Dyson Airblades 'Spread Germs 1,300 Times More Than Paper Towels' (telegraph.co.uk) 434
An anonymous reader writes: The Journal of Applied Microbiology published a report claiming Dyson Airblade hand-driers spread 60 times more germs than standard air dryers, and 1,300 times more than standard paper towels. The researchers from University of Westminster conducted their research by dipping their hands in water containing a harmless virus. Then, they dried their hands with either a Dyson Airblade, a standard hot-air dryer, or a paper towel. Their research shows the Dyson drier's 430mph blasts of air are capable of spreading viruses up to 3 meters across a bathroom. Typical driers spread viruses up to 75cm (about 2.5ft), and the hand towels 25cm (less than 1ft).
Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but it's a Dyson which means it cost twice what any other solution cost, so it's go to be good, right?
Re: Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you wanted them to be because you don't like them. That your desire happens to have overlapped with reality does not mean that you "knew" anything. We know this because...
I have, and it's easy. I don't think I've ever touched any part of the machine at all. But anyway, the reason they spread more germs is because they blow them further around a room, which has nothing to do w
Re: Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:3, Interesting)
Listen Donald, not all of us were graced with dainty hobbit hands.
Having also touched the interior of one of these crufty shit slingers (that crack in the bottom always fills with a brown sludge), I'll be happy to see them sued out of existence for false advertisement.
Re: Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:4, Funny)
They call those things Dyson Airblades? I thought it was a urinal!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:5, Funny)
Well most of the reviews on Dyson is that their products either sucks or blows.
Re:Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:5, Funny)
Dyson Airblades, or as microbiologists like to call the, Dyson Germ Cannons
Re: (Score:3)
Ahem.
Germ Dispersal Units. Or GDUs, if you prefer.
Re:Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always found them shit anyway. The airblade doesn't make sense, as it seems to blow horizontally, creating an air wall that basically pushes any water on your hand either side of the air wall, and as you move up and down, moves the water up and down.
To me, what would've always made more sense would've been to:
a) Have the air aim downwards to push the water down off your hands
b) Move your hands into position from the side, rather than above
Moving hands in from above just pushes the water up your arm, moving your hands in from the side and blowing down would push it off your hand.
So yes, right now all they really are is germ cannons that don't actually dry your hands particularly effectively - in fact, I find a good classic powerful (some are shit and too weak) hand dryer to be much better because at least they blast downwards, which because we live in a world with gravity, is kind of more fucking useful than creating a wall that just pushes water up your arm.
But one of the biggest sanitation problems for germ transfer in toilets is door handles. Rather than buying an expensive airblade, maybe places should invest in doors that open automatically with sensors because right now everyone washes their hands and dries them with an expensive no-touch hand dryer like the dyson, and then proceeds to put their hand on the door handle to exit the washrooms only to pick up all the germs that that one scratty bastard who doesn't wash his hands after handling his dick left there.
Re:Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:5, Funny)
And this is the company that Trump wants to entrust with building a wall around the solar system to keep out aliens?
Re:Yes, but it's a Dyson (Score:4, Funny)
On the other hand... (Score:5, Funny)
It actually gets my hands dry, unlike traditional air dryers ("press button, wipe hands on pants").
Re:On the other hand... (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was "press button, receive bacon"? [pinimg.com]
Re:On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dry, cold, and as soon as you turn and open the door handle without a paper towel, re-contaminated. Plus you're half deaf from the noise.
Re:On the other hand... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I had no idea Howard Hughes was still alive and posting on the Internet.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a TEDx talk, "How to make paper towels magically appear"? Or have you never used a restroom where they only have the dryers?
Re: On the other hand... (Score:5, Funny)
I just stand by the door and wait for someone else to come in... Never costs me more than a few hours...
Re: On the other hand... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: On the other hand... (Score:5, Informative)
Or just get rid of the door and have a little corridor with a bend in it so that you can't see in. That has the added bonus of allowing some air flow so the place doesn't get too ripe.
Re: (Score:2)
Is that the one where the guy admits that he has done absolutely no research and just makes the whole thing up?
Re:On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that the one where the guy admits that he has done absolutely no research and just makes the whole thing up?
For TED talks, that doesn't exactly narrow it down.
Re: (Score:2)
Shake. Fold. [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
I like those Excel XLERATOR hand dryers that are capable of launching a small child into orbit (or several feet into the bathroom floor)
It says it on the thing! (Score:2)
Re:It says it on the thing! (Score:5, Funny)
But... But... It's the "world's most hygienic hand dryer!" It says it right on the thing!
It is.
