paper towels. If I have to grab a handle to get out of the bathroom, then that bathroom MUST use paper towels; if I can get out by just using my body to push the door open, then hand dryers are fine.
I think I've discovered, not just from reading the replies to this video, though it certainly reinforces it, that people are far too scared of germs and bacteria. Do you know where bacteria lives? LITERALLY EVERYWHERE. Your skin is covered in it right now. It's on every surface you touch, unless it's been disinfected in the last ~20 minutes. Reasonable hygiene will do you fine; you don't need to start wearing an N95 and using hand towels to open bathroom doors.
"Pushing the boundaries of *accepted evidence*" Is not something I want to see on MOST scientists resumes, ESPECIALLY one working for a giant corporation with a money-making agenda.
Eh, I don't see that job description as being necessarily bad. Maybe the current regulatory evidence standard really is bad (I don't know, but let's assume for the sake of argument). Maybe the current standards are people wearing latex gloves, no soap, and only measure bacteria by how bad the gloves smell, and he wants to push the standards towards real hands, with soap, and using petri dishes to grow samples. That seems like it would be a good way of "pushing the boundaries of accepted evidence." Of course, if he was pushing the opposite direction, that would be bad. We'd have to know what the current standards are and how he wants to push them in order to know whether he's doing something good or bad.
My concern is that we're missing the bigger picture here, which is - as anyone born before 1980 can tell you: 1) Push butt -on- 2) Rub hands under -w- arm _h_ air 3) Stop -s au- to -mati- call -y- _4) Rub hands on pants_
It's funny how resumeś are misinterpreted. I'm a retired machinist and mechanical engineer. Long time ago I was assigned one particularly difficult (near impossible) job. I had to remind management the word "magician" was not on my resumé. 🤔
I'm on the side of paper towels. They also have other hygiene uses than drying your hands, and I can dry my hands better than any hand dryer. Sometimes I need 2 towels but that absorbs the water off very efficiently. Yes it costs more but I'm 99% sure it's way more hygienic, and I don't like using dryers anyway + they make a ton of noise.
Jet dryers are fine unless they're like airblade and you have to play Operation to not touch the sides or the grime collecting bottom. It really is a great product in one of the worst designed cases.
Being someone with pretty small hands (for a guy) I never appreciated how problematic this design could be; I had realised that those surfaces were bound to get filthy, but I'd have to try really hard to actually touch them
I always wondered how that Dyson hand drier was more hygenic because you have to put your hand inside & you often hit the sides, which other people would've also done so the germs just accumulate there & people touch it
I hate the noise of those things. All of them. They are painfully loud and it seems like they take as long as the original hand dryers did because it's so uncomfortable to use them.
Well hang on, so long as everyone washes their hands they should start out clean and touching the sides doesn't matter then. But given water accumulates at the bottom, I'd argue that fast blowing air will aerosolize the bacteria growing there onto your hands... So whether you touch the sides or don't, you may actually catch bacteria there anyway if the unit hasn't been cleaned... However! This whole video ignores the other purpose we wash our hands: To remove dirt, grease, and grime. In which case, I'd rather have a pneumatic drying method over a wasteful paper method.
It has to be obviously cleaned, I stand with dyson though I rather have a bit more bacteria in my hands than killing the planet, I hope dyson recycles its products also
The "Airblade dB" that is prominently featured in this video is no longer manufactured by Dyson because it most definitely did collect and spread germs. Dyson no longer makes any hand-driers with a basin.
I hated the dB model as my hands are long enough that my fingers touch said basin. If I forget to clench my hands when entering, I touch the gross basin and wind up washing my hands twice.
Almost like Dyson designs are often incredibly flawed because it's just some weirdo marketing things rather than a properly tested product! Like the "bladeless fan" that's literally just a normal fan in a tube for 5x the price. And to this day, people still think Dyson is some kind of wizard who can make air move without using a fan.
Instead they make this amazing dryer that's built into the bathroom faucet, so all the water that you washed off your hands blows right back onto you; and not just your hands but face, shirt, everything. The innovation is incredible!
I used to work at a food manufacturing facility. They switched to airblades and I was the lucky person who got to swab and grow the bacteria that grew on them. We were only allowed to swab them after they were subjected to a harsh chemical bath and even after that bath, they would still come back absolutely covered in Ecoli. Doing hand swabs of employees, we found the cleanest hands using paper towels, next cleanest was not drying at all and the least clean hands were using the airblades. Even after bringing this up with my superiors, nothing was done about it. The airblades were bought to cut costs compared to paper towels.
As a designer I come across this in many situations. Paper towels are a nightmare for maintenance in public bathrooms, but useful for bleeding, wiping etc. Hand dryers are useful for drying damp clothes and sometimes hair. It’s really situational but if possible, it’s best to have both
TBH, the best option is reusable cloth. We had them in college and there was this extremely long length of cloth that would cycle through over repeated uses. It got the hands very dry, easier than paper towels, and was reasonably sanitary. When all of it had been used, it would be removed, washed and cycled back in again. Any technology is going to have some sort of drawback, but you don't even have to use cotton, you can use the most environmentally friendly fiber you can find and it will likely still work.
what do you mean towels being so hard to maintain? replacing/keeping it always available? keeping it dry or clean while it's still inside the roller/rack? i mean, i rather do these compared to a piece of tech that's gonna need a specialist if it ever craps out
While living in Japan I was surprised to find that there is often neither paper towels or hand dryers in bathrooms. Instead, it is common for people to carry a small cloth towel with them. However, this can be rather inconvenient and I frequently saw people choose not to wash their hands in favor of walking around with wet hands because they did not have a towel.
5:25 Fun fact: The Metro North trains actually do have a hand dryer! The hand dryer, faucet, and soap are all hidden above the sink. You can see the label at 5:25. They work terribly and are very inconvenient - but they do exist!
I understand the lack of free space, but those ones suck so much since it's blowing high-velocity air directly into the freshly-used sink of soapy water.
2:20 actually you can recycle it again by having it composted rather then landfilled. It's a fairly clean damp towel that a compost pile will quickly eat up. Grind it to a coarse pulp and in a healthy compost pile it will be gone in a week or two.
Public Restrooms on highways in Germany always have a blower dryer. I guess the main advantage here is that you will inevitably run out of paper towels, but you're unlikely to run out of air.
I like paper towels for 3 reasons: 1) Faster 2) Quieter 3) I can use it to open the bathroom door so I don't have to touch the handle that other people (who didn't wash their hands) used.
The coolest kids remember the damp cloth towel on a rotary bar. It was usually placed right next to the pink, granulated soap dispenser in your elementary school bathroom. It's amazing we didn't all die.
They are actually the best version of public hand drying I can imagine. Well, provided that the rooms they are in are well enough ventilated, the rolls are regularly exchanged for fresh ones, and the pull-mechanism works and users use it. They're an economic compromise, with arguably a similar maintainance cost as paper towels.
@@fonkbadonk5370 Yes, the main reason why you don't see more just regular towels is because of the hassle of keeping them stocked. I remember using these in college and I don't remember them ever being wet. They did the job and as long as you advanced the towel enough to get dry towel, there wasn't a real problem.
I certainly prefer the paper towels, they're more useful than just for drying hands. I'm one of those weirdos who actually uses another paper towel to clean up the drops around the sink once I'm done. Once a food service employee, always one, plus it complies with Grandma's rule of "always leave the bathroom cleaner than you went in"
Paper towels are my preferred hand-drying method for one specific reason. In public places, I've seen too many people either not washing their hands or just using water. Coupling this with a Mythbusters episode about the amount of bacteria before and after hand-washing, I'm happy to have my washed hands on a piece of new and clean paper rather than having droplets of water being flung everywhere around me by a jet-drier... You never know how many hands were just wet in the sink and not washed before you came there.
The thing I do not like about the Dyson Dryer is that the opening is too narrow and when your hands in there, it sort of blows it around so it hits the plastic surfaces. That is a HUGE problem because in a public bathroom, MANY people do not wash their hands properly and therefore, THAT is when you pick up all sorts of gross poop germs, not from the air (since it is filtered) but the wet plastic surface you cant help but touch once you're hands are inserted. Gross. I prefer paper towels. That will always be more sanitary.
Sometimes the plastic is visibly gungy. Barffff, no thanks. Also, I've never yet been able to put that jet-speed blade of air between my hand and a filthy door handle.
Paper Towel Method: Wash, rinse, dry, use towel on nasty door handle. Air Dryer: Wash, rinse, dry, dry, dry, dry, dry, restart device, dry, dry, rub hands on pants or shirt before touching the nasty door handle. Not hard to see which one we should use.
What do you do with the now bacteria-laden paper towel (the one which probably didn't have much on it before you touched the nasty door handle with it, assuming you washed your hands properly)? There may not be a bin on the inside of the bathroom close enough to use, so are you now carrying it around? How is that better?
All our locations changed from paper towels to electric dryers, but it wasn't a budget decision or based on effectiveness. It was a DEMAND by the janitor union because their members didn't want to change the paper towels...and when the electric dryers didn't work the electrician union had to deal with it.
@@benjaminfranklin329 They're plumbers, they would have just been happy not to have to worry about some a-hole flushing the toilet while they were working on it from the floor below and getting it all over them.
