Public restrooms are infamously germy, which makes selecting between drying your hands using a bacteria-spewing hand dryer or a microbe-laden paper towels seem like a hard call … Or is it? We turned to microbiologists to see if there was a clear winner in the olden hand clothes dryer versus paper towel debate– here’s what they had about which hand-drying technique is more sanitary.
Are Hand Dryers or Paper Towels Better?

We have to hand it to air dryers– specifically high-speed versions, like the Dyson Airblade and Excel Xlerator. Germ-wise, paper towels and clothes dryers are basically connected.
When you think about the environmental effect, however, high-speed clothes dryers win. According to an MIT study from 2013, machines that can dry hands in 10 to 15 seconds have the least impact on the environment. Here’s the rub: Not all clothes dryers work that fast. “We took a look at a range of scenarios, including those where people utilized standard hand dryers for less than 30 seconds, and they entrusted to wet hands,” says Jeremy Gregory, PhD, executive director of the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium and lead author of the study.
Moist hands collect more bacteria than dry hands, says Sandra Wilks, PhD, a microbiologist and associate professor at the University of Southampton in England. Otherwise, get a towel.