All the germs which were on your hands are now up to 3 meters away from you.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It's also the world's messiest urinal.
I dunno about you... (Score:4, Insightful)
But I tend to wash my hands instead of dunking them in vats of bacteria before drying them, whichever method of drying I use.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've been in more than one public restroom where it's been outright obvious they have thinned the marginally effective soap with water. Either because they're cheap or the person who "fills the soap" just doesn't give a shit.
Re: (Score:3)
It doesn't have to be an either or situation. The management could be cheap and the person "filling" the soap could not give a shit.
Re:I dunno about you... (Score:5, Informative)
Washing your hands without soap at all is quite effective, assuming you do a reasonable job at it. See The Effect of Handwashing at Recommended Times with Water Alone and With Soap on Child Diarrhea in Rural Bangladesh: An Observational Study [nih.gov]. Any soap will make the hand washing more effective. Anti-bacterial soap is no better than standard soap.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I dunno about you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it get sucked up from the floor and onto my hands? Is there evidence that it atomizes and is breathable? The Dyson's (or any other hand dryer) part in the water on the floor is no different than what happens after someone shakes their hands off following washing (rinsing) their hands.
As far as I can tell this is a purposely misleading study intended to create FUD and boost paper towel sales. This study demonstrates that if you place wet, dirty hands into the dryer (who does that?), that dirt (germs) will be blown off your hands and splatter up to 3m away. It does not show that the Dyson produces atomized water particles containing germs in the air. Nor does it show that the hands of the person whom just washed and dried them are more ladened with germs than the other methods. This study would be a concern if you planned on licking the bathroom floor and adjacent wall space. That not really my hobby interest.
Re: (Score:3)
My own unscientific observations show that it gets blown around. Does it get atomized such that it could be breathed in? I don't know, but I think that it is a significant concern that someone should investigate.
Re:I dunno about you... (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly my junk is probably cleaner than my hands it's been locked up in clean underwear while my hands have handled money and all kind of other unsanitary things. Wash your hands before you take a whiz.
Re:I dunno about you... (Score:5, Funny)
My life coach told me that urine is sterile, so i just take a whiz on my hands.
Re: (Score:3)
It almost always is - the exception is if you have a urinary tract infection. It can be used as an emergency antiseptic.
Re:I dunno about you... (Score:5, Informative)
It almost always is - the exception is if you have a urinary tract infection. It can be used as an emergency antiseptic.
A sterile liquid isn't an antiseptic. It can help displacing some amount of bacteria (and water being a universal solvent, it does help more than most people give it credit for, although soap is for sure needed in most situations), but that's it.
The problem with urine is that it's not just sterile (in most cases). It's also full of nutritive components, and it's warm too, making it an ideal bacterial growth medium.
(And when a guy touches his penis, he can easily come into contact with precum, which is less sterile, and can transmit STDs if infected, including in some cases as an asymptomatic and undiagnosed carrier...).
If you have urine on your hands, you will ease bacterial growth on them and everything you touch for hours.
The "pee is clean so I don't need to wash my hands, you're just a clean freak with a sexuality complex!" idea is very typical of superficial thinking by phony skeptics...
(Intimacy is not a complex either... Trying to force one's one intimacy on others, is, though...).
You should clean your hand both before and after going to the toilets.
Re: (Score:3)
Yep, generally your own urine won't give you any disease you don't already have. If you've got something serious and transmitted via body fluids, keep em to yourself.
I'm not sure there are any diseases transmitted via urine. It's the microscopic pieces of faeces and other bodily fluids like blood, semen, and phlegm that cause all the problems. Urine is pretty sterile and will likely kill most things it comes in contact with so if you really want to be safe then pee all over the seat before you sit down.
Re: (Score:3)
Urine was believed to be sterile, but we now know this isn't true.
It's not that urine is sterile is that it's alot more sterile than what is available in the wild. It also tends to have a more similar PH and salt level to your body so if you're in the wild or in a battlefield and your only choice to sterilize some stitches is between dirty river water and urine then it's better to choose urine but if you have sterile saline or bottled water then by all means use the water.
Re:I dunno about you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then please stock the bathrooms with an unscented soap rather than the stuff that smells worse than the poop and lingers longer.
You can feel the water on your face (Score:5, Insightful)
Typically when the dryer starts up, I can feel a fine spray of water hit me in the face. I avoid these dryers now, even if it means using my pant legs to dry my hands.
At least the old fashioned blow dryers that take forever to dry your hands don't direct a spray of water into your face.
Re: (Score:2)
Mitsubishi make a similar device, but the angle of the air jets stops the upward spray, and they ramp up instead of going to 100% instantly.
