Paper Hand Towels, Electric hand Dryers or Hand Sanitiser?

Paper Towels or Electric Hand Dryers or Hand Sanitisers?

Germs and diseases are spread by our hands and effective hand washing remains our best line of defence. Next step hand drying?

From a hygienic point of view when comparing paper towels, cloth towels or hot air dryers, which is the best? Straight away we can remove cloth towels as they and most certainly not hygienic.

The key factors would be hand drying effectiveness, the speed of drying, the degree of dryness and the cross contamination of bacteria.

It appears that the general public would prefer paper towels with approx 75% in favour of these as apose to the remaining 25% in favour of warm air electric hand dryers.

Reasons being paper towels are superior to electric hand dryers by drying hands thoroughly with one use and is thought of as a method of improving hand hygiene and cross contamination.

Paper towels also seem to be more efficient with reasons given such as electric hand dryers were much slower and required realistically two goes or approx 45 seconds to reduce the residual water to an considered dry level.

With cloth towels being the least effective method of removing bacteria from washed hands it appears that electric hand dryers were second. It is not so much a case that electric hand dryers are a poor choice too but rather that when using a fresh new paper hand towel, studies have found that friction is the key factor in the hand drying action as it helps to remove contamination on the skin surface by transferring remaining bacteria from the hands to the paper towels.

People will only attain a certain amount of time to hand drying before walking away. If the results were not good they will wipe their hands on their clothes or touch door handles with wet hands. So realistically we have to be sensible or you could go on forever with concerns over something simple such as drying your hands. For example. Every time a toilet is flushed, a fine mist can be sprayed into the air from the WC bowl. This mist may contain may types of faecal bacteria that can cause diseases. The same bacteria would be present on the toilet and cubicle door and lock. The tap handle. The soap dispenser. The damp environment of the washrooms with allow bacteria to thrive.

The bacteria can then be inhaled or can be deposited on the person's body or clothes, thus making them a potential mobile source of infection.

I think we have to look at hand washing as a cleaning practice. Sanitation is a separate issue so after drying and other cross-contamination that will quickly occur after a hand wash. The answer is regular hand sanitation. Wall mounted or pocket sized. Alcohol or alcohol free. This is a perfect solution and a habit that needs to be adopted before eating and handling food of in zones of other people where cross-contamination will be high.

This is just our thoughts on the subject but as with most things it is all down to personal preference!