Add this to our list of worries in these anxious times: coronavirus-containing clouds that waft into the air when a toilet is flushed.
Scientists who simulated toilet water and air flows say in a new research paper that aerosol droplets forced upward by a flush appear to spread wide enough and linger long enough to be inhaled. The novel coronavirus has been found in the feces of covid-19 patients, but it remains unknown whether such clouds could contain enough virus to infect a person. The authors say the possibility of that mode of transmission calls for action in the midst of a pandemic — first and foremost, by closing the lid.
“Flushing will lift the virus up from the toilet bowl,” co-author Ji-Xiang Wang, who researches fluids at Yangzhou University in Yangzhou, China, said in an email. Bathroom users “need to close the lid first and then trigger the flushing process,” Wang said, and wash their hands thoroughly if closure isn’t possible.
Those self flushing public toilets were problematic for women already. Now this.
Read the whole thing for the full rundown.