@@Xnoob545 put some toilet paper and some paper towel in separate buckets of water and stir them around with a stick... The toilet paper breaks up into small pieces that don't clog up the sewers, the paper towel will hold together and catch other things in the system that causes blocked pipes.
The best thing is still the Tap/Dryer combo dyson offers. Such a genius design!! First you wash your hands and then when the blower comes on it blows all the water doplets out of the sink directly on your pants!!!
There are other brands of these that don't have that problem... It's like one of those washer AND dryers... you go in dirty, and come out fresh and dry!
To say nothing of the fact that if you don't finish washing your hands within the prescribed time window, it dries the soap on your hands! And no, there's no countdown, why would we include that?
I vote for paper towels. One of the germiest places in a restroom is the door handle, so you need to use your paper towel to grasp it on the way out. Doesn't matter how clean your hands are if you just collect everyone's filth when you leave.
Another thing to consider that a lot of folks don't think about: I have sensory issues, and the sound that the jet dryers make causes my nervous system to shut down, especially in a small bathroom. If a bathroom is going to have a jet dryer, I'm always grateful if they also have paper towels that I can use, and personally if I see a bathroom with one of the old style dryers instead, I'm actually happy, because they make a much more manageable level of noise!
I have a similar problem actually! It doesn't trigger anything for me, but the things are really loud and echo around inside the bathroom to the point where it causes physical pain to my ears if I try to use one. It's uncomfortable even if someone else is using it while I'm washing my hands or whatever.
Thank goodness things like aren’t taken into account or we’d never be able to accomplish anything. If you’ve made it this far in life, you can handle hand dryer. Nothing would ever get accomplished if we took every tiny thing into consideration that, all due respect. If we worried about that, then the two people that have paper allergies with voice their concerns, and the people who are highly susceptible germs would complain that the bathroom isn’t 100% germ free 24/7. It would then be decided that we wouldn’t be able to have bathrooms because of everyone’s personal issues. Basically, we’d all be stuck living like it’s 6000BC as doing anything that would move society forward would harm at least one individual in one way or another. In conclusion, thankfully we do not have to take the tiniest of things like that into consideration or life would suck 1,000 times more.
bro quit coping the airblades suck, theey always get grimy af so i never touch them and yeah.no theyre way too loud, even without sensory issues they leave my ears ringing when i leave the bathroom :/
The real answer is the automatic cotton towel dispenser. Anyone who's ever used one knows what I'm talking about, the Lindström ones are quite common in Finland. You pull on the towel, dry your hands, and the towel automatically recedes back into the machine to be washed - no trash, no germs, no hot air.
The only trouble is, in other countries (including mine), inventive degeneratives would desecrate those towels in ways we can't even imagine yet. And this is why we can't have nice things these days
My university has put something in between: A traditional towels that are suuuuper long. You pull it down, you get a clean side. As soon as you finish drying your hands, the wet bit gets rolled back inside of the machine. They're washed everyday and replaced every morning. So they're more hygienic than air blowers, and they're more ecological than paper towels. Win-Win.
Even if they're not as dirty as the "studies" claimed, I'm still on team paper towels. 1) The Dyson fans in particular require sticking your hand in and inevitably touching a nasty surface. 2) It still takes a lot longer than just paper drying, and often this causes a line to form. 3) It doesn't get into the cracks and crevices as well unless you hang out for a while. 4) It's annoyingly loud. 5) I have nothing to open the nasty door with, and I don't want to touch the handle right after washing my hands. 6) Maybe it's cleaner than we think, but it's still blowing around all the farts and whatnot and just feels more gross. 7) Sometimes a paper towel is just more useful for other things, not just drying hands. So if you're an establishment with a public bathroom and don't provide paper towels, I judge you and hate your bathrooms.
Point 5 is why foot door openers really should be more common in bathrooms! It's a 10 buck piece of metal and instantly makes leaving the bathroom infinitely more hygienic, assuming people actually use it. (I for one habitually will open basically any door that allows it with my foot, *especially* bathrooms. That's why the kickplate is there!)
1 - I've personally never touched the actual hand dryer - maybe you have big hands? Seems like more of an argument for a redesign. 2 - I've rarely seen a queue for these dryers, unless there's not enough installed for the number of toilets/sinks available. 3 - I personally find my hands are always slightly damp even after 3 or 4 paper towels (so not quicker or better). 4 - yes they can be loud, but no more so than the other appliances in the room and again just an argument for improved design. 5 - why would the door be "nasty" if people are washing and trying their hands? Just carry hand sanitiser if you think your fellow humans are incapable of basic hygiene or use toilet roll if you have that much of an issue with touching that specific surface. 6 - what? That's not really a reason, other than "I don't like it" which just sounds childish. 7 - what are you using paper towels for that toilet roll or a tissue couldn't be used for instead? Hygiene and function are the only real arguments here. Hygiene seems inconclusive and in terms of function I'd say badly designed hand dryer is worst, then paper towel, then well designed hand dryer.
Hate to break it to you, but basically every indoor space in the modern world has some sort of system that circulates air, either passively or actively. The farts are already being blown all around and homogenized with the rest of the air, regardless of an air dryer.
This is an amazing video. I've never before had someone tell me that there is a scientific paper and tons of studies to prove that something I personally experienced didn't happen. I'm of course talking about the idea that airblades can get rid of all water from my hands' surface in 10 seconds. That's hilarious. Maybe 10 percent of the water gets pushed up, into my sleeves, and my hands are not fully dry after 10 seconds. I can't even fully dry my hands with paper towels in 10 seconds.
I doubt either the research or the scriptwriting for this series now. Either they don't know about it... or they did, and actively choose not to mention mythbusters.
That Mythbusters episode is still why I never use air dryers of any type to this day. Even if there are no paper towels I'll just dry my hands on my shirt and pants
I once walked into a Greyhound Station bathroom, and encountered what i assumed to be a homeless guy, drying his whole package in an Airblade. I mean, i know that has nothing to do with the actual Airblade, but it definitely made me wary of them.
Commercial property manager here. We'll stick with the paper towels because the dryers are too loud to be acceptable in an office building and nobody likes being trapped staring at a wall just to dry your hands. It's just more convenient to tear off the paper towel that has automatically dispensed from the touch-less dispenser and keep moving.
The touch-less dispensers are nice. I despite the ones that require you to grab the paper towel on both corners and pull down. Inevitably it tears because your hands are damp, then you have to turn the thing on the side... and then you need to wash your hands again.
@@bendrui Same well wished for GTOger from me. Just last week I was checking the channel only to see nothing new had been posted for SO long. I was worried.
Ugh, not the automatic paper dispensers. They never give enough paper to dry one's hands, you have to sit there and get it to spit out 4 or 5 pieces of paper before you can actually get dry. Just give me a manually operated one so I can get all the paper I need quickly.
@@mjc0961 Our dispensers are set to my satisfaction, and I'm a picky customer. You only need 2 sheets to get your hands completely dry. If you need more paper towels, then you need them for some other purpose rather than drying your hands, and that's not what I'm in the business of providing.
I once disassembled and serviced an airblade style dryer, and the amount of gunk and sticky unidentified foul smelling liquid inside the machine, including just behind the air jets, has made me a supporter of big paper towel
They installed one of those Dyson air blade dryers that just blows downward in the bathroom at our office building. When you think of what it might be flinging off someone’s hands that maybe they didn’t wash completely, it’s really disconcerting when someone goes to dry their hands and you’re sitting on the toilet in a stall on the other side of the room, and the air is so powerful that, to put it delicately, you feel the breeze on your Nethers.
What is your immune system for? There's so much more bacteria in the air besides the water particles off of someones hands. I'd be more concerned with the air kicking up fecal or urine matter from the floors.
Something I found interesting when I traveled to Japan is that the public bathrooms very rarely have paper towel or hand dryers. The Japanese locals most often would just shake off their hands in the sink (after almost always only washing with water) and continue their business. It felt strange for an otherwise very hygienic culture. Maybe it has something to do with using bidet toilets
I've seen some salarymen pull out a little personal towel and dry their hands with that while there. I ended up buying a small towel to carry on my person as well for that same reason.
@@ManabiLT Which makes perfect sense, if you are going to the beach you don't expect to find a bathing suit waiting for you so if you are spending time out of the house you should not expect everywhere to have towels waiting for you. Mind you, with that logic we'd all have to carry toilet paper too.
Mitsubishi does make quite a lot of hand dryers in my country that're similar to Dyson's design though, albeit with a wider opening less tightly contoured around your hands. It also tends to blow colder air than Dyson's ones so I find that it takes longer to dry your hands as a result
For me, washing hands comes down to two things: water/soap and abrasion. The abrasive nature of paper towels over air makes me believe they're far more effective at removing grease and oil. When presented with an air dryer, I use my pants.
My workplace uses paper towels. There's also an air dryer but anyone who uses that would be blocking the door and you don't know when someone might come into the bathroom in a big hurry.
I like paper towel because I don't need hearing protection to use it. Most hand dryers are extremely loud, but those Dyson dryers leave my ears ringing. It's fucked, I don't know how people can stand to use them. Also paper towel can be used for more than just drying your hands. Like if there's no toilet paper for some reason and you just need to blow your nose, or if you need to get water of your shirt because the bathroom has one of those shitty sink that lets water run off the counter and onto your shirt. Oh and you have to slide your hands into that narrow slot that everyone else touches and that's pretty gross. Paper towel is just fine with me.
