Advantages And Disadvantages Of Electric Hand Dryers
While electric hand dryers are claimed to be less expensive to use and are more environment friendly than the use of paper towels they also have some disadvantages. It has been estimated that expenses can be reduced by as much as 90 percent when a shift is made from paper towels to these devices. This can be easily seen if you consider the fact that all you need to do is plug them to an electric outlet whereas you will need to regularly purchase paper towels and have to dispose of used paper towels. And because paper towels cannot be recycled, they also end up adding to the volume of landfills. Moreover, the use of paper towels means that trees have to be cut down and processed into paper. This article compares the advantages and disadvantages of using electric hand dryers instead of the more common use of paper towels.
Some of the manufacturers of electric hand dryers are Dyson, Vortex, Airdri, Palmer Fixture, American Dryer, Excel Dryer, Hokwang Industries, Eco Global and World Dryer. Dyson Hand Dryers offers the Airblade, Excel markets the XLerator hand dryer, American Dryer sells the eXtremeAir, while World Dryer offers the Airmax and the Airforce. All of the products are being claimed to drastically reduce the time needed to dry the hands and to eliminate the cost of having a regular supply of paper towels and then disposing them.
Another important benefit provided by these hand dryers is that the number of trees that are cut down each year will be reduced. It has been estimated that nine completely grown trees are required to supply the paper towels needed by an average fast food restaurant every year. This same restaurant will also cause the addition of 1,000 pounds waste paper that end up in the landfills. Aside from that, every ton of paper towels will require 20,000 gallons of water for the chemical cleansing process.
Another claimed advantage of hand dryers is that it is more hygienic although some studies allege that the use of paper towels is more hygienic. According to the studies that support the claim that these dryers are more hygienic, these devices cause the rapid drying of the surface of the skin such that bacteria and other microorganisms are not be able to live because of the lack of water. Moreover, the warm air penetrates those portions of the skin that are not ordinarily reached by paper towels.
On the other hand, some studies have shown that the use of electric hand dryers results in a rise in the total number of bacteria on the palms and on the finger pads, while the use of paper towels decreases the total number of bacteria on these parts of the hands. Still another disadvantage of these devices is that they are much slower in drying the hands than paper towels. Some people think that they are too noisy. Meanwhile, the jet air dryer, which was designed to address the problem of slow results, has been found to cause the blowing of bacteria to other washroom users.