Re: (Score:2)
Or, you can just do like me and dry your hands on someone else's pant leg.
Re:You can feel the water on your face (Score:5, Funny)
Bathrooms need to replace these damn air blades with a pair of jeans hanging on the wall.
Re: (Score:3)
Guess I'm bringing a hand towel with me from home from now on, in addtion to the gym towel I usually bring. It's got to be at least as 'green' to wash and re-use a hand towel as it is to use a blowing-air hand dryer.
I'ts been called the world's worst urinal in jest (Score:5, Funny)
Evidently, that's not a joke any longer. As James Dyson says,
"Like everyone we get frustrated by products that don’t work properly. As design engineers we do something about it."
Re:I'ts been called the world's worst urinal in je (Score:5, Funny)
Have you tried using one of them as a urinal while they were blowing?
Worst urinal EVER!!
Virus-laden water (Score:5, Interesting)
Shouldn't the premise for testing hand dryers be that the hands are washed with soap and are "clean" but wet? If we taint the water itself and measure how far that spreads, is that really a realistic test of how hygienic the dryer is?
Re:Virus-laden water (Score:5, Informative)
If we taint the water itself and measure how far that spreads, is that really a realistic test of how hygienic the dryer is?
No, it's not. But it makes for a better headline.
Re:Virus-laden water (Score:5, Interesting)
We tried to explain the discrepancy without simply saying "guys are pigs" and the best we came up with was that we believe that women on average used the bathrooms over this time twice as often as guys... though unless we started scanning people entering and exiting, we can't be 100% sure about the accuracy of that.
The end result is, no matter how we twist it, the average woman consumes 36 times as much soap in the bathroom than a man.
As such... I wouldn't worry about the hand dryers in the ladies bathroom, but I would in the men's.
So... then consider, men are terrible at washing their hands. They shake your hand, touch the door knobs, use your tools, etc... They will spread it EVERYWHERE!!!
The obvious follow up is that it really doesn't make a difference and since American germiphobia is famous worldwide for Americans' terrible immune systems, maybe it's more important whether a hand dryer dries your hands than whether it spreads germs. European doctors sit in groups laughing about how American doctors can't travel to seminars because their immune systems are so damaged by anti-bacterial soaps that they spend the whole week sick in the hotel rooms.
Re:Virus-laden water (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't the premise for testing hand dryers be that the hands are washed with soap and are "clean" but wet? If we taint the water itself and measure how far that spreads, is that really a realistic test of how hygienic the dryer is?
Last time I checked, these were usually installed in bathrooms, which are far from sterile laboratory conditions. The machine itself may be hygienic if you only dried RO/DI water off a microscope slide while holding it with tongs fresh from autoclave while wearing a hazmat suit, but lets be honest.. most people come straight from the shitter, run a little bit of water on their hands and lather soap just long enough to keep up appearances. Many people don't even use soap; the chlorine in water will get it, right? So, it'd be more realistic to test these after running your hands down your ass crack than with "clean" hands, and these are the conditions that show the true colors of the drying method in question.
tl;dr
a Prius may get "up to" 58 MPG, but here in the real world...
Re: (Score:3)
a Prius may get "up to" 58 MPG, but here in the real world...
You just reminded me of an ad I recently got saying "Save up to $800 on items starting at $398". There's a point where that technically-legal wording gets kind of ridiculous, because I'm sure they weren't going to pay me to take any of their products.
Re: (Score:2)
You can assume the hands were rinsed of the person is using a drier, but you can't assume they used soap.
Re: (Score:3)
You cannot assume washed hands. You can only assume something is being inserted into the air stream.
http://images-cdn.9gag.com/pho... [9gag.com]
Re: (Score:3)
The typical person in a restroom wants to get out quickly. Thoroughly washing hands takes far too long - they probably had a quick rub with soap and a run under the tap, no more.
Re: (Score:3)
The premise is to make people feel better. The reality is that unless you soap your hands for 2 minutes and 30 seconds every single time you are doing next to nothing. And none of that pre foamed soap, it does nothing to reduce the waters surface tension but it does save a lot of money on soap because no one is really using any.
You are literally covered in bacteria, viruses and other living things. They cover every square inch of your skin, they are on everything you touch and they are even all throughout y
I Knew I Hated Those Things For Some Damn Reason (Score:2)
Theory Failed (Score:2)
Tim, the Toolman's" theory of "More Power" seems to have failed in this case.
"Messiest. Urinal. Ever." (Score:3)
Yes, it was to save paper. (Score:5, Funny)
pretty sure people didn't switch to be "more efficient", wasn't the idea to save paper ?
