Re: what's more hygenic? paper-towels or hot air dryers? (ie bathrooms!)

First, washing your hands in no way removes all the bacteria. Try growing a finger print on some nutrient agar - lots of stuff still there... Washing your hands reduces the population to a level which reduces the risk of cross-infection, or of transmitting certain common bacteria that can cause food poisoning.

Drying your hands with hot air creates aerosols of the bacteria on your hands, enabling them to be transmitted to someone else (possibly).

Using a paper towel removes the water and a quantity of the remaining bacteria and is then placed in the bin and further destroyed.

Its all comes down to cost. Paper towels have a high maintainance cost and can be abused, i.e. thrown on the floor, stolen for personal use etc. The hot air dryer costs more for inital installation, but after that the only running cost is the electricity.

Chris Gregory