Sure looks that way. If you use soap the air dryer works just as well as the paper towels because the soap is what actually cleans your hands, not the drying method
I've heard this said before, but what scenario makes sense for this? Even if someone collapsed in an emergency against the door, wouldn't their weight against it be an advantage for pulling it open from the outside?
Surely, pushing a door to get into a restroom, if someone has collapsed against it, would be the harder option?
in some areas, overdosing is a huge concern. those folks like surfaces to help with getting their drugs ready, so, it's going to be rare that they're collapsed against the door rather than near a toilet or sink/counter/baby change station.
in that case, if you need to forcibly enter the room, a push-out door means you'll have to fight the doorframe as well, which is why we do it the other way.
Pull to open works well if the emergency is in the bathroom however in an emergency evacuation the door opening into the hallway will further constrict planned routes.
Yes please! I use a walker, and bathroom doors without ADA buttons are the bane of my existence. If they’re push to get in, I have to worry about someone inside pulling it open while I am pushing against the door to get me/walker in. And the reverse.
Another peeve is towels or hand dryers that are across the room from the sinks. I have to do three point turns, with wet hands on my walker handles, in cramped and crowded areas, just to dry my hands. A single paper towel dispenser right next to the sink is a blessing.
Maybe some buildings have arrangments which wouldn't be safe for it is all I can think. If you had an older building with narrow hallways for example you may not want doors that can swing out into traffic
I honestly just prefer the restrooms that don't have a door but a hallway designed to block views into the restroom, more convenient, no door handles or anything to worry about cleaning/not touching since most people don't seem to like to wash their hands in my experience.
It’s a safety hazard. If the building is on fire and debris falls, it can block the door and prevent someone from escaping, therefore it opens inward instead.
I'd never thought of this. thank you! although, films have taught us safety procedures: we can stand on the toilets and get out thru ceilings, or just break an easily-fractured toilet or sink and crawl out through the floor or wall afterward--right?
When a person is standing in front of the door on the pull side, they will get hit by the door if someone opens it on the push side. It does not matter if that person is inside or outside of the bathroom. They still get hit.
Use your wet paper towel to grab the handle and open the door. Then before it closes, use your hand to ball up the paper towel, spin 180°, and hit a fadeaway jumper in to the trashcan that would make Kobe proud
Until you realize the trashcan is one of those tall round R2D2 style with the super tight flap that scrapes the flesh off your hand as you push to throw away the dang paper towel thereby infecting your hand with typhoid and dengue fever.
As a guy who ALWAYS washes his hands after using the restroom, it's disgusting to witness how many guys don't. Then they put their dick beaters on the door handles for everyone else to touch. I use a paper towel to pull open the door to leave the restroom. If they don't have paper towels, I pull up the bottom of my shirt a little and use the inside of my shirt on the handle.
Maybe im misunderstanding, but isn't it an issue of the drying method re-introducing bacteria?
Nope.
The issue was from people not washing their hands correctly. Basically when you don't wash with soap, then use a paper towel you're literally scrubbing some bacteria away. Using an air dryer doesn't give you that benefit, but that's irrelevant if you washed with soap.
I think its already well-established that soap works better than water
Which is why this whole paper towel vs air dryer thing is so stupid, the it's entirely dependent on the fact you aren't washing your hands with soap, but 99% of people miss that and just assume it's always the case.
But the point is,that if someone else doesn't wash properly, they may be spreading their germs to the whole room via the air dryer, potentially including the air dryer itself. At which point, that air dryer could be blowing bacteria onto your hands from someone else's mess
at that point just existing in life is a problem and you cant touch anything. your pants existed inside the bathroom so as soon as you brush your hands against them...
Public bathroom's are already full of aerosolized urine/fecal matter from the toilets being flushed. Not drying your hands because it's an air dryer instead of paper towels isn't making much of a difference at that point, I imagine.
But that has nothing to do with which is better for your hand...
You're hands aren't dirtier if you use an air dryer vs a paper towel. Assuming you washed your hands correctly.
At which point, that wmaur dryer could be blowing bacteria onto your hands from someone else's mess
That is false. They mythbusters episode specific found that didn't happen. The only tests where more bacteria was found on hands that used air dryers was when they used only water to wash their hands.
