I know what you're thinking, but I have a very serious health-related reason for choosing to avoid air dryers at all costs. I used to be intrigued by the speed and efficiency of hand dryers, especially with the whole earth-conscious movement. Up until my sophomore year of high school, I would use hand dryers whenever one was available.

I took a health sciences class my tenth-grade year, and we were assigned an informative project centered around public health. My group decided to center our project on the proper way to wash your hands and the most important reasons to wash your hands frequently. We were looking to add some interesting facts about washing your hands to our project when my group stumbled upon one that really grossed me out. Jet hand dryers, which are the most common today, disperse 190 times more viruses back onto your hands than paper towels.

This essentially means that when you use a hand dryer in the bathroom, you are more than likely making your hands dirtier than before you washed them. While I am aware that paper towels require killing tons of trees, I seriously value my health. At a university, illnesses spread like wildfire, and we need to take every available precaution to avoid getting sick.

According to my mom, if you shake your hands REALLY hard 12 times, you can get your hands almost all the way dry without paper towel or hand dryers. She added that if you do need to continue drying your hands with a paper towel, you should only need one! This also exposes the fact that most people use way too much paper towel after washing their hands.

One thing that may help reduce the guilt of using so much paper towel could be recycling or composting used paper towels. This way, the paper towels that do get used go back to the environment and can aid in the growth of new trees. University of Washington piloted a composting program in 2013. They placed compost bins in the libraries restrooms to gauge how much they would actually help and be used. Within the 11-week pilot, nearly eight tons of paper towels were diverted from the landfill via composting.

Now I understand that this isn't an option for most people, and most places have removed paper towels in restrooms entirely. I am not saying that if you use hand dryers you are definitely going to get sick, but you are surely increasing your risk of disease. If you are in the situation where it's either dry your hands with an air dryer or nothing, please consider shaking your hands REALLY hard (as my mom suggests) and wiping any excess water off on your pants.