The net effect for practical human health of having a few bacteria on surfaces that are the same bacteria that already populate your gut is zero.
If someone you live with catches a disease you want to avoid, sure, worry about toilet aerosols. In fact, use separate bathrooms if at all possible. But normally, you and the people you live with already share the same microbes. And there’s no reason to worry about a few gut bacteria in the bathroom. If your tiles are clean, they aren’t going to reproduce or anything. Just wash your hands carefully before handling food, especially food you might feed to guests, or food that might sit out for looking enough for the buggies to grow.
Lots of people are waaay too scared of toilet cooties from strangers. And even from housemates.
Earlier today I was up to my elbows in a poop+water filled toilet trying unsuccessfully to unclog it with makeshift tools. This being Saturday the building won’t call an emergency plumber out unless both of our bathrooms are inop. Can’t say I blame them. And we don’t really have a good place to store a plunger or closet auger. Both of which I owned in my prior condo but which were trashed in the move here.
Got done with the poopy water, washed my arms and hands and went back to eating some snacks out of a bowl by hand. BFD.
I’m reminded of a scene from the Billy Crystal movie City Slickers. I tried to find the relevant clip on YouTube but failed. Anyhow, Crystal’s neurotic city-boy character staying at the dude ranch is agonizing to some other dude guests over some intricate personal problem when the crusty cowboy ranch hand character overhears him and contemptuously responds something close to:
Boy, you city people sure worry about a lot of shit!
and goes back to whatever cowboy task he was doing while shaking his head.
I searched and found multiple independent articles saying “Research has found that flushing the toilet with the lid down could reduce airborne particles by as much as 50%.”
All good. We aim to inform around here. But as others have said, the “50% reduction” in particles may be a provable fact of plumbing physics, but at the very same time biologically speaking it’s utterly immaterial and useless.
It’s a difference that Does. Not. Matter. Despite the germophobes wailing & gnashing of teeth.
Oh yeah, almost forgot …
I totally salute your decision to conduct your newsprint experiment and share the results. That is the mark of a smart curious dude. Would that we had more of them in this world. A tip o’ me cap in your general direction Good Sir. Seriously, not leg-pullingly.
It’s not a lack of space; the obstacle is the utter incompatibility of such a gauche device with one’s spouse’s sense of appropraite lavatoir décor. Certain things are simply Not. Done.
I think I may have mentioned this before here, but over 90% of the people I know leave the toilet seat up, either in their home or when they visit mine.
I truly cannot fathom why. If lids were meant to be left up, why do the toilet manufacturers make them in the first place?
I find the idea of toilet seat lids to be the same as Kleenex box covers: mere decorative claptrap that impedes functionality and encourages excessive prissiness, fussy clean-freakery, and the increased sales of stupid branded cleaning products.
My first wife and I lived happily for decades with the lids always up. Always. Why expend effort to lower it then effort again to raise it? It only interferes with toilet use; it does not enhance toilet use.
I readily grant there are people with other POVs. But since you wanted an example of why someone might prefer not to bother, well now you have one.
Because you really really want the outhouse seat lid to exist, and to be left closed. And toilet seats are modeled after outhouse seats.
Commercial toilets don’t have lids, because they aren’t needed, unless you’re afraid your kittens will fall into the toilet and drown.
The only time i close the lid is when I’m fostering kittens, or I’m doing a project in the bathroom (like grouting) and want a little extra shelf space.
(I vacation every summer at a place with out houses. Trust me, the lid is important.)
But then don’t you have to open it to make sure everything is fully flushed? Flushes are not always perfect. I like to make sure the toilet is pristine for the next use.
I’ve used them as a regular seat in the bathroom. Usually when a significant other was in the same bathroom and we were having an “important” conversation of some sort.
Do Porta pottys have lids? I’m not talking about pit bathrooms & outhouses, I mean the temporary plastic structures that they install at events which is what I assume you mean by porta potty.
I came into the thread dismayed, thinking that a lot more dopers had started RV-ing than I realized. I couldn’t think of any other relationship between toilet cover and travel.
Before reading this, the house toilet covers were like closet doors – I never even thought about their positioning while I’m gone.
Once a squirrel got in while we were gone for a few weeks. I think I would’ve preferred the live version over what I had to clean up.
