I have read some terrible things about biology, and the worst is everything about excretion. I can’t even blame evolution — it’s all physics and thermodynamics and chemistry, in which the extraction of energy from the environment is always going to produce waste products. Even photosynthesis pumps out lots of destructive free radicals, and animals are the kings of inefficiency, making all this crap (literally) that they fling out into the environment for someone else to take care of.
I learned more than I wanted to from this article on How to Poop Correctly. It’s an art, and we’re all doing it wrong.
The stool takes time to move into the right position to come down through the anal canal, which is why you shouldn’t try to force a poop when you don’t feel the urge. Many people will try to push a poo out in the mornings before they leave for school or work.
It’s also common for people to use coffee and cigarettes, which increase the production of certain hormones and neurotransmitters that trigger bowel peristalsis (involuntary muscle movement), to encourage their body to move the poop down faster. This isn’t a great idea, as your body can become dependent on these substances to shit, and they diminish the normal movement of the bowel.
Frequently, when things aren’t moving as quickly as you’d like them to, it’s not that you’re constipated – it’s just that the stool hasn’t moved into the rectum yet. However, when you do feel the urge, you need to respond to your body’s message as soon as possible. Every time you hold it in, your stool inches a little way back up, and your rectum reabsorbs some of the water from the stool, drying it out and making it harder to push out when you finally allow yourself to go. Don’t hold it. For a lot of you, this will mean getting over your reluctance to use public restrooms. Coffee shops and high-end hotels often offer clean, safe refuge.
But that article doesn’t deal with the big problem. It only covers moving waste through your body and out to, for instance, a “high-end hotel”. Then it’s their problem. It’s not over yet, though. Here’s a study that looked at the geyser of fecal material produced by flushing.
Our study demonstrated that lid position (up or down) prior to flushing of household or public toilets of United States design seeded with MS2 bacteriophage had no significant effect on the MS2 cross contamination of household restroom surfaces. MS2 was recovered from all restroom surfaces tested, and lid closure had no impact on the results. The most effective strategies for reducing restroom cross-contamination associated with toilet flushing include the addition of a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and the use of disinfectant/detergent dispensers in the toilet tank. To reduce the risk associated with exposure to contaminated fomites in the restroom, regular disinfection of all restroom surfaces following toilet brushing, and/or use of a disinfectant that leaves residual microbicidal activity is suggested particularly when the household is occupied by an individual with an active infection with a virus, such as norovirus, causing acute gastroenteritis. Because many viral infections may be asymptomatic, this is even more important in health care facilities where immunocompromised individuals are often present.
Lid up, lid down, it doesn’t matter — you’re either going to get a plume of nastiness shooting upwards or out sideways. Coffee shops and high-end hotels are looking increasingly less attractive, because you’re just going to be wading through someone else’s fecal ejecta.
I shouldn’t read this stuff.
Also, I’m scheduling a colonoscopy for mid-August — the doctor wants me to come in the day before classes start for it. At least I’d be beginning the semester with a clean start.
Tartaretus De modo Cacandi.
Well, shit!
The colonoscopy prep, you haven’t lived until you experienced one.
So how is the bidet working out?
The bidet is not yet functioning. We need to get an electrician in to add a GFCI outlet to the bathroom, and electricians are in high demand around here. Maybe in a few weeks.
Aaaarghh! This is one of the reasons we should hand over everyting to robots. After we have ‘uploaded’.
The real problem with poop is the massive amounts – literally mountains – caused by animal agriculture. Often left to contaminate water or sprayed into the air, esp. in small rural communities. Reason #1000 to go vegan.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23003487/north-carolina-hog-pork-bacon-farms-environmental-racism-black-residents-pollution-meat-industry
Keep a roll of cling-film handy to cover the bowl for every flush?
How about re-designing toilets so they force everything DOWNWARD, instead of splashing inward from all directions and giving everything a nice vigorous shake-up before sending it down the pipe? What about those vacuum-flush toilets they have on airplanes? Do they have a similar rate of cross-contamination?
Seriously, we’ve had toilets for, what, over a century now? That should be enough time for “America’s Special Genius” to figure this out. And yet, it seems quite a few of the recent innovations I’ve seen make things WORSE.
