Best Way to Dry Your Hands

"Wouldn't you give your hand to a friend"
- lyrics to Midnight Blue

NewScientist.com has a brief health notice on drying your hands.  Common sense would say that air dryers are cleanest but a medical study has found that For clean hands, don't rub, scrub with a paper towel.

"When you rub your hands, you bring a lot of bacteria to the surface from the pores of your skin," says Anna Snelling of the University of Bradford, UK.

In the study bacteria counts on the hands changed as follows after washing:

Air Dry with hand rubbing - bacteria up 18%
Air Dry without hand rubbing - bacteria down 37%
Drying hands with a paper towel - bacteria down 50%

Bottom Line

Towels work best because they actually scrape off bacteria from the skin.