There are two types of people in the world, those evil people who like the loud hand dryers in bathrooms, and the rest of us.
The noise of hand dryers is so painful to my ears that I can barely take it! I hate hand dryers, especially the Xcelerator, which sounds like a rocket ship taking off inside my brain.
Are hand dryers really better than paper towels? We are going to discuss this important question today, focusing on 4 main factors: people, profit, planet, and eardrums.
First, let’s talk money, AKA profit: Hand dryers are cheaper to operate than paper towels, from 5-50x cheaper, in fact. Less paper is used, so there is less waste. Because there is less waste, the cleaning people have less work to do. This saves on cleaning costs, paper towel purchases, and the number of trees being cut down.
Next let’s discuss the noise factor: You’ve all seen those Xcelerator hand dryers, right? That machine in the bathroom that sounds like a generator exploding during an earthquake? How loud is it, anyway? Well, they are supposed to operate at about 80 dB when they are being used correctly. An example of 80 dB would be a blender or a garbage disposal. However, the majority of people use them wrong. You are supposed to hold your hands about one-to-two-feet under them, but most people hold their hands right up close to them, which can make them even louder. When hands are placed right under them, some of these hand dryers can produce 90, or even 100 dB of noise. Think, train whistle, motorcycle or subway train. At 100 dB, even a short exposure for some people can worsen the ringing in ears known as tinnitus.
Children hate the scary loud hand dryers. Furthermore, many people with autism cannot tolerate the sound of hand dryers, making them fearful to use restrooms that have them.
I was concerned about the noise factor, so I wrote to the Xcelerator company complaining about the decibel level of their machines. They responded that there are two retrofitting options available for their hand dryers. One is a “sound deflection nozzle” for about $10 that would get rid of the extra noise when hands are too close, keeping it at about 80 dB. There’s also another sound controller that can be retrofitted into the machines for about $30/a piece that could significantly reduce the sound. But most operators don’t want to spend that extra $10 to $40 on these machines to make them less loud.
What about the environment, AKA planet? Hand dryers might use less paper, but they are powered by a powerful blast of electricity, which often comes from coal-fired power plants, AKA dirty coal. Even so, hand dryers have been shown to have about a 1/10th of the overall environmental impact of paper towels.
What about human health, aka people? This is where things get a little tricky. Interestingly, hand dryers such as Xcelerator are not even allowed in places with lots of bacteria and viruses and human health concerns such as hospitals or doctors offices or sterile environments such as labs. This is because paper towels really just do the job better. Paper towels do a much better job of drying your hands than hand dryers, and unlike hand dryers, paper towels remove over 75% of remaining germs from your hands, which are then placed directly into the trash can.
The Xcelerator could be called the germinator. That is because, when there is bacteria on your hands, the hand dryer blows the bacteria into the surrounding air, filling the room with bacteria. The hand dryers disperse 1,300 times more germs into the air than paper towels. And the number of bacteria on your hands can actually increase by using hand dryers!
If you wash your hands thoroughly with soap long enough to sing Happy Birthday two times before using a hand dryer, then this shouldn’t be a problem. But for the quick hand washers like me, the Xcelerator is just dispersing your germs into the atmosphere and all the other bathroom users are breathing in your germs.
Hand dryers are probably better for the environment and for the company’s bottom line than are paper towels. However, they are not better for your ears, and they are not appropriate at all for hospitals and other sterile environments. In fact, I would conclude by saying hand dryers don’t really do the job they are supposed to, and that paper towels are the better choice.
Paper towels win, hands down.