Why No One Should Ever Use Air Dryers in Public Bathrooms
episodePreviously titled “Why No One Should Ever Use Air Dryers in Public Bathroom” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey there, it's Sanjay. The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's a constantly evolving situation, and I know that can come with uncertainty and concerns. These types of viral outbreaks are something that my colleague Anderson Cooper and I have seen firsthand while reporting on the ground in Africa. And as always, we want to keep you informed. We want to answer your questions. So Anderson and I are going to be holding an interactive Q&A session all about Ebola, exclusively for CNN All Access subscribers. Go ahead, start submitting your questions now at cnn.com slash subscriber series, and we will answer them live on Wednesday, June 3rd at 5 p.m. Eastern. Hope to see you there.
Welcome to Paging, Dr. Gupta. Thank you so much for joining us. I love listening to all your comments and your questions. It really gives me a sense of what's on your mind. My producer, Jennifer, is back with us today. Who do we have first?
Hi, Sanjay. Today, we have a 14-year-old calling from Orlando, Florida, with a great question about bathroom air dryers.
Hello, my name is David, and my question for the podcast is, are air dryers safe? Like, do they have a filter where they filter the bacteria out?
Okay, David, 14-year-old David, thank you for calling in. That's a great question. Look, sometimes you've got to use a public restroom. I don't think anyone wants to do that, but sometimes it's just obviously inevitable. It may feel stressful because public restrooms may feel like they're full of pathogens, like bacteria, maybe even viruses. So we know that we need to wash our hands after using the bathroom wherever we are. What you may not know is that it's also critically important to dry your hands after washing them, because it helps decrease the volume of germs on our hands, and also because bacteria can be spread way more easily when our hands are wet. Now, if you're in a public restroom, there are often several options to dry your hands afterward.
Warm air dryer, jet air dryer, and or paper towels. Which is the most hygienic? We'll get into that after this short break. Okay, David, back to your question on the hygiene and safety of air dryers. So first of all, let's just start with some basics. How do air dryers work to dry our hands? Well, conventionally, there are two types of air dryers, traditional warm air dryers and jet air dryers. Both of them draw in the surrounding air. I'm going to come back to that point. But they both draw in the surrounding air through an electric motor in the dryer and In the traditional warm dryer, the air then goes through a heater and comes out a wide nozzle. A jet air dryer forces air out at a high speed to sort of push droplets off of your hands.
But again, I want to emphasize this point. The air that dries your hands from both jet air dryers and warm air dryers is air that is pulled from the public restroom. And the reason that's worth emphasizing is because it can be potentially problematic. Oftentimes, there can be aerosolized microbes in the bathroom air. If a toilet is flushed without shutting the lid, that flush can disperse a fine mist of aerosolized microbes into the air, and that's where bacteria and viruses potentially come from. So that means dryers can potentially spread the bacteria and viruses onto your newly washed hands, and they can undo what you just did to get rid of the germs. In fact, researchers did a test a few years ago.
What they did is they put Petri dishes in public bathrooms under two different conditions. In the first, they exposed the Petri dishes to bathroom air for two minutes. And in the second, the Petri dishes were placed under air dryers for 30 seconds. It turns out when Petri dishes were left in the bathroom for two minutes, they grew an average of about one bacterial colony per dish. But when the Petri dishes were placed under a hairdryer for 30 seconds, they grew an average of 60 colonies per dish. Now, another thing that David raised was filters. Many modern hair dryers do have HEPA filters, although older or less expensive models may not have them.
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