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Oldie but a goldie (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] Vlyn 21 points 4 months ago (3 children)

That was tested with Mythbusters. When your toothbrush is nearby there was hardly a difference if you flush open or closed, sorry :)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

‘Hardly a difference’ and ‘no difference at all’ matters when it comes to ingesting doo doo particles. I opt for the absolute least amount possible… preferably none.

[–] Vlyn 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ah, it had no lid, and unfortunately that part of the end-scene is cut off on YouTube. It was this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb-_KRh8asM

The control toothbrushes outside the bathroom had the same amount of fecal coliformes on them. That stuff is everywhere, it doesn't matter if you flush lid open or closed.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Run this quick experiment for me.

Hold your toothbrush/phone/anything on your bathroom counter above the toilet, with the lid open, then drop it. Repeat the experiment with the lid closed.

Which one offered a more preferential result?

[–] Vlyn 9 points 4 months ago

I've never in my 33 years in life dropped something in an open toilet bowl. My toothbrush is above the sink, not the toilet. The only thing I store above the toilet is a spare roll of toilet paper.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I avoid the non-preferential result by...well...not dropping things in the toilet.

I'm in my late 30s and have literally never dropped anything in the toilet that I wasn't intending to.

Sounds like a personal issue; maybe try not to be so clumsy?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I had to present this paper for a fluid mechanics class during COVID and yes, the particles do spread. The radius of contamination was almost 1,5m.

Shared bathrooms in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, or assisted living facilities are used by patients who might be infected, thus making them a likely source of indoor cross-contamination. The pathogen-spreading potential of toilet flushes was investigated in toilets seeded with microorganisms that were later recovered from surfaces and in the air after flushing. The organisms in the bowl could not be fully cleared even after repeated flushing, and the droplets produced by flushing harbored the organisms that were used for seeding, which remained airborne and viable.

Recently, Johnson et al. (2013a) investigated different toilet designs and found that up to 145,000 sampled particles can be produced per flush.

Analysis of more recent data revealed that a large number of droplet emissions are not visible to the naked eye (d < 100 µm) (Figure 6b). These emissions account for more than 6 mL and can remain suspended in the air for a long time compared to the larger visible drops (with diameters up to 6 mm) that end up on surfaces.

The larger visible drops settle on surfaces within milliseconds, whereas the smaller, invisible drops are advected by local airflow (on the order of a few centimeters per second). Droplets settling on surfaces can be tackled in accordance with surface decontamination procedures of local infection control protocols. However, no system or protocol currently addresses air contamination. Furthermore, usual cleaning solutions not effective in neutralizing the most resistant pathogens, such as the spores of C. difficile, may even contribute to their dissemination by effectively lowering the surface tension, for example, down to 30 mN/m, compared to water at 72 mN/m, increasing the local Weber number and thus promoting fragmentation into either more or smaller droplets, depending on the fragmentation mechanism.

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-fluid-060220-113712

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Source?

I'm pretty sure you're misremembering that episode. It didn't involve lid closed vs open.

[–] Vlyn 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ah, it had no lid, and unfortunately that part of the end-scene is cut off on YouTube. It was this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb-_KRh8asM

The control toothbrushes outside the bathroom had the same amount of fecal coliformes on them. That stuff is everywhere, it doesn't matter if you flush lid open or closed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Again, source?

We've established that you misremembered the lid test already, so I don't see why we should trust your memory on this.

I'm particularly skeptical of this assertion:

the same amount

I'm well aware there are some fecal particles all over the place. But common sense says that aersolaized, shit-filled toilet water (which the video confirms it does spray out droplets into the immediate area) would accumulate more on toothbrushes sitting closer to the toilet than in another room.

Edit: also, were they testing by flushing just normal toilet water? Or flushing after a shit?

Because if it was just toilet water, then the test isn't even relevant to the discussion.

[–] Vlyn 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

https://mythresults.com/hidden-nasties

Many objects that people touch every day are dirtier than a toilet seat.

I'd surely hope those tests were done with actually in-use toilets, lol. The toilet seat would be sprayed with the lid down, so it's a good indicator?

And here is the toothbrush one https://mythresults.com/episode12 (on the bottom). Maybe you can find the full TV episode, right now I can't.

Either way, as long as you don't have a vacuum toilet that sucks everything down you won't escape. I just rinse my toothbrush with water every time before I use it, which seems to be good enough so far.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Again, they weren't flushing fresh bowls of shit, just standard toilet water.

You're absolutely spraying shit all over your toothbrush for no good reason, and that's disgusting. Sorry :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I could have sworn they tested both. I remember them concluding that lid position didn’t matter.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The toilet in the episode doesn't even have a lid.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=nb-_KRh8asM

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

The human memory is such a fickle thing.