Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
This study from the American Society of Microbiology specifically demonstrates how air driers at least add 3 bacterial colonies, and up to 254 colonies, when using an air drier in a public restroom: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aem.00044-18. In addition, a Harvard review of the research also identifies that the chances of picking up a serious pathogen in the bathroom are quite small.
So, having little chance in general yet using the air drier, which has shown to add bacteria to your hands in every single test, doesn't make sense after understanding this data. I'm a man of science, and this involves assessing all available data regarding the topic at hand. This being the case, the data provided above highlights how just not touching your face and washing your hands at the next opportunity after leaving a bathroom with only hand driers is the most logical move. But to each their own, I know microbiologist and virologist who are much smarter than I that refuse to use air driers, so I took note and make moves accordingly.
There are two important quotes I would like to point out from that paper:
Note the wording: "reduces effectiveness" means you should still do it, it is still effective, just less so.
In other words: moving the air around is the cause, so a bathroom with paper towels that also has an air conditioner or fan will produce similar results. You know what else moves air around similar to a small fan? You when walking around, your hands are moving air and contacting lots of it.
I could reply with a study that finds air dryers to be safer and filter more bacteria, and we could go back and forth until one of us grows tired. Instead I'll leave you with a review of several papers published on the matter where you can see that it's not so clear cut, there is discussion around it and it doesn't help that the vast majority of papers out there are financed by either paper companies or air drying companies (btw, kudos for citing one of the independently financed studies)
https://academic.oup.com/jambio/article/130/1/25/6726080
If you don't want to read this, the long story short is that we don't have enough evidence to conclude whether they are more or less hygienic:
And finally I leave you with another quote from this paper:
In short: not washing your hands is worse than any drying method.