If there’s one thing we’ve learned during this pandemic, it’s how to properly wash
our hands.
Let’s review:
Step 1: rinse hands.
Step 2: apply soap and scrub-a-dub-dub for at least 20 seconds.
Step 3: time to dry.
Just go grab a...oh wait, maybe use the...or that one?
Dang it, why is this so hard??
We know that sounds dramatic, but drying your hands properly is really important.
"Every time we touch a surface, we are potentially transferring
pathogens.
...if you have a wet hand, you can see the mark
you leave."
It goes the other way too - germs hop more easily from surfaces to your hands if they’re wet.
But public health mess aging often fails to address this last step.
And in the covid era, people are confused.
A recent study showed that the pandemic scrambled the hand-drying preferences of Americans,
and that many want clarity.
So let’s clarify!
Do electric dryers do more harm than good, is there even a ‘best’ method, and which
bathroom appliance is the real public health villain?
Generally in public bathrooms, you’ll find
three hand-drying options.
We asked Dr. Christian Moro to break them down.
"The first one is the warm air dryers.
They dry through evaporation, so they simply heat the water up,
help it evaporate, removes it off the hands."
" The second one is the jet dryers, which are the more modern
ones that we see.
And the jet dryers work with sheer force.
They just simply force air onto the hands and it just sheers away the water molecules
The third option then is the paper towels.
And paper towels is one other option, we don't always do it properly, where we get into the
cracks and properly clean our hands, you know, we dry them properly and put them in the bin.
That's the way to get pathogens and moisture off our hands and into a secure department,
into a bin - a, uhh, trash can, you call it."
Paper towels and hot air dryers have been duking it out for bathroom supremacy since
the early 1900s.
Paper towels mostly won, except for a post-WWII
paper shortage and in the 1970s, when McDonald’s installed dryers at all of its locations.
Savvy businessmen pitched them as inexpensive and durable alternatives to constantly replacing
reams of paper towels.
Jet dryers joined the fray starting in 1993 in Japan, then hit the US in the early 2000s.
And ever since, debates have raged - most recently in Cheddar’s team meetings - about
A 2012 study evaluated each option on four criteria.
Paper towels and jet dryers remove 90% of water in ten seconds.
Hot air dryers need 40 - and, let’s be honest, how many of us commit that much time to drying
our hands?
Environmentally, however, paper towels lose - through their whole life cycle, they release
more greenhouse gases than the hot air dryer.
And jet dryers are far better than both.
But these last two criteria are where the science gets...well, messy.
A clear winner hasn't yet been determined.
Electric dryers have long been denounced as germ-spewing menaces to public health.
A slew of studies accused them of blasting germs all over our freshly-soaped hands - either
by sucking them in from the surrounding air or, worse, creating an environment for them
to grow.
They have such a bad reputation that some people - like Cheddar’s video director,
Carl - have sworn off them entirely.
So, Dr. Moro, any advice?
"Well, look, okay, firstly - the warm air dryers, bacteria aren’t
growing on the surface.
I mean, it gets hot and cold and hot and cold all day, but it’s not a consistent temperature,
so we don’t have bacteria growing on the surface.
So the worry then is, can this force of air, even the sheer force ones, be blowing germs
around from the environment?
And yes, it can."
So then...paper towels?
"Is it cleaner to dry the hands with paper towels?
Not necessarily... The germs can settle on paper towels, which means we pick
up paper towels and we wrap our hands with already-contaminated towels."
It turns out this whole hygiene and efficiency debate is basically a wash.
Even the WHO and CDC don’t take a stance.
"The problem, then, isn’t that an air hand dryer may spread
them around a little bit more or that we use paper towels or not.
And that’s where good toilet hygiene comes into play."
If you weren’t already horrified by public bathrooms, allow me to introduce the ‘toilet plume.'
A single flush can propel thousands of microorganisms skyward, where they either linger or fall
to a nearby surface.
"We're not always infected and spreading disease.
It's only if someone has a gastrointestinal infection, for example, and goes to the bathroom,
there's now going to be contaminants in that toilet.
The problem is, people- when you get sick, you tend to use the bathroom more often, and
it's one way that it spreads."
If the science on hand drying is muddled, the science of toilet plumes is crystal clear.
This study detected droplets five feet above the toilet for more than 20 seconds after
the flush.
This one detected a nasty bug 10 inches above the bowl for up to 90 minutes after the flush.
And Dr. Moro himself found that...well, I’ll let him tell you.
"I did a study where they flush the toilet many, many, many times,
you know, 6, 10, 20 times.
And they found that even every flush, even though it looked clean, was still spreading
contaminants around the area."
That means your flush of the office toilet is still launching remaining particles from
the flushes of your coworkers into the communal restroom airspace.
So what’s a germaphobe to do in the face of such pestilential perils?
Dr. Moro has some tips.
1: if there’s a lid, put it down before flushing.
"It’s not an airtight seal, but at least prevents a bit of that
spread of contaminants."
Unfortunately, most public restrooms don’t have lids, which brings us back to…
2: obviously - wash and dry your hands thoroughly, using whatever method you want (except shaking
your hands or rubbing them on your shirt, have you learned nothing you monster?
"I know we’re talking a lot today about, you know, which
method to dry your hands, but as long as people are drying, everything is great."
3: if you have any influence over bathroom construction, prioritize good airflow.
"Having a big open window and fresh air flow coming through is
one way to clear out any contaminants when they come through."
And finally, 4: if you’re sick and you can stay home, please do!
"W e can have the best seals on toilets and look after everything
and wash our hands correctly and someone coughs into the air and all that has- has led to
nothing.
ill, that's one key way to do it.