Thankful for paper towels
The Editorial Board | Washington Post | 28 Nov 2025
“Science supports paper towels. Handwashing is a necessary but insufficient part of germ removal: it’s just as important to get them thoroughly dry, because excess moisture facilitates germ transmission. In health care settings, the CDC still recommends this vital task be performed with disposable paper towels – time-tested germ fighters.
Older hand dryers spread germs into the air with reckless abandon. Even newer models with HEPA or UV filters can still stir up pathogens that have settled on the floor. Paper towels have none of those problems, and they don’t create any meaningful environmental harms.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/25/paper-towels-hand-dryers-wash-clean-germs/
The bacterial horror of hot-air hand dryers
John Ross, MD | Harvard Health Publishing | May 11, 2018
“If you’re the kind of person who avoids public bathrooms at all costs, you may feel validated, as well as disturbed, by a new study from researchers at the University of Connecticut and Quinnipiac University. They suspected that hot-air hand dryers in public restrooms might be sucking up bacteria from the air, and dumping them on the newly washed hands of unsuspecting patrons.
“They concluded that most of the bacterial splatter from the hand dryers had come from the washroom air.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-bacterial-horror-of-the-hot-air-hand-dryer-2018051113823
Deposition of Bacteria and Bacterial Spores by Bathroom Hot-Air Hand Dryers
Luz del Carmen Huesca-Espitia, Jaber Aslanzadeh, Richard Feinn, Gabrielle Joseph, Thomas S. Murray, Peter Setlow | American Society for Microbiology – Applied and Environmental Microbilology | 2 April 2018
“Hot-air hand dryers in multiple men’s and women’s bathrooms in three basic science research areas in an academic health center were screened for their deposition on plates of (i) total bacteria …
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Plates exposed to hand dryer air for 30 s averaged 18 to 60 colonies/plate; but interior hand dryer nozzle surfaces had minimal bacterial levels, plates exposed to bathroom air for 2 min with hand dryers off averaged ≤1 colony, and plates exposed to bathroom air moved by a small fan for 20 min had averages of 15 and 12 colonies/plate in two buildings tested.
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These results indicate that many kinds of bacteria, including potential pathogens and spores, can be deposited on hands exposed to bathroom hand dryers and that spores could be dispersed throughout buildings and deposited on hands by hand dryers.
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“Hands contaminated with pathogenic microbes play a major role in the transmission of bacteria in health care institutions, the food industry, and community and domestic settings
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“Analyses of colonies on rich, double-strength Schaeffer’s glucose (2×SG) medium plates left open for 2 min in men’s and women’s bathrooms (36 in total) with hand dryers off in three buildings in the basic science research areas of the University of Connecticut (UConn) School of Medicine found an average of 0 to 1 colony/plate (Table 1, environmental samples). Extending exposure of duplicate open plates for 18 h in two bathrooms with hand dryers off gave an average of only 6 colonies/plate (Table 1). However, when plates were exposed to air from hand dryers for 30 s in the 36 bathrooms located on different floors of the three buildings tested (Fig. 1), there was an average of 18, 24, and 60 colonies/plate in each building tested (range, 3 to 254 colonies/plate) in two different experiments separated by 3 to 4 weeks
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aem.00044-18
The Dirty Truth About Hand Dryers
Cleveland Clinic | November 15, 2023
“… avoid high-speed jet air dryers in public restrooms. Research shows that they spread — rather than remove — germs. The same is true to a lesser extent for warm air dryers. The clear winner: Good old-fashioned paper towels.
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“Let’s separate fact from fiction when it comes to hand drying.
Myth: Hand dryers help kill germs
Fact: Hand dryers can spread viruses and bacteria
The airport. The mall. Your beauty salon. You may have noticed how many public buildings have switched to hand dryers in recent years. Yet researchers have found that mechanical hand dryers may essentially “undo” what handwashing does in the first place — get rid of germs.
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Myth: Jet air dryers are better than traditional warm air dryers
Fact: Jet air dryers spread more microbes than warm air dryers
Could certain air dryers be worse than others? In a 2015 study, microbiologists aimed to find out by comparing jet air dryers to warm air dryers and paper towels. Here’s what they found:
>The jet air dryer dispersed an average of 60 times more viruses than the warm air dryer and 1,300 times more than paper towels, at six different heights.
>The impact of the viral spread was greatest at 2.5 feet to 4.1 feet — which is about face-level for a small child.
>The jet air dryer dispersed 20 times more viruses than the warm air dryer and 190 times more virus than paper towels, at nine different distances.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/the-dirty-truth-about-hand-dryers
Evaluation of the potential for virus dispersal during hand drying: a comparison of three methods
P T Kimmitt 1, K F Redway 1 | NIH National Library of Medicine | February, 2016
“Conclusions: Use of the JAD [jet air dryer] lead to significantly greater and further dispersal of MS2 bacteriophage from artificially contaminated hands when compared to the WAD [warm air dryer] and PT [paper towels] .
Significance and impact of study: The choice of hand-drying device should be considered carefully in areas where infection prevention concerns are paramount, such as healthcare settings and the food industry.