On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:10:22 +0100, Tim+
wrote:

Adam Funk wrote:
On 2012-08-30, The Medway Handyman wrote:

On 30/08/2012 09:13, Nightjar wrote:
On 30/08/2012 08:26, The Medway Handyman wrote:
On 29/08/2012 22:08, dennis@home wrote:

NHS facilities provide paper hand towels.
They do so because they are trying to stop infection.
Hand driers spread infection.
High speed hand driers spread more.

That is a load of old bollox promoted by paper towel manufacturers.

Trials last year showed that washing your hands and drying them on
either paper towels or a continuous loop cotton towel reduced the
bacterial count on hands by 45%-60%. Warm air hand driers, on average,
increased the count by 225%.

Funded by the European Tissue Symposium....

The studies funded by the hand-drier makers all compared bacteria on
hands dried *thoroughly* with hand-driers against hands dried with
paper towels, and they did *not* investigate bacteria spread around
the room.

How many people are inclined to spend the time it takes to dry their
hands thoroughly with those awful machines? You only need to look at
the typical provision of them to see that the installers know they
will go underused (example from my office: 3 toilets, 3 urinals, 4
sinks, 1 hand-drier). And then there's the noise pollution
(especially from the fast Dyson ones). Would you use a hand-drier in
your house?

Has anyone done any studies to see if you would be better of just NOT
washing your hands after a pee? Seems like you're more likely to pick up
someone else's faecal contaminant through contact with taps etc.

Not something I worry too much about since I'm going to wash
everything off my hands moments later. Push-down taps that you don't
have to turn off or, as Dennis mentions, lever taps make it better
too.

No, the thing that gets me - after I've done the right thing and
washed and dried my hands - is that I'm going to have to touch a door
handle that's been touched by someone who hasn't (done the right
thing.) My technique in a small, individual public toilet is to dry my
hands then use the paper towel to switch off the light (if required)
and unlock and open the door, throwing the towel in the bin on the way
out. In a communual facility I wait for someone else to go out or in
and follow them through or flick the door further open with my shoe.

Nick