In article ,
(Steve Firth) writes:
Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Because of the high velocity of the air from the hand driers, could I
get an embolism through a cut on my hands?

That thought crossed my mind too. Actually you can do it without
any cut if you blast compressed air at your skin -- it will go
through,

Could you point a paper published in a peer-reviewed medical journal
which supports your view that compresed air (let alone high veloicty air
from a hand dryer) can cause an air embolism in such circumstances?

I didn't mean to imply air in blood vessels -- I don't know what
the damage mechanism is when such air passes through the skin*.
I can tell you what it looks like - a really bad bruise, except it
took much longer to go than a normal bruise. A collegue at University
did it (messing around with a compressed air line in an engineering
workshop). The skin surface didn't appear to have been damaged, and
the bruise didn't appear immediately -- I think it appeared over
next couple of days and was visible on both sides of his hand,
and looked quite alarming. Workshop manager knew exactly what it was,
I presume from having seen it before. His GP gave him antibiotics as
a precaution against any infection which can apparently result.
He also got banned from the workshop, except for doing his physics
project (he was repairing his bike when the incident happened).
We had been warned not to do this during the workshop induction.

*If I was to guess now, I would guess the air got between tissues,
with sufficient pressure to tear them, resulting in bleeding
seeping back to the rear of the skin, and hence the bruising.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]