Shocking news: You may have always flushed the toilet incorrectly. A scientific study says that this must be done.
Flushing the toilet seems like a simple matter, but if you want to stop bacterial contamination from the water jet, you should take some precautions.
Download the bathroom
The toilet in any bathroom, no matter how much you clean and disinfect it, is always a reservoir of bacteria, both because it collects waste products from our body and because pathogens of various kinds accumulate there. While we’ve been told that flushing is enough to kill germs and bacteria, and that we need to lower the toilet seat to do better, a new study shows that we still need to do something.
In fact, every time you flush, virus particles present in the toilet flood all surfaces of the bathroom, regardless of whether the toilet seat is raised or lowered. This is possible because the “spray plume” that generates the force of the discharge can extend to more than 1.5 meters, carrying pathogens not only to the floor around the toilet, but also to the walls, sinks, and other bathroom surfaces.
The surprising study
The American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) published a study by some American researchers that compared the contamination of public bathrooms with that of private bathrooms, flushing toilets, and taking water samples from both. Considering that there is almost never a toilet seat in public toilets, the test results were surprising: there was no difference in the amount of virus that accumulated on the surfaces of the two toilets, regardless of the seat.
Experts have concluded that the real difference in controlling bacterial contamination is the use of disinfectants to clean the toilet. This should be combined with the use of the brush on the inner walls of the toilet to reduce viral contamination of the surrounding surfaces. Another fact that emerged from the study is that the toilet lid remains the most contaminated element of all.
Therefore, to reduce contamination from flushing, researchers recommend adding disinfectant to the toilet before flushing the toilet or using a sanitizer dispenser in the toilet cistern. Take these steps, especially if there are people in your family who have infections that cause gastroenteritis, to avoid transmitting the virus to other family members.