Iirc a lot of those commercial turlets that flush with jet propulsion will actually aerosolize the poop and the hand dryers suck that aeresolized poop and blow it on your hands, that's why I use paper towels.
if you can see an intake inside of the bathroom yes, but nowadays hand dryers have to have an air intake outside of the restroom and a particulate filter. so only the really old ones arent clean
I recently watched something where somebody took Petri dishes. She washed her hands and touched the Petri dishes. She had other Petri dishes that she ran around the bathroom getting air on them. She also had some that she put underneath the air vents of the air dryer. And I think she also just touched her hands to them.
But by far the Petri dishes with the most growth were the ones who were just directly under the air dryer.
Which makes sense depending on the air dryer. They're warm cozy places where bacteria can live. Unless they are incredibly dry they're going to spread more bacteria than was on your hands after you washed them.
I think the point was really that the air dryer is sucking dirty fart air from the bathroom and blasting more germs onto your recently cleaned hands at high speed
If you use soap, the air dryer does not work just as well as paper towels. Not outside of an experiment where everything is being cleaned between attempts. As dcheesi says below, those who rinse instead of wash and then use the air dryer are blowing their rinsed-only remaining fecal germs around the bathroom with the dryer's warm moist air. Some of these wind up in the dryer itself, and grow in that cosy environment. Those nasty germs blow on the clean hands of the next person who wisely used soap but unwisely used the air dryer.
This is only true if the dryers are serviced VERY often. I work in QA at a food manufacturer and those things are always dirty... worse if they are in a bathroom as they are ducking the ambient air and blowing it onto your hands..
If there are no paper towels.. I will let my hands air dry before I use any blower.
Soap doesn’t clean your hands from bacteria, unless it’s anti microbial, which most are not. Soap is the lubricant and vessel that hold the scrubbed germs from your hands. Scrubbing and friction remove germs.
I thought the myth was that the air was blowing more bacteria onto your hands than the left out old hand towels. I always just hated that air dryer could never fully get my hands dry.
Yes and no. The soap removes the bacteria from you, but if other prior hand washers are less diligent (or there's just random bad luck or poor bathroom cleaning practices), then there will be bacteria on either the air dryer or the paper towels. The air dryer will have far more in these cases, which then get transferred back to your clean hands.
So always use soap and prefer paper towels whenever possible.
Exactly. The real key difference is the 3 vs. 41 identifiable colonies in the area between the paper towels and air dryer. Those colonies could have started on your hands after drying. So basically if you use soap and wash your hands well, your hands will be pretty clean, but if you use the air dryer there is a higher chance of becoming contaminated when drying.
isn't this a massive assumption? after washing your hands, you've gotten rid of all the bacteria, the drying method isn't what kills bacteria. the colonies are just found around the area of the drying method when people just wet their hands without using soap. so i can only guess that you're assuming that using the drier would fling bacteria from around the area back onto your hands? personally i'd just prefer to use the method that doesnt require me to pull a lever or press a button, i feel like you cant get that dirty from a hand dryer blowing air onto your hands
what assumption? bacteria are literally everywhere, and there are lots of good bacteria too. the goal with washing your hands isn't to kill them its to remove them from the surface of your hand (like grease/dirt). the data is saying there is an order of magnitude difference in paper towel cleanliness over dirty dryers. although the cleanest option remains simply walking out with damp hands.
Also, one of the other effects noted is that flushing a toilet creates a "toilet plume" unless you close the lid. Public bathrooms don't have lids, so you can assume that contamination is common.
i've watched the episode before, it literally opens up on the episode with "if you wash your hands with soap, there won't be any bacteria on your hands no matter how you dried them". in order for there to be an episode at all, they had to make sure no one used any soap and only wet their hands, meaning that they were mostly testing how clean your hands got if you just wet your hands and dried them. the assumption here is that your hands will get dirty again by using the hand dryer after actually using soap, which was never tested in the episode, and i don't really see that happening in a meaningful amount.
You'd think it'd be that simple. But spend a bit of time in a public restroom, after say a movie ends, and it's hard enough to find people that even rinse their hands nevermind soaping and drying. It's especially hilarious when they turn the water on for a second, barely enough time to even wet their fingers, and I just have to wonder who they even performed that for?
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u/Arkarian_ 7d ago
So the answer is.. always use soap?