Yes, it was to save paper.
That stuff doesn't grow on trees...
Re: (Score:2)
Of course paper doesn't grow on trees, don't be stupid.
It grows in the dirt.
Re:"Messiest. Urinal. Ever." (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure they say it's "to save paper" while really meaning "we're sick of emptying the trash can all the time" or possibly "we think it's less expensive because the electric budget goes somewhere else".
Re: (Score:2)
"we're sick of emptying the trash can all the time"
How about these other steps;
1. Purchasing paper towels.
2. Storing paper towels.
3. Refilling dispensers.
4. Storing waste till it can be picked up.
5. Filling solid waste dumps with used paper towels.
Emptying cans is only one step in the process. Every step in that process cost time and/or money.
Dyson? (Score:2)
You mean those jet-powered hand dryers that make so much noise that they give you tinnitus?
I hate those!
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure about your office but ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I called a friend on not washing his hands. His reply was "In the Navy they teach us not to piss on our fingers".
Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Own one for two seconds and I defy you not to realise this.
See that damp stain on the wall underneath? And the puddle on the floor? Yeah, you washed your hands about five times, and it looks like you've been having water fights in front of the thing.
And then there was me who was always told that, actually, washing your hands (the process of wetting them) does little anyway. It's the drying / wiping that actually scrapes the crap off. Otherwise you literally just have a slightly damper environment for the bacteria on your hands anyway.
There's a reason that surgeons "scrub" up. It has little to do with the water itself, which just acts as a lubricant to assist the soap (which sticks to dirt and water) in sticking to the dirt and then providing a way to know where you've washed and to remove those parts that might have captured the dirt. It's the wiping / scrubbing / vigorous rub-down that actually removes that crap from you (and onto the floor / towel / soap / sink, obviously).
Like the Romans - who bathed in oil and then scraped it off, knowing the OIL took the dirt with it, not that smelling like a pizza for the rest of the day actually did anything in itself.
The reason we have hand-driers is because such scrubbing in public is considered... "wrong" somehow. You can't share a towel without transfer of bacteria, and people think individual paper towel is somehow killing the planet. Like blowing your nose - don't put it in a handkerchief and carry it around with you. Wipe it off on a tissue and throw the fucking thing away.
But, to be honest, it barely matters. Bacteria don't last long in those kinds of environments so long as they're cleaned occasionally, you can't really avoid spreading them anyway (it's not a question of some precisely contained particles - watch one of the slow-mo videos of a sneeze, it doesn't matter what you do it's like someone sneezing a handful of flour - it goes fecking everywhere, but, yes, put your hand up because it does stop quite a lot of your snot landing on someone else), and gadgets like this are quick and convenient which means more people might bother to wash their hands just to try it out.
But if you ever used one of these, I defy you to not have seen the crap and water on the floor underneath and around it that gets blasted off everyone else's hands.
Like all things Dyson (and Apple), half-decent idea, pretty aesthetics, fucking terrible design, but add a premium and be different and people buy it.
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)
Drying your hands with a towel of any kind isn't what cleans your hands.
Soap binds to the dirt AND to water. When you wash your hands the soap is effectively gluing the dirt to the water and when you rinse that water away you rinse away the dirt too.
Washing your hands with soap and water and doing a decent job of rubbing/lathering your hands together (i.e. do it for 20 seconds or so and hit all parts of your hand) is all that is required for good sanitation in most cases. Most people don't wash their hands properly.
You only need to 'scrub' with a brush or other implement if you need your hands _extremely_ clean or you have material on them that is not readily emulsified by soap & water. Unless you are a surgeon, you don't need your hands to be _that_ clean. You have an immune system for a reason. Give it something to do so it doesn't get bored and turn on you (allergies).
Re: (Score:2)
people think individual paper towel is somehow killing the planet. Like blowing your nose - don't put it in a handkerchief and carry it around with you. Wipe it off on a tissue and throw the fucking thing away.
I always get a kick out of those people. They may have have a leg to stand on at one point in time but now the paper used to make paper towels and other paper products come from tree farms; some of which use a specially bred type of tree that grows unusually fast compared to wild trees. One could even argue that tree farms offset the carbon dioxide used to harvest the trees compared to using electricity to dry your hands off. Tree farms can also have fringe benefit of providing a refuge for wildlife in betw
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)
CDC recommends you sneeze/cough into your elbow. Less opportunity to touch something with your germy hands.
Paid for study (Score:3, Informative)
One of the authors of the study works for Kimberly Clark, omnipresent maker of paper towels. How convenient.