@@vibaj16 Sounds like you may be from Europe where the air dryers are both much more effective and much quieter than most of the ones in North America.
The problem with not having paper towels is you have to touch the door handle, and there are plenty of people who don’t wash their hands for some reason.
I think the real problem with airblade and it's ilk is that they're absurdly loud, and have a significant high frequency component to the noise. I find it really uncomfortable to be in a bathroom with one operating if i'm not wearing earplugs.
many years ago i worked in a large casino resort as a cleaner, and often had to clean and supply washrooms. they switched from paper towels to dyson air dryers because people kept jamming the toilets up with paper hand towels. its insane how many people pee, or spit into those hand dryers... i am extremely hesitant to put my hands in them, and always inside them first, unless of course paper towels are around.
Paper towels are the way to go cause they don't destroy my eardrums. I can't dry my hands if I need to use them to cover my ears at the same time. I never use air driers and I hate when someone else uses them when I'm in the room. If a washroom doesn't have paper towels I just walk out and look for napkins or something to dry my hands on.
Sounds like you have sensory issues, maybe you're on the spectrum or simply have unusually sensitive ears. I'd recommend you see an ENT physician specialized in Otology and get checked for autism/sensory issues. One of those two can certainly help you solve this problem. Or you just put in earplugs and see if it's still an issue. I'd recommend the reusable silicon plugs used by soldiers/sports shooters and musicians as they still allow you to have a conversation while reducing the volume significantly. If those don't solve the problem, it's probably not the volume, but a sensory issue triggered by specific frequencies that makes you uncomfortable. There are special earplugs for that as well, to my knowledge.
@@LRM12o8 Yeah, because it's super reasonable to put in earplugs before going to the bathroom. And also super sanitary to remove the earplugs after you just got done washing your hands. 🙄 Maybe these terrible air dryers that don't work and give some people issues with the noise can just piss off and we can use paper towel, that seems like a much better solution.
The thing is, mythbusters tested the differences between towl and dryer, so they find while Towle uses trees and stuff, you have to understand that towls are way better to get rid of bacteria off of you than dryers not surprising
Mythbusters found that if you actually wash your hands properly there's no difference. They also only tested traditional evaporation dryers and not 'blade' type dryers which blow the air off.
I like the cloth towel dispensers. A long almost infinite towel on a roll, that you pull out and then after a couple of seconds vanishes on its own back in the machine. Every now and then a janitor switches the used roll for a new one, and the towel is washed and can be reused. Downside: you can only swap the entire roll and so unless your timing is perfect you always have some unused towel left when you swap, or it runs out.
Paper towels are always a win for me. I’m autistic and the loud sound of air dryers makes them extremely uncomfortable to use, especially since I can’t use my hand to plug my ears. They are definitely better for the environment, however. If no towels are available, you can do this crazy thing called wipe your hands on your clothes!
Honestly, same. But I really don't want to touch those door handles on the way out - they need to university make them the kind that push out and just have a panel on the inside so I can kick it open.
@@TheGrinningViking Eh, as soon as you're outside typically the first thing you do is touch some other surface that's touched constantly by other people, so I'm not sure it really makes a difference.
I like the idea of air dryers. In practical practice though, paper towels are far better so long as they're not those cheap kind that disintegrate upon contact with wet hands. They have a lot more uses, namely, giving you something to open the door with that keeps you from defeating the entire purpose of washing your hands to begin with. There are few things worse than finishing drying your hands with an air dryer, only to realize the door only opens inward so you're not getting out without touching what is often the most germ filled object in the entire bathroom.
I love the model A cause whenever I worked outside during the winter and had a break I would go to the bathroom use a paper towel to dry off my mask that got wet from dew from my breath and use the model A as a hand warmer for my nearly frozen/numb figures for a couple minutes before going back outside again.
Regardless of what the outside world uses, schools need air dryers. Most public bathrooms with paper towels I've been in have been fairly tidy. However, there were always soaked paper towels on the sinks when I was in grade school. I had to pick up after my classmates because I just couldn't stand to see it.
If produced sustainably, paper towels can be more environmentally minded than air dryers. This is due to business psychology where, if there is a demand for paper, forests are maintained to grow said paper. If demand drops, they find that forest more valuable as like another Dollar General or something
That seems like a pretty wild leap in logic when most lumber comes from areas that are sparsely populated and each step is handled by different companies where each company has little knowledge of what happened earlier or later in the chain.
I like jet dryers, but I NEED paper towels. I have a genetic disorder (HHT) which causes frequent nosebleeds. I hate going into a bathroom with no paper towels and have to start digging around the toilets for bath tissue to clean my face and whatever else I dripped blood on. Can't we just have both?
I encountered my first AirBlade at Parx Casino. It was quite the novelty back then, and it really _DOES_ do a better job at drying your hands (vs. a regular air dryer). Once they became common though, I'd still prefer the *CHOICE* of paper towels... I mean, how do I blow my nose or wipe my glasses off with an AirBlade, Dyson?!
The Dyson (and similar) driers with basins are fantastic, the problem is WC's are not main tend properly at the best of times, and they certainly dont clean and service the driers as they should. All new Dyson blades have no basin, and while the water kind of blasts off in all directions, it at least dries and doesn't collect anywhere.The new Dyson taps incorporate the water, soap and drier on a Y shaped arm, so the water drains into the sink, which is genius.
15 or so years ago I sold paper towels for unifirst uniform rental. We quoted that research over and over. Even used the term "blowing crystallized urine on your hands". I wonder if they still are saying that. Probably
Man I love the Xlerator hand dryers we have at work. I feel like a big hand dryer shill for saying this now but we've had it for years and no complaints. Can't stand the dryers that are about as effective as rubbing your hands on wet grass tho. The dyson ones are kinda gross cause it's basically impossible to dry your hands without touching the machine and they sometimes spray water back up at you.
Paper towels are so much better. But tbf, the only dryer to ever dry my hands was Dyson's. Although I didn't realise it because the air was so cold I kept thinking my hands were still wet
You have to rub your hands together while using it to get the last bits of water off. It even says so on the front, if you do that they're usually as fast as using paper towels.
Oh my GOD as someone who works in health care and has to wash their hands multiple times a day, this debate is one of the few hills that I will die on! I'm so happy that Sam's done a video on it 😂😂 For the record I am team towel - I have no trust that a jet dryer has the friction power to clean bacteria off your hands that paper towels do. None at all. Didn't realise that there was a Big Air Dryer vs Big Paper battle going on though! Props for sending Amy to get a sample for bathrooms... But going into some hospitals would have been an interesting inclusion. Here in Australia, I have *never* seen a jet dryer in a hospital - only ever paper towels... And with the amount of emphasis we have on hand washing in hospitals (ref: Google the "5 moments of hand hygiene" and organisations exist like "Hand Hygiene Australia") I feel like they're going to be doing something right...
@@RyanTosh As far as I know, the drying step is supposed to remove excess moisture *before* any new bacteria has a chance to start growing in it. Existing bacteria should've been removed by soap and abrasion in the washing step.
Pretty worrying that you would still have bacteria on your hands after washing and you work in healthcare. Learn to wash your hands properly before you kill an immuno-compromised patient, please.
I hate the airblade SO much! People inevitably touch the sides so at uni they were visibly covered in gunk. Also, they are the least disability friendly design you can think of. I've seen little kids struggle to use them too
Germs can apparently accumulate on them, it's less of a problem when it's a large roll as hopefully by the time you go through a full roll it will have dried, but it's still a risk.
The best part about hand dryers is washing your hands, attempting to dry them, giving up, then using your wet hands to open the door which was previously opened by a crack head 10 minutes ago that scratched his balls and walked out the door without washing.
I only use an AirBlade if its the newer V model. The old one definitely seems unhygienic after seeing some revolting ones over the years. I appreciate bathrooms that give you the paper choice too.
The sign right their in the train bathroom says DRYER FAUCET SOAP. So your outside correspondent can't find a dryer even when it's signed. I expect written apology from Half as Interesting.
The McDonalds in my local High Street had a weird sink/hand drier combo thing called a wall gate in the early 80s. Not sure whether they still have them now, or how long they lasted. They didn't work terribly well though.
Regardless of cost and environmental impact, I prefer actual towels because they actually dry my hands. The air dryers, no longer how long, never feel 100% dry. Air drying also takes longer which is annoying in a busy restroom.
Just came here to say that paper towels are superior in every way. Fucking everyone is removing them again now that COVID is gone and I really miss them.
I hate the xcelerator so much, the loud jet-firing dryers are the whole reason I still use paper towels, the only times I ever like the air dryers are the Dyson ones that are much quieter and affect the whole hand front and back. If you don't find the jet dryers loud, I would advise you to take a hearing test because too much damage has already been done.
Was kinda weird seeing that U.S. bathrooms had to choose a side. Where I'm from, if a bathroom had a hand dryer available, they'd usually also have paper towels right beside them. Most malls and fast food restaurants in my country would, in fact, have both options available. Most customers also expect to have both options available.
Possibly the epitome of a first world problem: “Should i dry my damp hands using a special machine that blows air or a piece of paper that is slightly different to the paper used for wiping?”
