What Is the Right Way to Wash Your Hands?
Redefining “clean” in an era of the skin microbiome
Paper towel or hand dryer? This simple question has sparked a fierce battle between the two industries, which have of course turned to that old PR strategy: Fund studies to show that the other side is gross and bad. Hand dryers spray bacteria all over place! Wet paper towels are soggy clumps of germs!
But there is a problem with these studies—and not just a kind of nitpicky “your method is bad” problem, so much as a big philosophical problem. They assume that bacteria are bad, and the fewer bacteria the
