With public restrooms there is a choice to be made between electric hand dryers and paper towels to dry hands. Both methods have their proponents. Some people might say that using paper towels is more sanitary as well as more effective. With older models of hand dryers, they might have been correct. However, modern fast drying hand dryers have come a long way from their ineffective and less-sanitary ancestors. Fast drying hand dryers are capable of drying a user’s hands in around 12 seconds. That is a lot faster than the old hand dryer models people may have used in the past.
The Healthy Choice
Paper towels are usually seen as the more hygienic choice. That is because with older models of hand dryers it was possible for the machine to pick up bacteria from the surrounding air, blowing the contaminated air right onto the user’s hands. With new technology in hand dryers, the issue is not nearly as clear-cut. Modern hand dryers come with HEPA filters inside that clean any air that is blown out to dry the user’s hands. The filters can eliminate up to 99.9% of germs. Also standard on most modern hand dryers, is touch-free activation. This eliminates the need to touch a button that could perhaps spread bacteria to your hand.
The Environmental Choice
Reports say that in order to make 1 ton of paper towels it requires 3.5 tons of wood. In the United States alone over 3000 tons of paper towels end up in landfills per year. Paper towels are difficult to recycle. They can be composted, but of course the vast majority of public bathrooms are not composting their paper towel waste. Electric hand dryers eliminate all of these environmental issues. Modern hand dryers actually draw less power than older hand dryer models, while at the same time being more effective. The environmental impact of using electric hand dryers is much less than paper towels.
The Preferred Choice
Based on the factors we’ve looked at, electric hand dryers are the way to go. They are at least as hygienic as using paper towels, if not more so. Also, hand dryers are considerably more friendly to the environment than paper towels are. Lastly, fast drying hand dryers work quickly enough that they don’t take much, if any, more time to dry a user’s hands than paper towels do. Make the right choice and choose one of these dryers, today.
