Super-fast hand dryer blows onto U.S. shores
Leslie Katz Former Culture Editor
Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection of tech and culture, plus all manner of awe-inspiring science, from space to AI and archaeology. When she's not smithing words, she's probably playing online word games, tending to her garden or referring to herself in the third person.
Credentials
- Third place film critic, 2021 LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards
Good news for germ haters of America. The Mitsubishi Jet Towel, a high-speed commercial hand dryer that offers extra-sanitary operation fast, went on sale nationwide this week. The product has been used in Japan for almost a decade.
Credit: Mitsubishi
The Jet Towel works like this: You put your hands into a U-shaped drying port at the top of the unit, and front and rear horizontal air jets force water from the front and back of both hands simultaneously. The high-speed motor produces an airflow rate of 90 meters per second, drying hands hygienically in five to six seconds--eight times faster than conventional hand air hand dryers, according to Mitsubishi.
The extra-sanitary part comes in because hands don't need to touch the Jet Towel itself. And because no paper waste is generated, the dryer offers the added benefit of keeping public bathrooms cleaner. Trees will like it too. Mitsubishi, in fact, dedicates a page of its Jet Towel site to the environmental benefits of reducing trash waste, offering as an example a company that uses some 320,000 paper towels per month. That many towels would generate about 1,600 pounds of waste paper, Mitsubishi says, equivalent to 16 26-foot trees per month, or 192 per year.