I’ve been waking up before my alarm the past couple days, so today I decided that this little chunk of “bonus time” in the morning would be a great opportunity to write. I often have a lot on my mind that I want to process via writing, and I suppose this topic is no exception. However, what I want to process with my Internet friends today is much less deep and existential than most of my thoughts. That does not, however, make it any less important. That’s a lie. This is not very important. Nonetheless, I still want insight from others so please comment or contact me at some point if you can offer me any fresh perspectives on the issue at hand. (Pun intended. Read on to understand said pun.)

In my office, there are no paper towel machines. As a hippie environmentalist, I really appreciate this fact. Instead of wasting towel after towel, my coworkers and I simply stick our hands into forceful machines that blow away the water and leave our hands quite dry and satisfied after a matter of seconds. Except, not everyone seems to participate in this practice.

I have, on multiple occasions, witnessed a coworker wash her hands, and then proceed to reenter the stall in order to grab toilet paper to for hand-drying purposes. My question is: why?

I have considered the practice and can find no reason why this alternative may be desirable. My argument is below. Please contact me with any insight into motivations I may have overlooked or reasons I am wrong. Rebuke me or affirm me; I want this to be a learning experience.

My first point is that toilet paper does a very poor job of drying hands. As soon as the material gets wet, it begins to crumple, break down, and peel away. One who dries her hands with toilet paper most likely (I say “most likely” because I have never participated in the practice) leaves the restroom with still-damp hands covered in gross little toilet paper flecks. Nothing about this sounds productive or desirable to me.

The only argument I can see in support of this practice is that some people believe hand dryers to be less sanitary than drying one’s hands with a physical towel. I have done a bit of research, and it seems like the scientists are pretty split. There are a number of studies out there that claim evidence that jet air dryers spread bacteria much more effusively throughout the bathroom than drying with paper towels. Another study claims hand dryers resulted in less bacteria spread. However, these studies had quite small sample sizes and were funded by manufacturers of paper and hand dryers respectively so I am skeptical to initially trust either one.

However, none of these studies compared the use of hand dryers to the use of toilet paper and here is where I believe I am right. When a toilet is flushed, it sprays a radius of around six feet of whatever germs were in the bowl (and sometimes some water if he’s an eager little guy). So, when you flush the toilet, the unused toilet paper on the roll is essentially coated in whatever germs you just flushed down (not to mention the germs every person before you flushed down).

Therefore, from my understanding, drying your hands with toilet paper is extremely counterproductive because you are literally rubbing your hands with the germs you just washed off. YOU ARE LITERALLY RUBBING YOUR HANDS WITH THE GERMS YOU JUST WASHED OFF. Maybe I’m wrong. Please correct me if you believe this is the case.

The world we live in is flawed and broken and I suppose the excess of germs in bathrooms is one slice of the brokenness we live in. There is no perfect solution and I understand that. However, from a combination of scientific understanding and logical reasoning, I also understand that a hand dryer (which I choose to believe does an adequate job of ridding hands of at least some germs with its combined pressure and heat) makes much more sense than toilet paper, which is wasteful, uncomfortable, and gross.

I’m not sure why I’m so passionate about this issue. I believe it comes from an unfounded notion that the people who use toilet paper to dry their hands do so because they feel like they’re “too good” for the hand dryers, as if they know something we don’t. In my mind, these people think “oh the hand dryer is so unsanitary, I read about that on the Internet. Let me dry my hands with toilet paper and let these less-sophisticated, less-sanitary inferior beings spread disease with their automatic hand dryers”. In reality, they may just enjoy the texture of wet, crumply toilet paper on their hands as they go about their day. Or maybe they’re trying to build up a tolerance to bacteria. Thank you for persevering through this journey; insight would be appreciated.