Paper towels beat air-dryers to fight bacteria

As cold and flu season approaches, we'll be hearing this: To stay healthy, be sure to wash your hands a lot. But to best prevent the spread of germs, you also need to dry your hands.

That point's driven home by a pair of studies published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology. The studies, quite transparently funded by Dyson Limited (the vacuum cleaner maker), set out to determine how the company's new Airblade hand dryer stacked up against the conventional hot-air dryers found in many restrooms.

Under some circumstances, the Dyson dryer (which uses ambient-temperature air to kind of shear water off hands) did a better job of keeping bacterial loads low than the hot-air dryers did.

But when all the air dryers were pitted against plain paper towels, the conclusion was clear: Drying hands with paper towels did a better job than the machines of getting rid of lingering bacteria.

Of course, the study notes that paper towels can make a big mess themselves because they're hard to dispose of in a sanitary, non-germ-spreading way.