UKC

Having read about the need to shut the loo seat  before flushing, { to reduce aerosol - spray and inhalation of Covid 19} I complained to a supermarket in Inverness because they hadn't loo lids for me to practise this in a public toilet and I thought they should -  and also they should have signs in public loos to encourage this practice.

Maybe others can contact their local supermarkets / shopping centres, to suggest this as a public health issue, especially as lockdown  reduces  and more people emerge on the streets.? Any "me too" on this one?Maybe I shouldn't say "me too" as that belongs to another serious campaign. "Me also"  might be better.....

Anything's better than "me either".   

This is just a hunch, put my feeling is that the risk of transmission through the handling of the toilet seat poses a far higher risk than transmission from breathing in aerosol carrying traces of the virus. And of course if it could be transmitted in this manner, which to my knowledge they are not convinced about as yet, then the highest risk would be having to flush away others deposits who may be infected. My personal thoughts are that if I were you, I wouldn't worry about it too much and focus on the standard practices of infection control. Or hold your breath when you flush? I could well be wrong though, await a more informed opinion.

Good point about touch. I should use a clean sheet of loo roll to handle seat and put that in the closed bin beside the loo.Then thoroughly hand wash.  I think these matters can be thought  through. But I read coronavirus is in faecal matter . Flushing loo was mentioned to me as a danger point in disease transmission by a GP when I was caring for someone  years ago who was  frequently in disease - that GP told me to close and flush to protect myself. 

Any doctors that have views on this?

All that will happen if you raise this is that public toilets will shut.  Not good for those who are desperate.  

Go to the loo before you leave the house is particularly good advice at present.  

I do understand that if you are driving into Inverness you might have a longer journey to the supermarket than most people however. 

Where did you read this?

This, followed by a vocal 'I'd give it five before going in there if I was you' should lower the risk of passing it on to others, something I've been doing for years

Flushing the bog with the lid open *does* aerosolise urine and faeces and spray it everywhere.  This has been known for years.

Traces of COVID have been found in faeces, though it's not known if they are viable in terms of causing an infection at that stage.

It's just, I guess, putting these two things together.

Lets have a bit of perspective here. if there is any virus in poo, then it will be such an incredibly small amount as to do no more than ramp up your own anxiety levels.

Trust me you'll have passed a shit-load more of the virus while out and about in the community long before you bare your arse to any toilet seat.

Bill Bryson refers to it in his book about houses.  He does quote some research on it and, from memory, says that closing the lid before flushing is one of the best ways to reduce the spread of bacteria within a house.

I'm not really in a position to dispute the research, but I wonder if the risk is really all that great? There don't seem to be waves of e.coli or cholera or whatever as a result. My feeling is that a closed lid is unwelcoming for the next person, plus it makes it less obvious if the flush hasn't been as effective as it ought to be.
And if you worry about aerosolised faecal matter getting on your toothbrush, don't leave it in the bathroom

Could practice shutting one at home?? 

I once read a study on this and the conclusion after various tests was that there is more transmission of aerosol particles with the lid down than with the lid up. Actually I this it was the range was further with the lid down. 

Toilet lids are not a seal and the idea was because the air movement was round the gap rather than in the open bowl the air moving had a greater velocity. 

Although that must depend a lot on the design and how it flushes.  

I'm not aware of any evidence that orofaecal transmission is a significant risk for this virus and since washing your hands after using the toilet should be mandatory anyway I can't see why there should be an issue here.

The potential issue is sh*t sprayed on e.g. the doorhandle.  Not a major problem in normal times, though, and as you say transmissibility of COVID this way isn't clear.

I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that the risk of faecal-borne transmission in this way is vanishingly small. If it weren't, we'd be swamped with such infections.

It was the link to COVID-19 I was looking for. I'm sceptical.

I have to say that, apart from in the most extreme and fluid circumstances (trying to put this delicately!), I find this a bit far-fetched. 

I'm sure it's easy to demonstrate that, say, a tracer dye in the water can be detected in deposited droplets elsewhere, but is the risk of actual faecal material from solid stools under maybe 5-10cm of water being distributed around the bathroom unless the lid is closed before flushing really worth lying awake at night about?  Perhaps if it were polio, cholera or even noravirus involved I'd be slightly more concerned, but even then...     

I’m pretty good at opening loo seats with my feet (on trains etc) but not so delicate closing them!

SARS in honk kong spread from viral particles being fanned off sewage and drainage pipes. That coronavirus was in poop.

Touch will be an issue but I'd certainly look at closed toilet lids.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539564/

And that's exactly how SARS spread at  Amoy Gardens. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539564/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92478/

"the virus is thought to have spread via aerosolized fecal matter through the internal seweage."

Presumably it also depends on the method of flush - US toilets seem to favour a 'drain then refill' process, rather than a 'batter and churn everything down the U-bend' approach favoured in Britain. The US method would appear to have less risk of aerosolising the bowl's contents?

Can you catch it through inhaling an infected persons farts? 

Why aren't most of us constantly ill?

Maybe we need this light "dose" to keep us strong and healthy.

