If you’re really freaked out by toilet plume, you can also use disinfectant wipes around your bathroom every day or so to reduce toilet-borne germs that might be hanging out on random surfaces, Reynolds says. difficile, for example, found that concentrations of this bacteria in the air were 12 times higher when the toilet lid was up vs. This keeps things pretty well contained, Dr. The biggest step you can take is putting the toilet seat down before you flush. While toilet plume probably won’t make you sick, you should still practice good toilet hygiene.įewer poop particles all over your bathroom is a nice thing, even if it has no bearing on your health. Overall, the research shows that toilet plume seems to be the biggest concern in hospitals where toilets may have more pathogens, people are immunocompromised, and toilets often have greater flush energy. Some modern toilets are also high-efficiency, so they flush as little as possible, or dual-flush, so you can choose a lower- or higher-flush volume based on whether you peed or pooped. Also, modern toilets typically use a submerged jet to suck away waste, which produces less toilet plume than older models that release water from the toilet rim, says the 2015 review. The Federal Energy Policy Act of 1992 ruled that toilets sold in the United States could flush a maximum 6 liters at a time, which can generate less plume than the previously allowed 11 to 13 liters of liquid, according to a 2013 study in Aerosol Science and Technology. This is especially true because of changes in toilet production. If you lick a toilet bowl, sure, you could get ill-just breathing in the plume or touching things covered in those particles usually won’t do it, Dr. Adalja, M.D., a board-certified infectious disease physician and affiliated scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells SELF. This is likely because the concentration of these pathogens in the air would need to be higher in order to reliably get people sick, Amesh A. As of now, there’s no solid scientific evidence that toilet plume will absolutely make you get some kind of infectious illness from a toilet bowl. Many more studies are required to determine how likely that actually is. coli uses a toilet before you, you’re not necessarily going to pick up the illness. This is why these studies all concluded that it’s possible to get sick from toilet plume, but not inevitable. This all sounds disgusting and terrifying and may make you want to spend the rest of your life bathing in disinfectant, but these researchers didn’t test whether those pathogens in the air actually infected people.
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