Dr Mark Wilcox has a long history of working with the European Tissue Symposium to look at paper towels vs hand dryers. We urge you to look at how his most recent study has been recieved by the science community
Read the response here
It has been criticised on the following grounds:
- Completely unrealistic, no one uses a hand dryer without washing hands first
- Gloves were used, gloves behave differently from skin
- Microbes left, even after poor washing would be mich lower than used in this experiment
- Subjects are likely to have had a bias that influenced their behaviours.
- Involved only 4 subjects and therefore holds little to no statistical relevance.
- No clear methodology provided only an abstact
- Wilcox has been ctiticise in the past for methodology and choses to rectify none of these failings.
You have to question why Dr Wilcox’s very limited (abstract only) study would be released to the press during the Covid-19 outbreak before being peer reviewed? You also have to question why such poor methodology was used again, so many years on from his first study being criticised for using the same unrealistic methodology. He was given clear guidance by peers on how to make a study more realistic. This time the study is of even lower quality and addresses none of the issues with the original study.
The answer can be found in the Guardians long read on hand dryers vs paper towels. The paper towel industry commissions work with headlines already written. Science can be carried out to back up a press release but it doesn’t mean that science represents reality.
The original Wilcox study involved applying paint to gloved and unwashed hands and putting them in a high-powered dryer, we believe a Dyson. This was to represent hands that hadn’t been washed well and to show bacteria transfer. Well, put paint in front of a high-powered jet of air and it will spray it, this is not a surprise! This study was then used to contrive a great but scientifically unimportant headline that the Daily Mail et al love. it’s very clickbaity and this is the way of online journalism. The latest research used similarly unrealistic methods.
However, do you ever walk round with gloves on and then skip the hand washing process and go straight to a hand dryer? We hope the answer is no.
Skin doesn’t react like a glove and we all wash our hands before using a dryer so you would never have large volumes of bacteria remaining on your hands, some but not masses as Wilcox’s subjects do.
As the scientists point out you have to sample a significant number of people in a real setting using both methods with washed and dried, normal not gloved hands. Wilcox has had years to rectify his previous study but chooses not to, instead releasing this half-baked study that somehow ends up in the press.
We were contacted by the Independent about the press release and we gave our reasons as to why this should not be published, they decided not to run with it. The Mail online however went with it without contacting us or looking at the science community’s response.
The WHO and CDC both recognise drying hands properly is a very important part of reducing infection transmission and both recommend using a hand dryer or a paper towel.
The focus right now should be on making sure people are washing their hands thoroughly for 20 seconds not scaring them not to dry them. The result of such scaremongering will be people using toilet roll to dry their hands with. Toilet roll is the most unhygienic thing you could use to dry your hands with as it is contained in a dispenser that is touched pre-hand washing and sits very close to the toilet bowl. The paper itself will harbour microbes and it is a physical object that you rub into your hands, toilet flush and sneezes could all rest on paper, this is the same for hand towels although they are more hygienic as they are touched post wash and aren’t so close to the toilet.
Other key messages
- Stay 2 metres away from others – this goes for when in a public washroom too. Limited numbers should be permitted to go in and distances respected.
- Make sure after washing thoroughly you shake excess water off into the wash bowl.
- Make sure you do not touch the opening of the paper towel dispenser to reach in for towels. The same goes for a hand dryer, most are touchless but if it has a push button use your elbow.
- Dry the hands thoroughly, get between the fingers, under nails, all parts of the hands need to be dry.
The bigger picture
It is very important that hand dryers are not lost to paper towel funded PR machine. Hand dryers play a huge part in improving the environment, as paper towel production creates untold emissions during the harvesting, manufacturing, shipping, storage, transportation and into landfill (and REPEAT 1000's of times over the hand dryers life time)
Hand dryers are a zero-waste solution that last for years and use negligible amounts of energy.
The environment is a struggle that seems less tangible than the current crisis, but remains the single biggest threat human beings face. According to WHO, 7 million people a year currently die due to air pollution and the effects of global warming go far beyond this.