It's like these warnings about dish cloths harbouring more germs than bog seats, how come we're not all dead? there must be some mechanism, whereby all this dangerous bio-hazard, isn't killing us, when it's so dangerous.

Obviously, CV-19 might be very different, but people have been mentioning this "danger" well before CV-19, and we've all managed to survive, mostly

Did you read this? "U-traps connected to most floor drains were probably dry and not functioning properly" as supposition, without any evidence!

Yeah, you'd think the risk would be low anyway, but its why we have lids on toilets because fecal matter can be aerosolized. 

Studying viral spread is so difficult though, it's basically impossible to demonstrate how a person got infected. 

I'd have thought that the major danger of faecal aerosol occurs when the stuff is flushed away by its owner, who wouldn't worry anyway about being (re)infected. The bowl itself is basically clean for the next person. If there is danger from any aerosol being deposited around the toilet area then I'd imagine closing the lid might cause extra deposit on the seat (though more on the underside) by causing more concentrated aerosol flow over it and the inside of the lid. If an infected person is straining away they might more easily produce dangerous aerosol from mouth and nose. Washing hands afterward is key as usual. All just uneducated musing on my part however.

I thought it was to give you somewhere to sit on, or put your feet while you cut your toe nails.

It’s a virus, not a bacteria. 

Bacteria multiply themselves. Viruses have to infect a cell and use the cell to multiply. If that specific type of cell isn’t available, then it can’t replicate and dies very quickly. 
 

It’s transmitted by droplets, so by the time the next person walks in, the droplets would have dropped to the floor, if there were any in the first place. A flush isn’t powerful enough to send droplets higher than the cistern, certainly not from the physics I know. 
 

I’d wash your hands after using the toilet as your best line of defence. 

Really? Toilets have had lids since before the term aerosol and virus (in its current meaning) were coined. They've had lids since long before before flushes were invented.

So? That doesn't mean there wasn't a reason.

What do you think the smell is? That's particles coming off the sewage.

If only everyone was so bothered about dog faeces!

I read a rather amusing article (may have been Australian?) that said quite seriously that it was important to avoid "bare bottom farting".  Presumably undies will catch most of the virus.  

I don't know.  I was just replying to the question about where something could be read about it.  Like you, I suspect that there's such a thing as too clean and no - I don't put the lid down.

There was an article in the Guardian about the need to redesign public toilets to make them safer for coronavirus.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/04/sensor-taps-door-handles-co... 

There seems to be a significant amount of viral shed into faeces.  Some scientists were measuring it in the sewers to estimate how many people are affected in a city.

I wonder if we'll see a the old fashioned 'hole in the floor' bogs make a return.  If you really don't want to touch anything and if you want it sanitised between each customer that super-simple design has a lot of benefits.

If they actually end up redoing a lot of public bogs as a result of a new safety code I wonder if there will be a general transition to unisex at the same time.  There's already pressure from the trans lobby and companies might think as long as they are spending the money they may as well do both changes at the same time - and perhaps save some cash by replacing separate male and female bogs with a single unisex one.

That test does not need viable virus to be effective. Much as testing water around new building sites doesn't mean you have a great-crested newt in your PCR tube.

More generally, anything that increases the cleanliness of public loos is to be applauded. My only concern is that we end up with even fewer than the ridiculously small number available now in some places.

Coronavirus can cause bowel symptoms and the possibility that a previous 'customer' might have sprayed virus laden diarrhea is somewhat offputting.    

Bigger problem for women since they end up with the risk even when they just need to pee.

Sorry I wasn't picking on you particularly, more just putting thoughts out there, as it were

There are issues with using chemical cleaners though, in that they can end up producing resistant bacteria, so making things worse.

All tesco loos have no lids in any of the supermarkets, large retail park or Ness park or Bridge street Metro Tesco in |Inverness. I haven't "surveyed" morrisons or aldi.

there's something for you to do then.

Given all that aerosol viral load, probably better to stay away from them...

Hmm, that is quite disturbing for me a big part of my job is servicing blowers that bubble air through waste water, there is quite a bit of aerosol produced in that process. 

I Thought of writing to my local councillor to point out this incidence of lid-less loos which may have assisted cleanliness in the past but seem now to be a weak public health area  with the emergence of covid 19. I can't help feeling that the Sars coronavirus transmission/ hotspot quoted above is the most compelling evidence of sewage transmission as regards  these respiratory but also gut inhabiting new viruses. And stopping aerosol transmission seems to outweigh the touch aspect of a lid shutting habit, as regards out health. Afterall, public loos are not cleaned after every person uses them and we will up those numbers fairly soon.

I do want to be accurate, though- any more evidence?

Here is the link to the paper about sewage testing : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00973-x

If it is genuinely a problem, then it is a global issue, not a local council issue.

Be careful what you wish for; as warned above, your local council might respond by simply closing all public toilets.

Thank you.

According to the research I did last night they say the risk is minimal and normal procedures for working with waste water will protect the people on site. 

Trouble is they don't mention the treatment method. 

The photo in the paper (probably a stock photo) shows a passive treatment plant but over here we mainly use forced aeration with plenty of scope for creating aerosol particles. 