As a former janitor for 'wally world'... Paper towels **in actual use** are far less hygienic than any of these studies wud lead you to believe Those paper towels are nearly nvr kept in the utmost hygienic surfaces before bein installed and are often carried across whole stores exposed to the open air. Not every sheet is gonna be as coated, but dont think that any sheet is safe; the top and bottom are what get so coated But also just like, none of that restroom is as hygienic as you wud hope xD I knew multiple coworkers who only cleaned the toilets when they "looked dirty" despite what policy dictstes just cuz it got the job done faster so the bosses considered them a better worker bcuz it looked as clean 9,9 And the toilets are far from the only example of that. The only thing that is def gettin cleaned daily is the mirrors bcuz they cant go a day without gettin water residue on them from splashback and ppl flingin their wet hands at the mirrors Like, i personally hate both options bcuz sensory reasons but i dont at all expect either is hygienic if im in a public space; so ill just use whatevs is more tolerable at the time
It’s a no-brainer with the modern air hand dryers that we have. They’re amazing. Paper towels… half the time you have to touch part of the dispenser to get a paper towel and a third of the time the dispenser is empty and out of towels‼️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
she is much closer to the camera than everyone else, which could be a problem, because that might become the second most important thing in the picture, and being a important figure in any picture taken by someone else without your consent could lead to being sued.
I worked at my local hospital (I was janitorial, I cleaned the rooms) and our paper towel dispensers ran on 4 D Cell batteries. Those Dyson Airblades were a joke. I used one, after a minute I grabbed a paper towel. Eventually they were all removed from the hospital cause they didn't work. (Note: This was all pre-COVID).
I'd been pretty unimpressed with air dryers in general for quite a while, but it turns out that's because I live in the United States. Apparently people in the United States just don't know how to install air dryers so they actually work. After a full minute, I just give up and leave with wet hands. On a recent trip the the UK and Iceland, I was stunned by the effectiveness of the air dryers there. They actually did what they're supposed to do: dry hands in a few seconds. It was like magic! Maybe someone from the paper towel lobby is paying off installers to just install air dryers badly in the United States?
Might have something to do with the US grid running on a lower voltage? That's also why electric kettles are less popular in the US, because they're quite slow compared to in Europe.
Obviously the correct answer is use both at the same time. A paper towel will almost instantly remove any drops of water on your hand leaving your hands slightly damp. Now that the paper towel is thoroughly wet it won't dry your hands further but air-dryers (not the Airblade design though) excel at drying out slightly damp hands. Using this method you can dry your hands less than 5 seconds and only use 1 paper towel.
I’m surprised you didn’t do your own research to show some basic differences at the end. Also surprised there’s no mention of how freaking LOUD dyson’s dryers are. Sometimes so loud they can literally cause hearing damage if you stand too close to them. I am happy using either method and I think places should have both options.
We have Dyson driers at work. They have a fun design feature where all of the water that gets blasted off of your hands falls down onto the curved surface below. It then collects there over time and all sorts of fun things start to grow.
"Seems to me" that Dyson should put a small UV-C LED to kill off the bug in the accumulated moisture. It might also try to sanitize some of the air coming off your hands.
@@GilmerJohn Except UV-C is sufficiently bad for our skin and eyes that we should not be exposed to it, at all.
@@JonMartinYXD -- That's true. That's why is has to be concealed in a duct through which a fan draws the exhaust air. An "ideal" system would draw in fresh air and head and irradiate it in a duct. The air would be blown on the hands and most of the air would be sucked up into another duct where it would be UV-C treated again.
@@GilmerJohn dyson only makes garbage products with crippling design flaws so it’s up to their standards as is
I mean... You're supposed to clean them every now and then...
Mythbusters tested this and said they both work fine as long as you actually wash your hands. If you just rinse them, then air dryers are worse and spread more bacteria.
They completely neglect the fact that in the real world people suck at washing their hands, and some are purposefully nasty, pissing in them.
Not just bacteria but disease aswell.
Thats why i prefer paper towels, more maintanence = more cared after = less dirty.
Yeah, the whole point of washing your hands is to get rid of bacteria...
This is a big issue then, because you're depending on a lot of people to properly wash their hands and we know plenty of people don't.
I'm amazed that Sam and his team found so much stock footage of people using hand dryers and drying their hands. There really is a graphics library for everything.
Do you ummm, think they might uhhh… 😬 have some footage of…you know..other bathroom activities? 🤔 asking for a friend.
@@T..C..M cringe
@@T..C..M cringe
The amount of stock footage is beyoung what you could ever imagine, there's tons of photo\video for any activity you can imagine.
Also:
@@T..C..M cringe
And that brings us to today's sponsor: StoryBlocks
“This train avoided choosing sides by having.. nothing “. That’s the best laugh I’ve had in the last week.. classic!
I like papertowels. If i need to blow my nose, or open a door and not touch the door, or is bleeding, they work better than air dryers.
You could just blow your nose in the airdryer, open the door with your feet and bleed on the floor like a normal person. sheez...
But the trees
What I like about the airblade is that it doubles as a urinal.
Not just using your sleeve... ngmi
@@MrSkyl1ne The air dryer also works for blowin the blood off of the wound while you wrap it with some of your ripped off shirt (accidental double meanin there, but i mean it in both senses of those words xD)
There ought to be a simple rule for which bathrooms can use hand dryers and which MUST use paper towels. If I have to grab a handle to get out of the bathroom, then that bathroom MUST use paper towels; if I can get out by just using my body to push the door open, then hand dryers are fine.
What about those foot dinguses? The things that let you pull the door open with your foot?
I think I've discovered, not just from reading the replies to this video, though it certainly reinforces it, that people are far too scared of germs and bacteria. Do you know where bacteria lives? LITERALLY EVERYWHERE. Your skin is covered in it right now. It's on every surface you touch, unless it's been disinfected in the last ~20 minutes. Reasonable hygiene will do you fine; you don't need to start wearing an N95 and using hand towels to open bathroom doors.
@@herrantonwhat about people with no feet?
@@christocarter3258 sadly, their ability to use the foot dingus is in about the same place as their professional sock model carrer.
@@herrantonAh yes let me kick open the handle with my foot
"Pushing the boundaries of *accepted evidence*" Is not something I want to see on MOST scientists resumes, ESPECIALLY one working for a giant corporation with a money-making agenda.
Eh, I don't see that job description as being necessarily bad. Maybe the current regulatory evidence standard really is bad (I don't know, but let's assume for the sake of argument). Maybe the current standards are people wearing latex gloves, no soap, and only measure bacteria by how bad the gloves smell, and he wants to push the standards towards real hands, with soap, and using petri dishes to grow samples. That seems like it would be a good way of "pushing the boundaries of accepted evidence." Of course, if he was pushing the opposite direction, that would be bad.
We'd have to know what the current standards are and how he wants to push them in order to know whether he's doing something good or bad.
Yeah I heard that and had to double-check. What an overtly sleazy job description.
My concern is that we're missing the bigger picture here, which is - as anyone born before 1980 can tell you:
1) Push butt -on-
2) Rub hands under -w- arm _h_ air
3) Stop -s au- to -mati- call -y-
_4) Rub hands on pants_
@@haxney Usually, they would phrase it as "improving regulatory evidence standard" instead of "pushing boundary of". The latter is dodgy AF.
It's funny how resumeś are misinterpreted. I'm a retired machinist and mechanical engineer. Long time ago I was assigned one particularly difficult (near impossible) job. I had to remind management the word "magician" was not on my resumé. 🤔
I'm on the side of paper towels. They also have other hygiene uses than drying your hands, and I can dry my hands better than any hand dryer. Sometimes I need 2 towels but that absorbs the water off very efficiently. Yes it costs more but I'm 99% sure it's way more hygienic, and I don't like using dryers anyway + they make a ton of noise.
Jet dryers are fine unless they're like airblade and you have to play Operation to not touch the sides or the grime collecting bottom. It really is a great product in one of the worst designed cases.
Their new models have fixed this flawed design luckily
@@adamdanilowicz4252 Great, can't wait to see it widely used in 25 years.
@@SuperCatacata In the UK one can see them more and more frequently
I had that epiphany when I first saw that buildup, someone needs to clean that almost as often as to clean a convention toilet.
Being someone with pretty small hands (for a guy) I never appreciated how problematic this design could be; I had realised that those surfaces were bound to get filthy, but I'd have to try really hard to actually touch them
I always wondered how that Dyson hand drier was more hygenic because you have to put your hand inside & you often hit the sides, which other people would've also done so the germs just accumulate there & people touch it
you could also be like the little kid shown in this video and put your damn mouth against it while using it. because kids...
I hate the noise of those things. All of them. They are painfully loud and it seems like they take as long as the original hand dryers did because it's so uncomfortable to use them.
Well hang on, so long as everyone washes their hands they should start out clean and touching the sides doesn't matter then. But given water accumulates at the bottom, I'd argue that fast blowing air will aerosolize the bacteria growing there onto your hands... So whether you touch the sides or don't, you may actually catch bacteria there anyway if the unit hasn't been cleaned... However! This whole video ignores the other purpose we wash our hands: To remove dirt, grease, and grime. In which case, I'd rather have a pneumatic drying method over a wasteful paper method.