For the next study... (Score:3)
For the next study, I recommend they compare the decibels of the Dyson Airblade dryer, as experienced by the user, to the decibels of a jet engine on the tarmac, as experienced by a baggage handler wearing ear plugs.
I'm betting the dryer would win.
This is not how the world works (Score:2, Redundant)
Experimental setup:
Real world equivalent of the experimental setup:
Actual bathroom operation:
Does anyone
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actual bathroom operation:
1. Quickly run your hand under some water with a little soap, because you want to be finished as quickly as possible.
2. Mop up the water off your hands.
Why is this news? (Score:2)
Shake. Fold. (Score:2)
How to use one paper towel [youtube.com].
Thank you! (Score:2)
I've been saying this for years. I refuse to use any sort of "germ blowing" device in the bathroom. If there are no paper towels... i simply just dry my hands on my pants or move on with slightly moist hands. Only takes a couple of minutes for them to dry anyway...
But they overlook Dyson's main advantage... (Score:2)
Well, yes, paper towels might be more effective and more hygenic, but without Dyson Airblades or those obnoxious XLerator blow-dryers, how are we expected to damage our hearing in the restroom? If we don't have a 95-decibel mini-jet-engine firing up every few seconds in a small room covered in hard, echoing surfaces, we'll pretty much have to stick actual spikes in our ears to get the same result.
But how dangerous is it ? (Score:2)
Sure blowers may blast bacteria around and paper towels may already have bacteria on them. But how dangerous is this ? Billions of years of evolution has given us an immune system that deals with what is found in the environment., if now we would have died out centuries ago. I do agree that we are living in more densely populated communities and so germ control is more important than it was in times past; but I suspect that most of that happens through the guys who don't wash their hands after going to the
Sometime old school is the best school (Score:2)
Paper towels beat air blowers and air blades in cleanliness?
Sometimes the old ways are better than the new ways.
Re: (Score:2)
Air Blades and air blowers beat paper towels in resource usage. Priorities change.
A few ideas (Score:2)
That said, the problem here isn't the dryer. It's the idoits who don't know how to wash their hands. Perhaps in a hospital, we could make smart sinks that detect when you haven't washed your hands thoroughly enough and then curse at you or something... maybe the "red alert" sound. If it's obnoxious enough to get the attention of others in the room, then people will
Dyson dodges the issue... (Score:2)
So Dyson says: "Independent research shows that before they even reach the washroom, paper towels can contain large communities of culturable bacteria."
Yes, but those bacteria aren't likely to cause disease in humans. As I understand it, infectious viruses don't survive for long periods of time on dry surfaces, like paper towels. If one person having a cold or the flu uses a Dyson dryer, he aerosolizes the virus into tiny droplets hanging about in the air and splashing about on the doorknob. That's where th
There's a moral to this story (Score:5, Insightful)
Dyson airblades have ALWAYS been awful (Score:4, Interesting)
I first encountered these idiot things in my first overseas trip to London and Paris back in 2010 at many shopping centres and airports.
The stupid goddamn things have a very small slit to put your hands in, where the air is coming rapidly on to your hands in a very tight line / wave of air.
The problem is in the design that you put your hands inside this small gap and it's really bloody easy for your palms or back of your hand or your shirt to easily touch the top or bottom of the opening.
https://www.thememo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/dyson-airblade.jpg [thememo.com]
It's simply too small a space to put your hands. Sure if you're careful you're fine but it reminded me of playing the old electronic board game 'operation' trying to not touch the sides.
I realise Mythbusters seemed to confirm that an air dryer IS worse than paper towel for germs, but I still prefer a combination of both (towel then dryer) but I'd take a regular hand dryer any day over the Dyson, stupid bloody thing.
Wait a minute now... So what? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, no, the warmth from a standard air dryer does not appreciably speed up the proliferation of remaining germs on your hands. The heat does not persist long enough to make a difference in bacterial growth. Bacteria do not multiply _that_ fast.
The purpose of a Dyson is to be _quick_ and thorough at drying your hands, which is something that standard air dryers are pitiably bad at.
Re: (Score:2)
is that after you have dried your hands (or not) you have to pull on the contaminated handle to open the exit door.
It shouldn't be contaminated if everyone washes their hands like a normal person. If anything, it should (in theory) be cleaner than the handle or plate on the other side.
WHY DON'T THESE DOORS OPEN OUTWARDS THEN YOU COULD PUSH IT WITH SOMETHING OTHER THAN YOUR HANDS.
Same reason most doors open into the room rather into the corridor. You're more likely to clobber someone walking past. Nobody approaches the door from inside the room without already having their attention on it (usually).
Re: (Score:2)