The spread of Covid-19 has actually turned us into a nation of hand-washing obsessives, citizens who strongly interlace our fingers and circle-scrub our thumbs with an exacting, anxiety-fueled intensity. It’s not over when you flip off the faucet: Drying your hands matters too, due to the fact that damp skin provides a congenial environment for bacteria and, as a result, might increase the possibility that you’ll pass on pathogens.
So now, as we confront what could be a society-altering disease outbreak, it seems worth taking a difficult take a look at the extensively reviled yet relatively common electrical hand clothes dryer. Are they more hygienic than paper towels, as their manufacturers claim, or are they, as some individuals think, essentially air-blasting virus fountains?
The earliest pitches for hand dryers played up their supposed ability when it concerns “avoiding the spread of contagious disease,” as a 1924 paper advertisement for the Airdry Electric Towel put it. More recently, Dyson, whose Airblade hand clothes dryer promises– threatens?– to “scrape water from hands like a windshield wiper,” has bragged that its HEPA air filter captures particles as small as.3 microns in diameter, similar to the N95 deal with masks that are now selling for AirPod Pro– equivalent prices on Amazon.
But the quality of the intake filter doesn’t attend to whether blowing air at 420 miles per hour– the actual supposed airspeed of one Airbl
