Drying Your Hands With Poop

I remember when electric hand dryers in bathrooms were bad because they used electricity, whereas paper is a renewable resource.  Now, however, electricity has been rehabilitated in the eyes of the enviro-wackos, cutting down trees is bad, and we have all these fancy electric hand dryers in public restrooms.  They don't work so great when I want to blow my nose, but hey, why let a little reality spoil the good feels of the lefties? 

Why, indeed:

Washing your grubby mitts is one of the all-time best ways to cut your chances of getting sick and spreading harmful germs to others. But using the hot-air dryers common in bathrooms can undo that handy hygienic work.

Hot-air dryers suck in bacteria and hardy bacterial spores loitering in the bathroom—perhaps launched into the air by whooshing toilet flushes—and fire them directly at your freshly cleaned hands, according to a study published in the April issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Connecticut, found that adding HEPA filters to the dryers can reduce germ-spewing four-fold. However, the data hints that places like infectious disease research facilities and healthcare settings may just want to ditch the dryers and turn to trusty towels...

The research findings largely square with other data showing that hot-air dryers and jet dryers can launch and disperse germs from hands into the air and onto surfaces—essentially setting off a very dirty bathroom bomb. But the new study clearly demonstrates that the less powerful hot-air dryers can also bathe hands with germs already swirling in the wash room.

But we can feeeeeeeeel good about "doing something" for the environment, or something.