It has to be obviously cleaned, I stand with dyson though I rather have a bit more bacteria in my hands than killing the planet, I hope dyson recycles its products also
The "Airblade dB" that is prominently featured in this video is no longer manufactured by Dyson because it most definitely did collect and spread germs. Dyson no longer makes any hand-driers with a basin.
Oh, that's good to know.
I hated the dB model as my hands are long enough that my fingers touch said basin. If I forget to clench my hands when entering, I touch the gross basin and wind up washing my hands twice.
But they are widely used, soo
Almost like Dyson designs are often incredibly flawed because it's just some weirdo marketing things rather than a properly tested product! Like the "bladeless fan" that's literally just a normal fan in a tube for 5x the price. And to this day, people still think Dyson is some kind of wizard who can make air move without using a fan.
Instead they make this amazing dryer that's built into the bathroom faucet, so all the water that you washed off your hands blows right back onto you; and not just your hands but face, shirt, everything. The innovation is incredible!
I used to work at a food manufacturing facility. They switched to airblades and I was the lucky person who got to swab and grow the bacteria that grew on them. We were only allowed to swab them after they were subjected to a harsh chemical bath and even after that bath, they would still come back absolutely covered in Ecoli. Doing hand swabs of employees, we found the cleanest hands using paper towels, next cleanest was not drying at all and the least clean hands were using the airblades. Even after bringing this up with my superiors, nothing was done about it. The airblades were bought to cut costs compared to paper towels.
As a designer I come across this in many situations. Paper towels are a nightmare for maintenance in public bathrooms, but useful for bleeding, wiping etc. Hand dryers are useful for drying damp clothes and sometimes hair. It’s really situational but if possible, it’s best to have both
You're insane with your situational usefulness! I demand an omni-solution or no solution at all!
@@Herrikias Damn Right. I'm not buying until one of them solves world hunger
While a lot of the hand dryers can be used on damp clothes or hair, the Dyson ones can't. They're designed to be used for hands only.
TBH, the best option is reusable cloth. We had them in college and there was this extremely long length of cloth that would cycle through over repeated uses. It got the hands very dry, easier than paper towels, and was reasonably sanitary. When all of it had been used, it would be removed, washed and cycled back in again.
Any technology is going to have some sort of drawback, but you don't even have to use cotton, you can use the most environmentally friendly fiber you can find and it will likely still work.
what do you mean towels being so hard to maintain? replacing/keeping it always available? keeping it dry or clean while it's still inside the roller/rack? i mean, i rather do these compared to a piece of tech that's gonna need a specialist if it ever craps out
While living in Japan I was surprised to find that there is often neither paper towels or hand dryers in bathrooms. Instead, it is common for people to carry a small cloth towel with them. However, this can be rather inconvenient and I frequently saw people choose not to wash their hands in favor of walking around with wet hands because they did not have a towel.
Yep that sounds worse
@@josefagomezschmeisser8356it really does
5:25 Fun fact: The Metro North trains actually do have a hand dryer! The hand dryer, faucet, and soap are all hidden above the sink. You can see the label at 5:25. They work terribly and are very inconvenient - but they do exist!
Damn “Dryer” is right there. Can’t believe the editor didn’t pick that up
The rest of the story is always in the comments.
I think this person has never used a train toilet before - that's the standard design 😆
I understand the lack of free space, but those ones suck so much since it's blowing high-velocity air directly into the freshly-used sink of soapy water.
Looks like you'll be in the next edition of "times HAI was wrong"
2:20 actually you can recycle it again by having it composted rather then landfilled. It's a fairly clean damp towel that a compost pile will quickly eat up. Grind it to a coarse pulp and in a healthy compost pile it will be gone in a week or two.
Honestly paper towels versatility outside of hand washing makes them win every time.
Yeah, air will never be as tasty as paper towel. 🤤
@@SuperCatacata you need air to live I swear I'm not addicted to it i love air
Just... expensive.
The air dryers really blow when you've run out of toilet paper.
Pun intended.
Public Restrooms on highways in Germany always have a blower dryer. I guess the main advantage here is that you will inevitably run out of paper towels, but you're unlikely to run out of air.
I like paper towels for 3 reasons:
1) Faster
2) Quieter
3) I can use it to open the bathroom door so I don't have to touch the handle that other people (who didn't wash their hands) used.
The coolest kids remember the damp cloth towel on a rotary bar. It was usually placed right next to the pink, granulated soap dispenser in your elementary school bathroom. It's amazing we didn't all die.
Ugh. I remember that pink soap. I hated it so much.
They still have those at Auckland University! 😄
Schools, restaurants, gas stations,... I remember them basically everywhere until the mid-1990s.
They are actually the best version of public hand drying I can imagine. Well, provided that the rooms they are in are well enough ventilated, the rolls are regularly exchanged for fresh ones, and the pull-mechanism works and users use it. They're an economic compromise, with arguably a similar maintainance cost as paper towels.
@@fonkbadonk5370 Yes, the main reason why you don't see more just regular towels is because of the hassle of keeping them stocked. I remember using these in college and I don't remember them ever being wet. They did the job and as long as you advanced the towel enough to get dry towel, there wasn't a real problem.
1:39 "What would happen to Boeing stock price" aged well.
I certainly prefer the paper towels, they're more useful than just for drying hands. I'm one of those weirdos who actually uses another paper towel to clean up the drops around the sink once I'm done. Once a food service employee, always one, plus it complies with Grandma's rule of "always leave the bathroom cleaner than you went in"
Same dude
But trying to keep hygiene in a public bathroom that way(talking abt the sinks, not the restroom itself) is a lost cause
That sounds like a waste of paper to me
My school has these in the union. I avoid that bathroom like the plague because I like being able to rinse the soap off my hands.
Paper towels are my preferred hand-drying method for one specific reason. In public places, I've seen too many people either not washing their hands or just using water. Coupling this with a Mythbusters episode about the amount of bacteria before and after hand-washing, I'm happy to have my washed hands on a piece of new and clean paper rather than having droplets of water being flung everywhere around me by a jet-drier... You never know how many hands were just wet in the sink and not washed before you came there.
The thing I do not like about the Dyson Dryer is that the opening is too narrow and when your hands in there, it sort of blows it around so it hits the plastic surfaces. That is a HUGE problem because in a public bathroom, MANY people do not wash their hands properly and therefore, THAT is when you pick up all sorts of gross poop germs, not from the air (since it is filtered) but the wet plastic surface you cant help but touch once you're hands are inserted. Gross. I prefer paper towels. That will always be more sanitary.
Sometimes the plastic is visibly gungy. Barffff, no thanks.
Also, I've never yet been able to put that jet-speed blade of air between my hand and a filthy door handle.
I don't see that style of Dyson airblade much these days, most of the time it's the V model which avoids many of the original's flaws
Plus, it's too easy to touch the bottom of the hand area, where the water accumulates. I loathe the air blade.
@@brianfunt2619Yeah, that kind is fine. But seriously, fuck the airblade
Exactly!! When I see one of these driers I end up just wiping my hands on my jeans for this exact reason.
Paper Towel Method: Wash, rinse, dry, use towel on nasty door handle.
Air Dryer: Wash, rinse, dry, dry, dry, dry, dry, restart device, dry, dry, rub hands on pants or shirt before touching the nasty door handle.
Not hard to see which one we should use.
What do you do with the now bacteria-laden paper towel (the one which probably didn't have much on it before you touched the nasty door handle with it, assuming you washed your hands properly)? There may not be a bin on the inside of the bathroom close enough to use, so are you now carrying it around? How is that better?
All our locations changed from paper towels to electric dryers, but it wasn't a budget decision or based on effectiveness.
It was a DEMAND by the janitor union because their members didn't want to change the paper towels...and when the electric dryers didn't work the electrician union had to deal with it.
The plumbers would have been happy too, less blocked toilets from paper towel being inevitably flushed
@@benjaminfranklin329 They're plumbers, they would have just been happy not to have to worry about some a-hole flushing the toilet while they were working on it from the floor below and getting it all over them.
@@benjaminfranklin329 if toilet paper is fine to flush so is paper towel
@@Xnoob545 put some toilet paper and some paper towel in separate buckets of water and stir them around with a stick... The toilet paper breaks up into small pieces that don't clog up the sewers, the paper towel will hold together and catch other things in the system that causes blocked pipes.
the airblade is the messiest urinal I've ever used.
The best thing is still the Tap/Dryer combo dyson offers. Such a genius design!! First you wash your hands and then when the blower comes on it blows all the water doplets out of the sink directly on your pants!!!
Really love looking like I pissed all over my pants everytime I wash my hands
Ditto watching the confused older folks trying to figure out what the fuck they're looking at when in the bathroom
Yo bro tell your dad to step down from twotter
There are other brands of these that don't have that problem... It's like one of those washer AND dryers... you go in dirty, and come out fresh and dry!
To say nothing of the fact that if you don't finish washing your hands within the prescribed time window, it dries the soap on your hands! And no, there's no countdown, why would we include that?
The big problem with jet dryers is that they are just way too loud. And as someone with anxiety and audio sensitivity issues, doublely so.
