Debunking the 4 big myths about electric hand dryers

In my more than 20 years as a Mediclinics employee (first as quality manager and now as marketing manager), I have had the pleasure of training many of our customers on the key features of our products. In most of these training sessions, there are a number of recurring questions about electric hot air hand dryers. These are what I call the 4 big hand dryer myths.

But let's take it one step at a time: What do we mean by "myth" here? Very easy: a myth is a false belief about something. For example: "Listening to Mozart makes us smarter".

Since 1993, some people believe that babies under the age of three who listen to the first movement of the Sonata for twopianos in D major, K. 448, by the brilliant Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, will have more developed intellectual abilities such as spatial reasoning. This belief (known as the Mozart effect) was based on an article published that same year in the journal Nature by the American psychologist Frances H. Rauscher. This theory has been roundly disproved by rigorous research carried out by scientists at the University of Vienna and published in the journal Intelligence. However, this does not detract from the fact that listening to Mozart is nice and a pleasure for our ears - it could be worse!

Having explained what a myth is, I will now tell you what these 4 big myths about hand dryers are:

Myth number 1: Hand dryers spread germs.

If you remember, in our article of 20/01/2021 "7 reasons that support the use of electric hand dryers in times of Covid-19" we explained that leading world health bodies, such as the World Health Organization(WHO), the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States of America and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) support the use of electric hand dryers as a hygienically safe method of hand drying.

This support, on the part of these renowned institutions, is neither gratuitous nor self-serving. It is based on proven scientific facts and also on the latest technological innovations applied to electric hand dryers, which ensure they are not breeding grounds for germs. I am talking, for example, about HEPA filters that filter out most of the microscopic particles that can be harmful to the human body and which we talked about in our post published on 10/09/20: "Are HEPA filters a safe solution for COVID-19?". I am also talking about ionizers (see our post from 24/03/20: "HEPA filters and hand dryers, what else do we need? ") that can purify the bathroom air through the emission of negative ions. And I am also talking about antimicrobial additives incorporated in the most critical areas of the hand dryers (areas that may be in direct contact with the user's hands) that prevent the growth of viruses, bacteria and fungi that are harmful to human health on the surface of the hand dryer. In other words, they protect us by preventing cross-contamination through contact.

Myth number 2: Hand dryers are not energy efficient.

Not long ago, specifically at the end of May 2022, we explained to you in our post "Why you have to pick up a calculator to dry your hands in a public bathroom?" how Juan Yuste, facility manager of a large shopping centre in Madrid, optimised his operating costs by replacing the paper dispensers with state-of-the-art hand dryers. I showed you, by means of a numerical example, that the costs derived from the use of hand dryers were 10 times lower than when only paper was used, despite the fact that at that time the cost of electricity was sky-rocketing.

But it is not only the energy savings over the use of paper that are substantial. Other aspects such as environmental friendliness, sustainability or hygiene itself make electric hand dryers the most efficient method of hand drying in a public bathroom. We saw this, also with Juan Yuste, in our post: Why are electric hand dryers the best solution for drying hands in shopping centres?.

Myth number 3: Hand dryers do not dry our hands but burn them.

What happens when hand dryers are designed with low-speed motors and high-power heating elements (between 2,000 and 2,700W)? The answer is easy: the drying time of the hands is high (between 35 and 50 seconds) and the air comes out at a fairly high temperature that even burns people's hands. This was how all hand dryer manufacturers made our equipment in the past. We used to think that what dried the hands was the heat provided by the heating element and the motor only had to generate an air flow to maintain the high temperature at the outlet. That way the hands would dry out due to the heat. Over time, we discovered that this was not exactly the case and what really dried the hands in a few seconds was a concentrated, high-velocity jet of air. The air temperature did not matter or mattered very little.

We found that fast drying without an excessive heat sensation was achieved with high-speed motors and narrow air outlets that focused the air exclusively on the hands. For this reason, we started working with this type of motor and we stopped installing heating elements, or the ones we did install were only for comfort (so that the air was not so cold), and with low consumption. Now we were able to say that the hand dryers dried and did not burn.

In addition, with the application of these measures, we were also able to reduce the electrical consumption of the hand dryers by half or more. We have gone from consumptions of almost 2,300W (2,000W heating element + 300W motor) to consumptions of 1,100W (200W heating element + 900W motor), or even less. These state-of-the-art machines have, therefore, allowed us to reduce energy consumption and really dry hands efficiently in a third of the time.

Myth number 4: hand dryers are noisy

I have saved this myth for last because I have very few arguments to defend it, although I think I have something to say on the matter. It is clear that the use of a hand dryer is much noisier than the use of a paper towel. No, I won't deny that, but I will also tell you that this is a problem for any manufacturer of electric hand dryers and for any state-of-the-art air dryer. However, inside a public bathroom there are other factors that also disturb the peace of the place. I am talking, for example, about flushing the toilet. You can't deny that we are also dealing with a major noise pollution action and that nobody complains about it because it is something we have all accepted and internalised throughout our lives.  I'll leave that with you...

On the other hand, if we want hand dryers to be really efficient and fast when drying our hands, as we have seen in myth number 3, we have no choice but to design our equipment with high-speed motors and with air outlets as narrow as possible. The aim is to create a high-speed, concentrated jet of air that really dries the hands in a very short time (between 8 and 15 seconds maximum).

This inevitably generates a certain level of noise that can be somewhat annoying (like flushing the toilet). However, at Mediclinics we always try to minimise this problem of acoustic pressure by providing the possibility to regulate the speed of the motor (and therefore to regulate the noise and energy consumption) by means of an adjustable potentiometer integrated in the electronic control board. This measure allows us to achieve acoustic levels of between 67 and 74 dBA in our hand dryers, which are among the lowest in the market.

I will leave it here, because I think I might be trying your patience a little, by just telling you that the idea of demystifying these beliefs about our hand dryers, which are far removed from reality, is a pleasure for me, as it allows me to show the real attributesof our machines in a clear and convincing way, and this also helps me a lot when it comes to presenting my training sessions to all our customers in a much more informative way.

Germán Muñoz
Marketing Director
Mediclinics S,A