Dateline put an end to the UP/DOWN debate regarding toilet seats!
A very simple solution is to Put the LID DOWN and with/for a very good reason.
They showed the resulting bacterial contamination of the entire bathroom, including toothbrushes, etc.
Now every time you use the commode/toilet fixtue you will have visions in your head of big nasty infectious bacteria crawling all over the tooth brush if you don’t …
Close the Lid Before you Flush!
Didn’t Cecil cover this?
Well, he certainly put the lid on it.
It’s worth repeating!
I suppose.
In a related story, I moved into a new apartment recently, and my flatmate has been living here for a while. He has one of them freestanding metallic shelf things over the toilet… the entire inside of the thing is almost corroded off. It is destroyed up to about 4’ height. It is just disgusting - and this is where he stores his toothbrush and other toiletries.
After The Master’s wisdom, I’m a seat down man til I die.
Cecil scared me straight about this a good while ago; but it brought another problem… The smell can’t really leave the toilet, with the lid down. Very unpleasent when you have to pay it another visit. Is there any solution to that?
Actually, the smell can leave the toilet, especially with the lid down. Air is sucked down along with the water. For particularly distressing butt-bombs, flushing twice might help. A deodorizer can sometimes be helpful, but don’t use odor maskers like Glade pine scent. It just makes the toilet smell like a shitty Christmas tree.
I’ve always thought that it would make more sense to invent some kind of toilet seat that can be opened by stepping on a pedal somewhere at the base of the toilet so that it automatically closes afterwards, the same way that lots of rubbish bins work.
A misrepresented thread title. You are talking about the lid, not the seat. But alright. Okay so far as for poopers, but pee really should be sterile. No need to close before flushing. I am an obediently trained but resentful younger brother now husband for almost 20 years, and I always thought that the dang females should be grateful I lifted up the seat before I peed to not get any dribbles on the seat! Dabnubbit!
There’s only two reasons to put the lid down, to keep children and animals from drowning and to sit on the lid.
The “contamination” theory is silly.
DSeid, sure your pee is sterile, but do you think everrything makes it down the bowl every time? If so you would have no problem drinking from it, right?
Beeruser, refer to Cecil’s column. I have corroborating anecdotal evidence as well. As a single guy I would clean the bathroom… less than is optimal. Never noticed anything too nasty by the time I got around to it though. Since I have been keeping the lid down BEFORE I flush I have noticed that after a little while some serious nastiness starts to grow on the bottom of the lid. Before, all that stuff was spread throughout the bathroom. Of course now I have to clean more often, but it was a real eye-opener.
. As a single guy I would clean the bathroom… less than is optimal. Never noticed anything too nasty though. Since I have been keeping the lid down BEFORE I flush I have noticed that after a little while some serious nastiness starts to grow on the bottom of the lid. Before, all that stuff was spread throughout the bathroom.
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question:–back then as a single guy, when you cleaned less often, and that stuff was spread throughout the bathroom (as opposed to growing inside the lid)–did you ever get sick from it? Did “serious nastiness” sprout anywhere?
Why do you think all that serious nasty growth is only visible now that you are married and keep a CLEANER bathroom?
My WAG–By closing the lid, you are concentrating the stuff ,so it starts to grow and get nasty. Let it get spread around and get diluted, and you never see it, and your body never gets infected with it. I know it sounds disgusting, but remember that our bodies supposed to be invaded by bacteria. We are well equipped with white blood cells, and healthy people can tolerate a certain amount of fecal bacteria.
Yes, I wash my hands. But I am no stickler for cleanliness. And I have lived 3 decades with no infectious diseases (maybe once a year a viral flu, and once every 3 years I get a fever for 2 days)So all those bacteria living in the toilet must not be causing my body any problems.
It’s gross, but it’s not a medical disaster
Well, the fact of the matter is - if you don’t have any infectionus diseases, and you are the only person who uses your bathroom, the odds of catching an infectious disease from yourself are pretty slim.
However, in shared bathroom situations, and in less health-conscious countries where infectious diseases are more common, this is a health issue.
Anyway, would you brush your teeth with a brush you dropped into the toilet?
To quote from Uncle Cece’s article
Worry about the many people who aren’t washing their hands after they wiped and then are spreadin that crap around your house. Worry about touching the sink handle to turn the water off after you’ve washed (you know you and everyone else turned it on with hands contaminated with poop organisms!) Worry more about your sponge. I guess I’m very biased. I’m a pediatrician and in training I had an infectious disease professor put it like this. “If you have kids you have microscopic layer of poop over all of the surfaces in your house. No matter how much you clean. Deal with it.”
Why can’t we all just leave the toilet seat/lid however we found it?
I was the only girl at a small get together at house lived in by 2 single men. The seat was always up when I went in the bathroom, so I’d simply put it down to use it and put it back up when I was done. The next person was sure to be a guy, anyway. The guys noticed and thanked me for it.
The Mythbusters did a segment on this recently. They set up several toothbrushes in their bathroom, then kept two in their kitchen, in a sealed container, as control. The brushes in the bathroom were used daily; the ones in the kitchen had toothpaste applied to them, then were rinsed off with distilled water. After thirty days, they sent all the toothbrushes off to be analyzed. All of them, even the ones in the kitchen, had fecal coliform (sp?) bacteria present. So apparently it doesn’t matter where your toothbrush is or whether the seat is up or down. You can’t escape the bacteria.
I couldn’t find a link to the Mythbusters episode on their website, but the blog community apparently found it worth talking about. One such blog is here.
Lookninjas! is right. Yes, there was FCB on the toothbrushes in the john. But there was also FCB on the control toothbrushes in the kitchen- and what is more telling- the amount of contamination on the dozens of toothbrushes in the John did not vary directly as distance from the toilet. In fact- there was no discernable pattern. And the lid was kept open, and the toilet got plenty of use.
One small note- the kitchen toothbrushes were not “kept sealed”- they were used & rinsed, just like the bathroom ones were. They were a good Control.
The problem with shows like Dateline is that they wouldn’t know a Control if it climbed up their ass and did the cha-cha. 
Thanks DSeid.
I had been planning to clean the bathrooms today, but now I think I’ll just mix a morning martini and watch Blues Clues with the kids.
As to the toilet seat…if I close the lid, what would the dogs drink?
I dunno, Joe’s eyebrows kinda freak me. I don’t think I could handle it with a martini.
The point is that it is hands that do the dirty deeds folks. Hand to tush. To sink handle. Wash. Back to sink handle and FCB back right at ya, yours mine and ours. To toothbrush. To mouth. Yum. To every other surface in your house.
For most of us the dose is small enough that our immune systems deal with it just fine, in fact some exposure is needed to keep our immune systems working well.
For me seat down is a health issue just because otherwise my wife would kill me.
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To IMHO.
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