Cringe
@@calebbarnhouse496I don't understand the logic lol like it's cringe to react to things? how do you live lmao
@@maxsync183 it's cringe to be unable to handle something as common as a high powered fan
I vote for paper towels. One of the germiest places in a restroom is the door handle, so you need to use your paper towel to grasp it on the way out. Doesn't matter how clean your hands are if you just collect everyone's filth when you leave.
@@ayaya-ayaya I've seen a couple places with little things on the bottom of the door so you can open it with your feet. Everywhere should have those.
@@aliensinnoh1 The Lowe's where I live have those on their bathroom doors.
Yep. And I'm one of those people who, if there is no trash can near the door, will throw the paper towel on the floor.
@@travisscavoni369 You ever considered you may be the reason they are shifting to dryers?
@@travisscavoni369 You're the reason we can't have nice things
Another thing to consider that a lot of folks don't think about: I have sensory issues, and the sound that the jet dryers make causes my nervous system to shut down, especially in a small bathroom. If a bathroom is going to have a jet dryer, I'm always grateful if they also have paper towels that I can use, and personally if I see a bathroom with one of the old style dryers instead, I'm actually happy, because they make a much more manageable level of noise!
I have a similar problem actually! It doesn't trigger anything for me, but the things are really loud and echo around inside the bathroom to the point where it causes physical pain to my ears if I try to use one. It's uncomfortable even if someone else is using it while I'm washing my hands or whatever.
I think I have a sensory issue with both the noise and touch or air dryers. I can't stand to use them and would rather use my clothes than air dryers.
Thank goodness things like aren’t taken into account or we’d never be able to accomplish anything. If you’ve made it this far in life, you can handle hand dryer. Nothing would ever get accomplished if we took every tiny thing into consideration that, all due respect. If we worried about that, then the two people that have paper allergies with voice their concerns, and the people who are highly susceptible germs would complain that the bathroom isn’t 100% germ free 24/7. It would then be decided that we wouldn’t be able to have bathrooms because of everyone’s personal issues. Basically, we’d all be stuck living like it’s 6000BC as doing anything that would move society forward would harm at least one individual in one way or another. In conclusion, thankfully we do not have to take the tiniest of things like that into consideration or life would suck 1,000 times more.
bro quit coping the airblades suck, theey always get grimy af so i never touch them
and yeah.no theyre way too loud, even without sensory issues they leave my ears ringing when i leave the bathroom :/
The real answer is the automatic cotton towel dispenser. Anyone who's ever used one knows what I'm talking about, the Lindström ones are quite common in Finland. You pull on the towel, dry your hands, and the towel automatically recedes back into the machine to be washed - no trash, no germs, no hot air.
Preach!
Reusable toilet paper is the spawn of satan but reusable hand towels are brilliant and will save the world.
The only trouble is, in other countries (including mine), inventive degeneratives would desecrate those towels in ways we can't even imagine yet. And this is why we can't have nice things these days
unless you are at the end ow the towel and only have a damp rag left to dry your hands. These never get changed enough.
@@-xirx- Not if we install laser turrets on the roof...
i think i used those when i was in germany. feels kinda yucky
My university has put something in between: A traditional towels that are suuuuper long. You pull it down, you get a clean side. As soon as you finish drying your hands, the wet bit gets rolled back inside of the machine. They're washed everyday and replaced every morning.
So they're more hygienic than air blowers, and they're more ecological than paper towels. Win-Win.
Even if they're not as dirty as the "studies" claimed, I'm still on team paper towels. 1) The Dyson fans in particular require sticking your hand in and inevitably touching a nasty surface. 2) It still takes a lot longer than just paper drying, and often this causes a line to form. 3) It doesn't get into the cracks and crevices as well unless you hang out for a while. 4) It's annoyingly loud. 5) I have nothing to open the nasty door with, and I don't want to touch the handle right after washing my hands. 6) Maybe it's cleaner than we think, but it's still blowing around all the farts and whatnot and just feels more gross. 7) Sometimes a paper towel is just more useful for other things, not just drying hands.
So if you're an establishment with a public bathroom and don't provide paper towels, I judge you and hate your bathrooms.
I use air dryers, since I'm usually the guy that has to take out the trash.
Point 5 is why foot door openers really should be more common in bathrooms! It's a 10 buck piece of metal and instantly makes leaving the bathroom infinitely more hygienic, assuming people actually use it. (I for one habitually will open basically any door that allows it with my foot, *especially* bathrooms. That's why the kickplate is there!)
@@Hexagonaldonut Agreed, I love those. Unfortunately they're still pretty uncommon :(
1 - I've personally never touched the actual hand dryer - maybe you have big hands? Seems like more of an argument for a redesign.
2 - I've rarely seen a queue for these dryers, unless there's not enough installed for the number of toilets/sinks available.
3 - I personally find my hands are always slightly damp even after 3 or 4 paper towels (so not quicker or better).
4 - yes they can be loud, but no more so than the other appliances in the room and again just an argument for improved design.
5 - why would the door be "nasty" if people are washing and trying their hands? Just carry hand sanitiser if you think your fellow humans are incapable of basic hygiene or use toilet roll if you have that much of an issue with touching that specific surface.
6 - what? That's not really a reason, other than "I don't like it" which just sounds childish.
7 - what are you using paper towels for that toilet roll or a tissue couldn't be used for instead?
Hygiene and function are the only real arguments here. Hygiene seems inconclusive and in terms of function I'd say badly designed hand dryer is worst, then paper towel, then well designed hand dryer.
Hate to break it to you, but basically every indoor space in the modern world has some sort of system that circulates air, either passively or actively. The farts are already being blown all around and homogenized with the rest of the air, regardless of an air dryer.
This is an amazing video. I've never before had someone tell me that there is a scientific paper and tons of studies to prove that something I personally experienced didn't happen.
I'm of course talking about the idea that airblades can get rid of all water from my hands' surface in 10 seconds. That's hilarious. Maybe 10 percent of the water gets pushed up, into my sleeves, and my hands are not fully dry after 10 seconds. I can't even fully dry my hands with paper towels in 10 seconds.
Fun fact: The Mythbusters did an episode on air-dryers vs paper
I was amazed he didn't mention it
And they found that paper towels cleaned better than air dryers. They used Petri dishes to incubate the bacteria.
Was about to comment that
I doubt either the research or the scriptwriting for this series now. Either they don't know about it... or they did, and actively choose not to mention mythbusters.
That Mythbusters episode is still why I never use air dryers of any type to this day. Even if there are no paper towels I'll just dry my hands on my shirt and pants
I once walked into a Greyhound Station bathroom, and encountered what i assumed to be a homeless guy, drying his whole package in an Airblade. I mean, i know that has nothing to do with the actual Airblade, but it definitely made me wary of them.
Commercial property manager here. We'll stick with the paper towels because the dryers are too loud to be acceptable in an office building and nobody likes being trapped staring at a wall just to dry your hands. It's just more convenient to tear off the paper towel that has automatically dispensed from the touch-less dispenser and keep moving.
Hi, GTOger! I'm glad to see you're ok. Spouse and I miss your parking lot videos. Of course, you owe us nothing. I hope you continue to be well.
The touch-less dispensers are nice. I despite the ones that require you to grab the paper towel on both corners and pull down. Inevitably it tears because your hands are damp, then you have to turn the thing on the side... and then you need to wash your hands again.
@@bendrui Same well wished for GTOger from me.
Just last week I was checking the channel only to see nothing new had been posted for SO long. I was worried.
Ugh, not the automatic paper dispensers. They never give enough paper to dry one's hands, you have to sit there and get it to spit out 4 or 5 pieces of paper before you can actually get dry. Just give me a manually operated one so I can get all the paper I need quickly.
@@mjc0961 Our dispensers are set to my satisfaction, and I'm a picky customer. You only need 2 sheets to get your hands completely dry. If you need more paper towels, then you need them for some other purpose rather than drying your hands, and that's not what I'm in the business of providing.
I once disassembled and serviced an airblade style dryer, and the amount of gunk and sticky unidentified foul smelling liquid inside the machine, including just behind the air jets, has made me a supporter of big paper towel
They installed one of those Dyson air blade dryers that just blows downward in the bathroom at our office building. When you think of what it might be flinging off someone’s hands that maybe they didn’t wash completely, it’s really disconcerting when someone goes to dry their hands and you’re sitting on the toilet in a stall on the other side of the room, and the air is so powerful that, to put it delicately, you feel the breeze on your Nethers.
That's an interesting point. I wonder how much of the water blown off ends up in the air of the restroom and is then breathed in.
@@RunaroundAtNight Another reason to keep wear N95-class respirators!
If they washed their hands it's clean water!
@@RobinTheBot Not if they didn't wash them properly. Then it's clean-ish water with germs from what was on/is still on their hands in it.
What is your immune system for? There's so much more bacteria in the air besides the water particles off of someones hands. I'd be more concerned with the air kicking up fecal or urine matter from the floors.
The air dryer in the metro is hidden behind the mirror, It's says DRYER in huge letters right above the sink, you can easily see it at 5:24
Something I found interesting when I traveled to Japan is that the public bathrooms very rarely have paper towel or hand dryers. The Japanese locals most often would just shake off their hands in the sink (after almost always only washing with water) and continue their business. It felt strange for an otherwise very hygienic culture.
Maybe it has something to do with using bidet toilets
I've seen some salarymen pull out a little personal towel and dry their hands with that while there. I ended up buying a small towel to carry on my person as well for that same reason.
