I’ll bet that of all the zillions of topics and questions that have been covered on the SDMB, this is a first.
One day a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that my toilet seat had turned blue. The blue IRL is a little darker than it appears in the picture.
I do have a blue water/bleach tab thing in the tank. Actually it’s half blue and half white and when I flush, the water turns blue and then quickly turns clear again, which is also a mystery–where does the blue go?–but a mystery for another day (unless someone sees a connection).
Anyway, I put this tab in the tank. Shortly after that my every-other-week cleaning lady came, and shortly after that, I noticed that the seat was blue, as in the picture. I thought that maybe she had dipped the brush in the water when it was blue and then ran it over the seat. She’s here today and I asked her and she said she hadn’t done that.
Also, you’ll note that the shape of the blue stain vaguely follows the outline of a person’s butt cheeks, what with the scallop shape near the back. However, let me point out that my own personal butt cheeks do NOT spill over and down the sides of the seat, whereas, the stain does. Also, I haven’t noticed my butt leaving blue stains anywhere else (like on my sheets or on the floor when I practice naked yoga). (I don’t really practice naked yoga.)
The place at the front of the seat where it’s not so blue may be because I scrubbed that spot with a Clorox wipie in an attempt to remove the stain and had some success. Not sure about that.
This is an old-time large tank toilet (yay!) that might even be the original in the 1936 house I’m renting. The seat is probably more recent than that.
Side note but those chlorine tabs play havoc with all the rubber bits in your toilet tank, most plumbers don’t recommend them as they corrode parts quite quickly.
Is it possible that someones body chemistry is reacting to the toilet cleaner your CL uses?
A quickgoogle search reveals that you are not alone…
Is any member of your household currently playing the role of Mystique in the popular X-Men movie franchise? Apparently, that can lead to blue toilet seats, according to Jennifer Lawrence.
My theory: Sitting on the toilet seat puts body oils (and sweat, skin flakes, dirt, etc.) on the toilet seat. (Since you don’t sit on exactly the same spot every time, you’d expect the dirt to cover a larger area than your body itself.) The toilet seat is not perfectly smooth/nonporous, giving this stuff a place to stick. (Cheaper toilet seats are more guilty of this, but nothing’s perfect). Tiny droplets of blue water come out of the toilet when you flush. They react with the oils on the seat, causing a permanent color change that doesn’t appear elsewhere.
This is maybe one step better than a WAG, since I have a number of known facts… but I really have no evidence that the connection between them exists.
C’mon, let’s at least generate some hypotheses here!
Certain microorganisms (thinking cyanobacterium) seeded either from skin or pants contact that grow well in the microaerobic environment of the toilet seat, perhaps especially if the is some sebum shed there to feed them?
Something in the plastic or in cleaner used that reacts with skin/sweat compounds or with bacterial products to produce staining? (Thinking some iodine based reactivity here.)
The blue chemical from that flush tab vaporizes and collects prefentially where there has been skin or sweat contact or has been warmer? The Clorox Blue bleach tabs use Acid Blue 9 and likely whatever our op has is similar.
Sorry. :o
I’d love to read an authoritative answer though! Following swampspruce’s link it does appear a common topic on pregnancy and mommy boards, and more common with female commenters so something hormone-related?
Something like that happened to me when there was a power outage, so I lit some candles. I noticed afterwards that there was a bluish coating on the toilet seat (I hadn’t had candles in that room, though). It was easily wiped off, though.