I fired off an email last night to the safety department at Yorkshire Water to see what they have to say. 

Well, I've certainly complained to Tesco and hopefully, when the guy said this will go to head office, they will also consider that all 3 Tesco supermarkets in Inverness have lidless loos. I get your point about councils- they do tend to take the road of least resistance and probably would shut rather than modify. Approaching the individual store is probably better.

What about men's urinals? In most places these flush automatically either on a timed basis or sensor. Some flushes are powerful and create quite a lot of splash. 

MIne was a female perspective where a loo services both functions of the body. Maybe the separation of those functions in men's loos are an  advantage as it is faecal- matter- aerosol  we are talking about. 

However, no idea on your point especially given the strength of the flush.  is the urinal a health advantage???

But  still, in terms of reducing viral load in an enclosed/confined air space, the loo- lid thing  is relevant for male and female toilet spaces, it seems to me. 

My original point was that if more than one person complains about a lack of lid to say Tesco, they'll take more notice.

Also I wondered if the shut that loo lid is a public health, habit changing, campaign in the making generally?

Concerns were also  raised about muck-spreading (where this contains human feaces) eg on fields near public rights of way etc  - haven't heard anything further about that 

I always leave the lid up, as I'm a proponent of a strategy known as "turd immunity". 

I think supermarkets and shopping centres have a vested interest to modify their loos with a lid rather than close them completely. I'm looking towards the maintaining of "R" 0 when lock down eases, as well as helping it go down in the meantime.

Are you sure? I thought that muck spreading of human faeces had been banned decades ago, at least in the UK?

Do you know what sewage has to go through before it gets spread on the fields?

But why aren't treatment workers all falling over dead. Even before CV-19 there was some pretty horrible diseases around, surely you'd think life expectancy for sewage workers to be virtually zero from the day the start work, wouldn't you?

Well, us, obviously. Was that a trick question?

ha ha

You'd be surprised what comes down the sewage pipe though, not all of it have been through ahuman body, we had a bike come through once and an arm.

My primary concern is that whatever is done, it is based on sound scientific evidence, not just 'gut feeling' (to use an unfortunate phrase). That will require properly designed experimentation to determine if viable virus (of whatever type) can be spread in toilet aerosol, and what factors affect the spread; whilst it might seem 'obvious' that a closed lid will prevent spread, things don't always behave in 'obvious' ways.

This is a public health issue, and should be properly addressed by public health epidemiology scientists. There are existing design standards for toilets. These will have been developed based on evidence. I hope...

As a rough rule of thumb when you start working with waste water you have one or 2 doses of the squits and pukes. Just about every new person I have come across in the last 20 some years went through it. 

Anyway I got my answer today, to condense it. Though C19 can be present in waste water it's do diluted due to the volume of water that the risk is minimal. The documentation specifically references ASP plants too and they are the ones that use forced aeration. 

Never heard of that or witnessed anyone I knew having this either. I've worked in waste treatment since 1989, off and on, up until 2003. On one site the sparkies were making their tea with final effluent for 3 months!

If you want a good dose of aerosol, work on a site with surface aerators, but still I never got sick or heard of anyone else being sick. I was in charge on a number of sites for teams of 20-25 blokes, so I'd have noticed people being ill.

The least one can say is no harm can be achieved by this practice,  and I'm using Debenham's loos when they are open. There is always a fence sitting position, which I don't recommend!!!

No, you cannot say that. As others have pointed out, there are potential mechanisms for it to make the spread worse. Proper, controlled experiments are needed.

And I have also read some scientists suggest putting the loo lid down before flush because of Covid 19.  It is like face coverings for the general public , this has resulted in some nations deciding to go with one view of science and others prevaricate .

Where does the transition happen from one to the other?

That is a possibility, maybe in the spirit of modern times, some community fund raising could be done for getting the lids? I'm thinking that it's probably down to vandalism that public toilets have the kind of toilets which don't have lids, it's something removed for people to damage.

Well I started in the mid to late 90's and I'm still there and from what I have seen most people get at least one dose of a dodgy tum when they start. There are exceptions though like your sparks, one guy I worked with was always covered in shit to the point he normally looked like the Gogothen from Dogma, at snap time he would wipe his filthy hands on his filthy overalls and eat his sandwiches. Never got even slightly ill but the flip side to that is another guy picked up a bug in one of the offices, was in hospital for a few weeks and off work for the better part of a year. 

Surface aerators are awful things and very in efficient too, it uses far less energy to use blowers and diffusers than surface aeration. 

It seems strange that we have polar opposite experiences of sickness but I can only go on what I have seen just like your going on what you have seen. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/04/02/why-you-should-...

This is an interesting article

Yes as it happens! An article appeared in New Civil Engineer about potential wastewater risks  - not sure where the agricultural sludge ref was from now - but yes, minimal to non-existent/no actual evidence to support transmission. 

With which visitors to certain motorway services will be familiar

I was being tongue in cheek in a D family familial way in asking about the distinction between a local and a global issue by the way, then I woke up this morning and remembered it doesn't translate online.