High-speed hand dryers are bacteria havens
High-speed hand dryers like the Dyson Airblade spread up to 1300 times more bacteria than towels. This is shown by a new study from Great Britain.
A study by the University of Westminster shows that high-speed hand dryers can fling microbes up to 3 meters.
The researchers wet their hands with water containing a harmless virus and dried them with a Dyson Airblade, a conventional air dryer and paper towels.
The result: The microbes were distributed over a distance of three meters in the high-speed dryer, over 75 cm in the normal air dryer, and only over 25 cm in paper towels. The quantities of viruses also differed considerably: With the Dyson Airblade, there were 1600 times more microbes than with towels and still 60 times more than with standard air dryers.
Dyson reacted indignantly to the new accusations: when asked by the British newspaper the Guardian a spokeswoman for the company stated that the study was scaremongering and conducted under artificial conditions.
What's piquant about this is that as recently as 2008, the Dyson Airblade was recommended by health organizations as being particularly hygienic because the hand dryer rids the aspirated air of 99.9% of bacteria before the airflow hits the skin.
