What’s the difference between hand dryers and paper towels? No matter which way you look at it, your hands are being dried, right? True, but dry hands aren’t always clean hands. 

Here at West, the only option for hand drying in the student restrooms is the unpleasant, hot hand dryers.

According to The Harvard Health website, “When they exposed Petri dishes to air from the hand dryers again, the number of bacteria in the dishes had fallen by 75%. In addition, the researchers found minimal amounts of bacteria on the nozzles of the hand dryers. They concluded that most of the bacterial splatter from the hand dryers had come from the washroom air.”

This begs the question: why do the teachers and staff bathrooms have paper towels instead of hand dryers?

Hand dryers are not only putting germs onto your hands, but they are also re-releasing them into the air and on all surfaces. Meanwhile, in the teacher’s restrooms, they have paper towels.

Bella Murphey, a senior here at West, expressed her thoughts on the hand-drying options in our student restrooms.

“I honestly feel that is unfair, and it’s really stupid because we are a bunch of kids that’ll spread germs, so I think we should have paper towels more than teachers because they are less likely to spread a different amount of germs.”

London Perkins, another senior here at West, also shared her perspective on our hand-drying sources.

“I personally prefer hand dryers because they are efficient, and they get the job done. Paper towels are just wasting paper and causing chemical pollution.”

Both students who were interviewed had two different opinions on what the students here are drying their hands with. Other than paper towels being one of the many causes of chemical pollution in the world, germs are being spread by hand dryers. Hot hand dryers seem to not be beneficial to hands or the world’s pollution.