It’s common to carry a handkerchief or hand towel that they will use to dry their hands
It's expected you'll have a handkerchief to use to dry your hands. Everyone carries them, even little kids.
@@ManabiLT Which makes perfect sense, if you are going to the beach you don't expect to find a bathing suit waiting for you so if you are spending time out of the house you should not expect everywhere to have towels waiting for you. Mind you, with that logic we'd all have to carry toilet paper too.
Mitsubishi does make quite a lot of hand dryers in my country that're similar to Dyson's design though, albeit with a wider opening less tightly contoured around your hands. It also tends to blow colder air than Dyson's ones so I find that it takes longer to dry your hands as a result
Your recent hard turn into empirical microbiology is great. Keep making up things to buy "as a business expense"
5:27 "It's an inspiring level of conflict aversion: to leave your hands dirty to keep theirs clean." Brilliant
I’m a strong believer in “step 4 wipe hands on pants”
For me, washing hands comes down to two things: water/soap and abrasion. The abrasive nature of paper towels over air makes me believe they're far more effective at removing grease and oil. When presented with an air dryer, I use my pants.
Bro what. Y’all got issues, using your pants is nasty. I 100% prefer air dryers
Based.
Based
Based.
My workplace uses paper towels.
There's also an air dryer but anyone who uses that would be blocking the door and you don't know when someone might come into the bathroom in a big hurry.
I like paper towel because I don't need hearing protection to use it. Most hand dryers are extremely loud, but those Dyson dryers leave my ears ringing. It's fucked, I don't know how people can stand to use them. Also paper towel can be used for more than just drying your hands. Like if there's no toilet paper for some reason and you just need to blow your nose, or if you need to get water of your shirt because the bathroom has one of those shitty sink that lets water run off the counter and onto your shirt. Oh and you have to slide your hands into that narrow slot that everyone else touches and that's pretty gross. Paper towel is just fine with me.
Most people don't have such sensitive ears.
@@vibaj16 Because they've already gone deaf after listening to the air dryers so often.
Our granddaughter aged 3 gets very upset as the sound is extremely loud and the machine is set at about the height of a child.
@@joshjlmgproductions3313 I have what I'd consider to be sensitive ears, yet air dryers aren't uncomfortable at all to me
@@vibaj16 Sounds like you may be from Europe where the air dryers are both much more effective and much quieter than most of the ones in North America.
The problem with not having paper towels is you have to touch the door handle, and there are plenty of people who don’t wash their hands for some reason.
I think the real problem with airblade and it's ilk is that they're absurdly loud, and have a significant high frequency component to the noise. I find it really uncomfortable to be in a bathroom with one operating if i'm not wearing earplugs.
Yup! Accessibility is the biggest problem IMO
I always refuse to use them becouse i have this weird feeling that im inconviniancing everyone with the loud sound.
The new ones are better, 10× better than those Xcelerator dryers
I thought I had sensitive ears, but I've never had any problems with hand dryer noise
Those xcelerator ones were shown to be much louder than the manufacturer claimed
many years ago i worked in a large casino resort as a cleaner, and often had to clean and supply washrooms.
they switched from paper towels to dyson air dryers because people kept jamming the toilets up with paper hand towels.
its insane how many people pee, or spit into those hand dryers... i am extremely hesitant to put my hands in them, and always inside them first, unless of course paper towels are around.
Paper towels are the way to go cause they don't destroy my eardrums. I can't dry my hands if I need to use them to cover my ears at the same time. I never use air driers and I hate when someone else uses them when I'm in the room. If a washroom doesn't have paper towels I just walk out and look for napkins or something to dry my hands on.
They've never been uncomfortably loud for me
Sounds like you have sensory issues, maybe you're on the spectrum or simply have unusually sensitive ears.
I'd recommend you see an ENT physician specialized in Otology and get checked for autism/sensory issues. One of those two can certainly help you solve this problem.
Or you just put in earplugs and see if it's still an issue. I'd recommend the reusable silicon plugs used by soldiers/sports shooters and musicians as they still allow you to have a conversation while reducing the volume significantly. If those don't solve the problem, it's probably not the volume, but a sensory issue triggered by specific frequencies that makes you uncomfortable. There are special earplugs for that as well, to my knowledge.
@@LRM12o8 Yeah, because it's super reasonable to put in earplugs before going to the bathroom. And also super sanitary to remove the earplugs after you just got done washing your hands. 🙄
Maybe these terrible air dryers that don't work and give some people issues with the noise can just piss off and we can use paper towel, that seems like a much better solution.
@@LRM12o8 Better we just stop putting jet engines on washroom walls.
I just vibrate my hands above the sink
The thing is, mythbusters tested the differences between towl and dryer, so they find while Towle uses trees and stuff, you have to understand that towls are way better to get rid of bacteria off of you than dryers not surprising
Mythbusters found that if you actually wash your hands properly there's no difference. They also only tested traditional evaporation dryers and not 'blade' type dryers which blow the air off.
Paper towels are compostable, and they can be used for a variety of needs outside of drying your hands.
Nobody composts paper towels, you are spreading misinformation.
Like wiping my bum!
Lighting a grill 👌👌
but realistically no public bathroom has a compost bin
True, for example, eating it
I like the cloth towel dispensers. A long almost infinite towel on a roll, that you pull out and then after a couple of seconds vanishes on its own back in the machine. Every now and then a janitor switches the used roll for a new one, and the towel is washed and can be reused.
Downside: you can only swap the entire roll and so unless your timing is perfect you always have some unused towel left when you swap, or it runs out.
Paper towels are always a win for me. I’m autistic and the loud sound of air dryers makes them extremely uncomfortable to use, especially since I can’t use my hand to plug my ears. They are definitely better for the environment, however. If no towels are available, you can do this crazy thing called wipe your hands on your clothes!
Honestly, same. But I really don't want to touch those door handles on the way out - they need to university make them the kind that push out and just have a panel on the inside so I can kick it open.
I'm not on the spectrum myself but I have sensitive ears. Air dryers always irritate me, I hate them!
@@TheGrinningViking Eh, as soon as you're outside typically the first thing you do is touch some other surface that's touched constantly by other people, so I'm not sure it really makes a difference.
The number of people who asked:
Never gonna give -
@@internet_userrwho are you even replying to?
I like the idea of air dryers. In practical practice though, paper towels are far better so long as they're not those cheap kind that disintegrate upon contact with wet hands. They have a lot more uses, namely, giving you something to open the door with that keeps you from defeating the entire purpose of washing your hands to begin with. There are few things worse than finishing drying your hands with an air dryer, only to realize the door only opens inward so you're not getting out without touching what is often the most germ filled object in the entire bathroom.
I love the model A cause whenever I worked outside during the winter and had a break I would go to the bathroom use a paper towel to dry off my mask that got wet from dew from my breath and use the model A as a hand warmer for my nearly frozen/numb figures for a couple minutes before going back outside again.
Regardless of what the outside world uses, schools need air dryers. Most public bathrooms with paper towels I've been in have been fairly tidy. However, there were always soaked paper towels on the sinks when I was in grade school. I had to pick up after my classmates because I just couldn't stand to see it.
I love it when Amy shows up for these things. 😂
The worst part of air dryers is having to wait for someone to enter the bathroom so you can then leave without touching the nasty door handle.
If produced sustainably, paper towels can be more environmentally minded than air dryers. This is due to business psychology where, if there is a demand for paper, forests are maintained to grow said paper. If demand drops, they find that forest more valuable as like another Dollar General or something
Cellulose!
Paper made of that is sturdy, absorbent, cheap and recyclable!
@@mr.paperbag771 All paper is made from cellulose what are you talking about.
That seems like a pretty wild leap in logic when most lumber comes from areas that are sparsely populated and each step is handled by different companies where each company has little knowledge of what happened earlier or later in the chain.
@@hedgehog3180 Hence the "If". I would have made it a big If, but UA-cam either won't let me alter font sizes, or I'm just unaware how.
A lot of the emissions come from making paper and then transporting it
"why are paper towels still around"
because its so damn inconvenient to use any air dryer, even the blade ones
I like jet dryers, but I NEED paper towels. I have a genetic disorder (HHT) which causes frequent nosebleeds. I hate going into a bathroom with no paper towels and have to start digging around the toilets for bath tissue to clean my face and whatever else I dripped blood on. Can't we just have both?
Just hold your nose above the cleaner thing and see it become a bloody mess while your nose is also getting hotter making it bleed even more.
Have your gp prescribe you some packets of tissue to carry around
I encountered my first AirBlade at Parx Casino. It was quite the novelty back then, and it really _DOES_ do a better job at drying your hands (vs. a regular air dryer). Once they became common though, I'd still prefer the *CHOICE* of paper towels... I mean, how do I blow my nose or wipe my glasses off with an AirBlade, Dyson?!
Well, there is toilet paper..
Don’t clean your glasses with paper towels, they will leave scratches. Only use microfibre cloths.
The Dyson (and similar) driers with basins are fantastic, the problem is WC's are not main tend properly at the best of times, and they certainly dont clean and service the driers as they should. All new Dyson blades have no basin, and while the water kind of blasts off in all directions, it at least dries and doesn't collect anywhere.The new Dyson taps incorporate the water, soap and drier on a Y shaped arm, so the water drains into the sink, which is genius.
