Silly chum bucket meme I made to explain how I feel about air dryers

I can’t tell you the relief I feel when I walk into a bathroom and I see that there’s paper towels, it is often the first thing I scan for when I enter a bathroom. I hate air dryers and I know I’m not the only one, a study done in 2008 on european consumers found that 63% of respondents said they preferred to dry their hands with paper towels. Despite that US. Modor Intelligence thinks that the market for air dryers will increase 6% from now to 2028, something I seriously hope doesn’t happen. Air dryers are loud, unsanitary, and less effective at drying your hands.

Mythbusters proved it in 2013 when they did a bathrooms myth episode. In the episode they reported there were 12 million hand dryers in the US alone Assuming the reported number of 12 million is correct and assuming a 6% growth rate in the ten year period from the release of the episode to now we’d have over 21 million air dryers today and potentially 28 million by 2028. Which may be conservative estimate.

In the first part of episode the mythbusters prove that washing your hands with soap is extremely effective at removing bacteria, only water does a pretty good job but will still leave you with some bacteria and not washing your hands does as you’d expect. Later in the episode (can’t find the clip anywhere, probably the work of big air dryer) they run this same water, soap, and no wash test on 16 participants and also tested the difference in residual bacteria in the hands of the particapants after using air dryers vs. paper towels and found that on average, the paper towels removed 71% of the bacteria on the volunteers’ hands, while the air dryers only removed 23%, confirming the first part of the myth. The other part of the myth they tested was to determine if it was true that air dryers actually blow bacteria everywhere by swabbing the area of a paper towel dispenser versus a hand dryer and they discovered they area around the hand dryer yielded much more bacteria than the area around the paper towel dispenser.

Mayo clinic also ran a study on air drying efficacy and made a similar conclusion about hand dryers. Coming to the result that “residual water was more efficiently removed from the hands by cloth towels. After 10 seconds of drying with a single-serve cloth towel, the residual water on the hands was reduced to 4%. With 15 seconds of drying, the residual water was reduced to 1%. However, hot air dryers were much slower and took 45 seconds to reduce the residual water to 3%.” Also adding that “the degree of wetness encourages the survival and transmission of bacteria on the hands” but also, “other factors also influence the hygiene performance of a hand-drying method” Still despite this study giving the gold to cloth towels it gave paper silver and hand dryers came in broze which is to say last place.

Lastly the noise of air dryers, particularly jet air dryers, are obviously noisier than paper towels or cloth towels. According to Redway and Fawdar,the mean decibel level of using a jet air dryer at 0.5 m was 94 dB, which is in excess of that of a heavy truck passing 3 m away. When 2 jet air dryers were used at the same time, the decibel level at a distance of 2 m was 92 dB. Therefore, in washrooms with jet air dryers, the noise level could constitute a potential risk to those exposed to it for long periods.

The way I see it 40% of bathrooms have either paper towel or air dryers and the other 20% give you both options. With this view which ever side you’re on you probably get what you want when you walk into any given bathroom. Althought after this I don’t know how you can still be on team air dryer which we’ve proven is a minority but despite this the dirty noisy buisness of air dryers seems to be poised for growth. I hope one day you guys on team air dryer see the light.