So, toilets should have a seal ring under the seat? You’d still need to have a vent to avoid over pressure. huh. I wonder it it’s any different with vacuum toilets that create suction in the outflow line?
Actually some boat toilets have a sealing lid, and operate by closing the lid and then pumping out the bowl which creates a vacuum which pulls flush water into the bowl. The seal also keeps residual water from sloshing out of the bowl in rough weather.
— In other words the technology sort of exists now.
It’s funny to think that those thousand dollar Japanese bidet-toilets likely are just as bad. However there are probably some models based on a sealed bowl.
Seems like slightly flawed methodology. IIUC, they added a sample to the toilet, flushed it, and then immediately checked surrounding surfaces for contamination.
That’s fine so far as it goes, but isn’t really what I’d be worried about: I take it for granted that I’m getting geysered with, um, fresh sample material, when I flush a public toilet. But I would expect that the vast majority of it is my own poo, and therefore presumably pretty harmless to me — whatever viruses and bacteria are in there, I already have them. And by the time I leave, it’s going to have settled down. Yes, that means all the surfaces are coated in a microscopic layer of gross, but as long as the next guy doesn’t lick anything, and washes his hands, he’s probably fine too.
I think the more important question would how much of the last user’s “sample” is still present, and actually getting geysered out, after a flush or two in between. A better experiment would involve two distinct pathogens, “A” and “B” which could be measured independently on surfaces later. You’d prepare the site by flushing about 20 samples of “A” down. After that, set up a clean collection surface at about face height and flush sample “B”. The surface will be covered in “B” afterward for sure, but the question will be whether there is a measurable/dangerous level of “A” on it?
This does all suggest to me that US-style partial cubicles are even more of a crime against humanity, though. Floor to ceiling or go home.
(Also: absent some hard data, I’m not too worried about tooth brushes. You literally cover your toothbrush in soap every time you use it. There’s probably still some danger of transmission that way, but it’s also going to be within a family, where there are lots of other opportunities anyway.)
Wouldn’t adding disinfectant to the bowl / tank (as in the study) in daily at home use lead to disinfectant resistant microbes being re-ingested from the plumes and leading to proliferation? Toilet disinfectant use while ill might be a good idea though.
It never occurred to me to think of toothpaste as “soap” or as killing bacteria. I think of it as scrubby stuff with fluoride that gets gunk off my teeth. No doubt the gunk contains bacteria, but I’m mostly trying to take away the stuff that would feed bacteria that would harm me.
Aside from the fluoride, the working ingredients in most toothpaste are chemicals like sodium laureth sulfate and other detergents. Pretty much exactly the same stuff as liquid hand or dish soap.
The rest is just filler to make it squeeze out and stay in place nicely, and flavoring agents to cover up the soap taste.
A couple decades ago, they introduced laws to limit the water usage of toilets. The early low-flow toilets were notoriously clog-prone. Because of that, all the focus has been on getting the liquid and solid contents down the drain without clogging. Probably they could reduce the aerosol distribution if they tried, but it just hasn’t been a #1 or #2 priority.
Biology is messy in the way it defies neat and tidy categorizations. It’s also just plain messy in implementation.
Period Podcast talked about incontinence issues and the pelvic floor piston.
Episode S2E19 What’s the range of normal in pelvic floor health?
Show Notes
I was surprised to see Ebola virus in the diagram!
Sketchy study aside, if that much bacteria/viruses/ick were really spewing out of the toilet, wouldn’t there be an epidemic of people getting norovirus if this was happening on any kind of large scale?
I hope you have better luck with your colonoscopy prep than I had with mine. After a week of dietary restriction and 2½ days of laxative-induced diarrhea, they called me the night before my colonoscopy to cancel the procedure. They wanted to reschedule it in a few months, but I can’t bring myself to go through the extensive prep more than once every five years, so I got my doctor to order a Cologuard screening test instead. It isn’t quite as good at detecting cancer and precancerous polyps as a colonoscopy, but it doesn’t require any prep, just mailing a stool sample. I’ll probably do another Cologuard test in 3 years, and maybe a colonoscopy 3 years after that. After that (unless there is a positive test), I probably will do only the stool tests, and no more colonoscopies.