15 or so years ago I sold paper towels for unifirst uniform rental. We quoted that research over and over. Even used the term "blowing crystallized urine on your hands". I wonder if they still are saying that. Probably
Man I love the Xlerator hand dryers we have at work. I feel like a big hand dryer shill for saying this now but we've had it for years and no complaints. Can't stand the dryers that are about as effective as rubbing your hands on wet grass tho. The dyson ones are kinda gross cause it's basically impossible to dry your hands without touching the machine and they sometimes spray water back up at you.
I agree
Paper towels are so much better. But tbf, the only dryer to ever dry my hands was Dyson's. Although I didn't realise it because the air was so cold I kept thinking my hands were still wet
Or maybe because your hands were still wet.
I have used Dyson airblades at school and they dry nothing.
You have to rub your hands together while using it to get the last bits of water off. It even says so on the front, if you do that they're usually as fast as using paper towels.
Rub the droplets out, dries super quick in hot air.
Oh my GOD as someone who works in health care and has to wash their hands multiple times a day, this debate is one of the few hills that I will die on! I'm so happy that Sam's done a video on it 😂😂
For the record I am team towel - I have no trust that a jet dryer has the friction power to clean bacteria off your hands that paper towels do. None at all. Didn't realise that there was a Big Air Dryer vs Big Paper battle going on though!
Props for sending Amy to get a sample for bathrooms... But going into some hospitals would have been an interesting inclusion. Here in Australia, I have *never* seen a jet dryer in a hospital - only ever paper towels... And with the amount of emphasis we have on hand washing in hospitals (ref: Google the "5 moments of hand hygiene" and organisations exist like "Hand Hygiene Australia") I feel like they're going to be doing something right...
Wait is the drying step _supposed_ to remove bacteria? I'd assumed that was the role of like...the washing part, and the drying was just to dry them.
@@RyanTosh As far as I know, the drying step is supposed to remove excess moisture *before* any new bacteria has a chance to start growing in it. Existing bacteria should've been removed by soap and abrasion in the washing step.
Gosh
Pretty worrying that you would still have bacteria on your hands after washing and you work in healthcare. Learn to wash your hands properly before you kill an immuno-compromised patient, please.
@@KindredBrujahI don't understand where in my comment you got the idea that I don't wash my hands properly. Hand hygiene is part of the basics.
I hate the airblade SO much! People inevitably touch the sides so at uni they were visibly covered in gunk. Also, they are the least disability friendly design you can think of. I've seen little kids struggle to use them too
Nahhh, the xcelerator is GOATED. the model A was a tank because every time I went to use it at school I POUNDED the button
Whatever happened to the endless cloth wrap? I assume they never need to be replaced and they’re perfectly clean all the time.
They basically roll from one spool to another, then you just put a fresh one in and wash the old one
Germs can apparently accumulate on them, it's less of a problem when it's a large roll as hopefully by the time you go through a full roll it will have dried, but it's still a risk.
The best part about hand dryers is washing your hands, attempting to dry them, giving up, then using your wet hands to open the door which was previously opened by a crack head 10 minutes ago that scratched his balls and walked out the door without washing.
I only use an AirBlade if its the newer V model. The old one definitely seems unhygienic after seeing some revolting ones over the years. I appreciate bathrooms that give you the paper choice too.
You should try and find a Dyson Airblade 9kj and give it a try!
there's definitely something about the smell of those brown paper towels when damp that smells super nostalgic
Fun fact: When I use a hand dryer, the evaporation does most of the work
The sign right their in the train bathroom says DRYER FAUCET SOAP. So your outside correspondent can't find a dryer even when it's signed. I expect written apology from Half as Interesting.
Expensing a McFlurry out of the blue for work sounds like a good perk
If there aren't any paper towels in the bathroom, i won't even bother washing my hands. My pants will do
The McDonalds in my local High Street had a weird sink/hand drier combo thing called a wall gate in the early 80s.
Not sure whether they still have them now, or how long they lasted.
They didn't work terribly well though.
Yeah we still have them in our main train station in Bristol, England. Soap, water, drier all in one hole in the wall.
They have them on British trains. They're okay when they work.
Excuse me “the McDonalds in my local highschool”???? My highschool didn’t even have air conditioning
"Didn't work terribly well"
Bless you, sir. That's about the nicest way you could say they were dogshit useless.
What’s a local high street?
Regardless of cost and environmental impact, I prefer actual towels because they actually dry my hands. The air dryers, no longer how long, never feel 100% dry. Air drying also takes longer which is annoying in a busy restroom.
Just came here to say that paper towels are superior in every way. Fucking everyone is removing them again now that COVID is gone and I really miss them.
What about mitsubishi
I hate the xcelerator so much, the loud jet-firing dryers are the whole reason I still use paper towels, the only times I ever like the air dryers are the Dyson ones that are much quieter and affect the whole hand front and back. If you don't find the jet dryers loud, I would advise you to take a hearing test because too much damage has already been done.
Was kinda weird seeing that U.S. bathrooms had to choose a side. Where I'm from, if a bathroom had a hand dryer available, they'd usually also have paper towels right beside them. Most malls and fast food restaurants in my country would, in fact, have both options available. Most customers also expect to have both options available.
Possibly the epitome of a first world problem:
“Should i dry my damp hands using a special machine that blows air or a piece of paper that is slightly different to the paper used for wiping?”
Don’t give Dyson any more ideas of paper to replace.
As a former janitor for 'wally world'... Paper towels **in actual use** are far less hygienic than any of these studies wud lead you to believe
Those paper towels are nearly nvr kept in the utmost hygienic surfaces before bein installed and are often carried across whole stores exposed to the open air. Not every sheet is gonna be as coated, but dont think that any sheet is safe; the top and bottom are what get so coated
But also just like, none of that restroom is as hygienic as you wud hope xD I knew multiple coworkers who only cleaned the toilets when they "looked dirty" despite what policy dictstes just cuz it got the job done faster so the bosses considered them a better worker bcuz it looked as clean 9,9
And the toilets are far from the only example of that. The only thing that is def gettin cleaned daily is the mirrors bcuz they cant go a day without gettin water residue on them from splashback and ppl flingin their wet hands at the mirrors
Like, i personally hate both options bcuz sensory reasons but i dont at all expect either is hygienic if im in a public space; so ill just use whatevs is more tolerable at the time
It’s a no-brainer with the modern air hand dryers that we have. They’re amazing.
Paper towels… half the time you have to touch part of the dispenser to get a paper towel and a third of the time the dispenser is empty and out of towels‼️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
Sam is really taking full advantage of the "other duties as assigned" clause with Amy recently.
0:03 - why blur this one lady and no one else? Is she a top secret super spy or something?
she is much closer to the camera than everyone else, which could be a problem, because that might become the second most important thing in the picture, and being a important figure in any picture taken by someone else without your consent could lead to being sued.
Air vs paper, is the new pepsi vs coke, and xbox vs playstation. And now im waiting for a 4 part documentary on its history
The scene in Reservoir Dogs where the character played by Tim Roth uses the air dryer while the police were conversing was really memorable
But, be honest, there is nothing more satisfying than ripping off a 20 yard long piece of paper towel and drying every speck of moisture on your hands
LMAO
That's interesting I do the opposite & try to reach the same result with 1 sheet. Usually can with some handshaking before drying
True bro lol
You're confusing paper towels dispensers with toilet rolls
I worked at my local hospital (I was janitorial, I cleaned the rooms) and our paper towel dispensers ran on 4 D Cell batteries. Those Dyson Airblades were a joke. I used one, after a minute I grabbed a paper towel. Eventually they were all removed from the hospital cause they didn't work. (Note: This was all pre-COVID).
I'd been pretty unimpressed with air dryers in general for quite a while, but it turns out that's because I live in the United States. Apparently people in the United States just don't know how to install air dryers so they actually work. After a full minute, I just give up and leave with wet hands. On a recent trip the the UK and Iceland, I was stunned by the effectiveness of the air dryers there. They actually did what they're supposed to do: dry hands in a few seconds. It was like magic! Maybe someone from the paper towel lobby is paying off installers to just install air dryers badly in the United States?
Dyson is a UK company.....
Might have something to do with the US grid running on a lower voltage? That's also why electric kettles are less popular in the US, because they're quite slow compared to in Europe.
I'm just gonna bring my own towel and wash it at home.
Smartest person in this comment section
I will always use paper towels even if I have to bring them myself, which I do when I go to certain stores
Obviously the correct answer is use both at the same time. A paper towel will almost instantly remove any drops of water on your hand leaving your hands slightly damp. Now that the paper towel is thoroughly wet it won't dry your hands further but air-dryers (not the Airblade design though) excel at drying out slightly damp hands. Using this method you can dry your hands less than 5 seconds and only use 1 paper towel.
LMAO, yellow tshirt guy on 3:14 had me rollin
I’m surprised you didn’t do your own research to show some basic differences at the end. Also surprised there’s no mention of how freaking LOUD dyson’s dryers are. Sometimes so loud they can literally cause hearing damage if you stand too close to them. I am happy using either method and I think places should have both options.
Its a shame airblades don't get my hands dry and create a dangerous slipery floor.