Flushing a toilet can generate aerosol droplets that carry coronavirus up to three feet.

[Mrs. Overall]

Link to tweet

NYT Science
@NYTScience

Flushing a toilet can generate a cloud of aerosol droplets that rises nearly three feet. Those droplets -- which could be laden with coronavirus particles -- may linger in the air long enough to be inhaled by a shared toilet’s next user.

[maxsolomon]

1. Put the lid down 1st.

This is one of the major issues offices have to find a fix for - lidless commercial toilets are the default.

[Ms. Toad]

5. I'd love to. But my toilet does not have a lid.

Approximatley once a month I get a free fecal shower. The rest of the time, it refuses to flush (even just liquid and TP), requiring more flushes, leading to another free fecal shower.

Maybe I can get them to fix the toilets based on this new information.

[maxsolomon]

6. Yikes.

I hope you can resolve that.

[Ms. Toad]

15. Just sent another note off to the person who has ignored it in the past

With a link to the NYTimes article.

Not sure what her deal is - except that she resents me finding building problems that she hasn't addressed (like doors wide open all weekend when the building is supposed to be locked; and handicap access door openers that don't work if you access the building with a swipe card when it is otherwise closed). She was one of the main challengers when I suggested, less than 24 hours before Ohio closed colleges and universities, that we should be slapping social distancing/hand-washing signs up now with tape, rather than waiting until we found the right frames for the signage. Her reasoning: we shouldn't have to tell adults to wash their hands; it only impacts the at risk population, and it's just a bad case of the flu.

In the past, in an attempt to get her to take things more seriously, I have alerted her to the fact that I have intransigent c diff, and although I try to cean up after myself, I can't guarantee that I'm not infecting people - given the toilet's propensity to spray. (c diff is a killer for elderly or immune compromised people)

But she is on the university-wide COVID response for facilities. So maybe she's learned a bit . . .

[customerserviceguy]

13. Sounds like

you've got one of the Trump models that he's known for having trouble with.

[Ms. Toad]

18. Yup.

I commented on it extensively in an earlier thead.

It takes, on average, 2 flushes, to clear the bowl. Occasionally one flush does the trick. More often it is 2, and occasionally as many as 4.

The inability to flush seems to be the bowl design. It's so flat that you need pretty good pressure to dislodge solid matter (TP or BM). It's a very fine line between the pressure needed to dislodge and the pressure needed to generate the dreaded fecal shower.

[Tipperary]

14. In your home?

Workplace?

[Ms. Toad]

16. Workplace. n/t

[DesertRat]

2. Public restrooms are ground zero for spreading all kinds of disease

Scientists have found that in addition to clearing out whatever business you’ve left behind, flushing a toilet can generate a cloud of aerosol droplets that rises nearly three feet. Those droplets may linger in the air long enough to be inhaled by a shared toilet’s next user, or land on surfaces in the bathroom.

This toilet plume isn’t just gross. In simulations, it can carry infectious coronavirus particles that are already present in the surrounding air or recently shed in a person’s stool. The research, published Tuesday in the journal Physics of Fluids, adds to growing evidence that the coronavirus can be passed not only through respiratory droplets, but through virus-laden feces, too.

And while it remains unknown whether public or shared toilets are a common point of transmission of the virus, the research highlights the need during a pandemic to rethink some of the common spaces people share.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/health/coronavirus-toilets-flushing.html

[Nevilledog]

3. trump question "How far does it travel when you flush 15 times?"

[Hugin]

4. If no toilets are flushed pretty soon there would be zero COVID cases.

What?

[Cirque du So-What]

7. Something else...

Hot-air hand dryers. They exacerbate the aerosol poo problem.

[Wellstone ruled]

10. One of the worse

germ spreaders known to man kind.

[BusyBeingBest]

8. Fantastic.

We need fully enclosed closet-type public toilets with a downdraft vent near the toilet. Not that that will ever happen anywhere.

[SoCalNative]

9. Or maybe just put actual toilet seats

with lids that close on them. It would be a start.

[BusyBeingBest]

11. You think people will put the lids down? Because many people

seem to have too much trouble actually flushing their nasty logs down at all, and getting their tp wads into the actual toilet.

[Tipperary]

12. I do not like public restrooms at any tiime.

No way I would set foot in one right now.

[Newest Reality]

17. The homeless

The homeless usually have no other option.

[Collimator]

19. In my own home. . .

I not only put the lid down whenever I flush, I also keep my toothbrush in a closed closet or cupboard. I have done this ever since a Bones episode where Dr. Brennan talked about aerosolized fecal matter.

Who says that you can't learn anything from television?

[jayfish]

20. Pssst.

By Far the Worst Thing Ever Discovered on Mythbusters

Well unfortunately the myth is very real. The guys set up a test in which they had several toothbrushes that were in the vicinity of the toilet and out in the open. They used two of the toothbrushes regularly and simply rinsed the others. They also kept two other toothbrushes in an office well away from the bathroom as a means of using a controlled aspect within the experiment. After a month of using the two toothbrushes and merely rinsing the others they took the toothbrushes to a microbiologist for testing and found that every last one had a microscopic amount of fecal matter on them. This left the conclusion that fecal matter isn’t just present in the bathroom, but nearly everywhere else as well.

That might creep and gross you out all at once, but unless you’re willing to sterilize yourself several times a day then the truth is that no matter where you go there will be some type of filth that you cannot fully escape. It’s possible to remain clean and healthy even in the worst of conditions but one thing that people tend to forget is that our bodies have adapted to the multitude of bacteria and other germs that have been present for longer than humanity has existed. Throughout countless generations we’ve earned the right to live on this planet through becoming resistant to most of them and wise enough to stay relatively clean most times so as not to allow the bacteria to grow to unhealthy levels.

Not saying you shouldn't do what you're doing but it's a bit of a lost cause on that particulate front.

[WyattKansas]

24. After I seen a test done on tv years ago about how flushing sprayed droplets all over...

I have refused to ever flush my toilet without the lid being down.

An ultraviolet light on the program showed that flushing with the lid up basically showered the entire bathroom with toilet water.

[soothsayer]

21. I'm thinking of carrying a portable fan

For extra coverage, though I stay home 99.9% of the time.

[Blue Owl]

22. Brett Kavanaugh waving his penis can propel the virus up to 2 feet

n/t

[melm00se]

23. Damn, who'd've thought that toilets create bigger health issues

than things like open sewers, chamber pots, open cesspits and the like.