It’s not often that a middle schoolers’ science project actually makes it into a scientific or medial journal, but such is the case for 13-year-old student Nora Keegan from Calgary, Canada. Keegan’s science project, an investigation on whether or not hand dryers found in bathrooms caused hearing loss in children, was recently published in the Pediatrics & Child Health journal.
Researchers found that hand dryers like the Dyson Airblade in particular created more exposure to germs because water from hands drips down into the machine, and is then pushed back up through the air, spreading germs.
However those same hand dryers are found to be unhealthy in other ways, as Keegan’s science project revealed that they also operate at decibel levels that put users at risk of developing hearing damage from exposure to the noise that they emit. “Many public washrooms have hand dryers instead of paper towels. Informally, parents have said that their children refuse to go into particular washrooms because the dryers are too noisy, and children say they ‘hurt my ears’. Previous research has shown that hand dryers are much louder in real life than in sound testing laboratories,” reads Keegan’s intro, which was published in the Pediatrics & Child Healthjournal.
Accrol Group Holdings PLC (LON:ACRL) manufacture a wide range of household and away-from-home paper products from our purpose built production facility in Lancashire.
