Join the Dryer Army
Hand dryers are toxic, don’t dry hands when used to the manufacturers’ and certifiers’ specifications, and are not a green, energy-efficient product.
Let’s get them removed.
Hand dryers are toxic, don’t dry hands when used to the manufacturers’ and certifiers’ specifications, and are not a green, energy-efficient product.
Let’s get them removed.
Three years of research, 50,000 hand-counted bacterial colonies, eleven journal preprints,
and a scratch-written civil suit. You can help fix this.
The six dishes below show both the problem and the solution. Room air is relatively clean. Dryers and brown paper towels are contaminated. White paper towels are nearly sanitary — sometimes cleaner than the room air they reside in.
+Room air · 60 secondsClick image for detail
+Dryer output · 60 secondsClick image for detail
+Brown towel · 30 secondsClick image for detail
+Room air · 60 secondsClick image for detail
+Dryer output · 60 secondsClick image for detail
+White towel · 30 secondsClick image for detail
Each set of three dishes, top and bottom, came from a public restroom that had a hand dryer next to a paper towel dispenser in the same room, in the same restroom air. Brown paper towels on top. White paper towels below. Every test set in the 353 microbial content series of tests — 1,076 culture dishes across 226 unique restrooms — is functionally identical. www.handdryerstudy.com
Manufacturers claim dryers dry in eight to fifteen seconds when it requires 60 to 90 seconds to meet their own dryness standards. Energy usage if you dry completely is eight to ten times greater than claimed.
In 462 measured trials, every downdraft dryer failed residual water tests at the claimed time by about 2000%. Actual time to dry is 70–90 seconds, eight to ten times longer than claimed, visible in the time chart and animation above.2 All published and certified energy and environmental claims are therefore off by a factor of eight to ten, making hand dryers equivalent or worse than paper towels if they are used to dry hands to the manufacturers specified dryness.3 Full data in the published studies.
Commercial hand dryers are certified to dry hands in seconds, to be hygienic, and to save energy. Eleven journal preprints and a federal civil complaint now document that they do none of these things. Most of those claims are verifiable by anyone, in minutes, without instruments or expertise.
Visit any public restroom with a certified electric hand dryer. Wash your hands. Hold them under the dryer for fifteen seconds — longer than any claimed drying time. Then observe three things:
The complete record is published. Science, chain-of-custody, complaints, and documentaries. View them and decide.
During two and a half years of testing — 169 distinct hand dryers, 462 drying trials, 353 contamination tests, 226 unique restrooms examined, and approximately 50,000 bacterial and fungal colonies counted by hand — the findings were consistent, statistically overwhelming, and reproducible across every manufacturer tested.
Certified to reach a dry-hands threshold in eight to fifteen seconds. Across 462 trials, zero met it. Real drying takes seventy to ninety seconds — false by a full order of magnitude. Every downstream energy and environmental claim rests on this number.
Dryer output air carries bacteria and fungi at fifty to one hundred ten times the concentration of ambient room air — and far higher in the extremes. Products certified as "hygienic" spray amplified contamination onto freshly washed hands.
Roughly 7.3 grams of indeterminate wash water is stripped from the hands at hurricane-force air speeds and thrown onto the walls, floor, and the user. No certification standard addresses where that water goes.
Visible mold colonized the wall and surfaces beneath the air outlet in 100% of installations examined — varying only by how often each facility cleans it away.
Because the energy math depends on a false drying time, dryers consume far more energy and produce far more CO₂ per use than claimed. The marketed environmental advantage over paper towels does not exist.
The foundational standard was written around a hand dryer no longer sold, never rewritten for the machines now in every restroom, and certified by bodies that excluded the very performance — drying, hygiene, water — the products exist to deliver.
There is a way to address it in court, with expert guidance.
Start here →
Let's band together and let the dryer purchasers know they have a problem.
Enough informed people change a market.
Here's how →
1 Mold and bacteria identified in samples from the dryer plume by Hayes Microbial Consulting, LLC — EPA Lab ID VA01419, report #25049698, reported October 8, 2025. View report →
2 Catastrophic Time-To-Dry Failures by Dyson, Excel and World Dryer Hand Dryers via the Bi-Modal Loose Water and Bound Water Mechanism: A Comprehensive Definitive Analysis; Blouch, R. A. Jr. (2025) [Preprint]. Retrieved from www.handdryerstudy.com. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17869567 — Paper [8]
3 An Empirical Refutation of Green Energy Claims for Dyson and Xlerator Hand Dryers in Use in Public Restrooms; Blouch, R. A. Jr. (2025) [Preprint]. Retrieved from www.handdryerstudy.com. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17859198 — Paper [7]
