A laser light shows why you need to close the lid before flushing

It is one of the rooms in the house that one inevitably enters several times a day: flush the toilet It is one of the gestures that are made the most today. And although it may seem like a simple action, one detail is very important: check that the lid is closed.

A study conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA, shows how a burst of small water droplets, invisible to the naked eye, they fly out of the toilet after you flush the toilet.

“People knew the toilets were giving off aerosols, but they couldn’t see them,” she said Scientific alarm Civil and environmental engineer John Crimaldi, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, references the 20 Minutes site.

By the researchers’ own admission, there’s a “yuck factor” here, enhanced by the green glow of the laser light, but there’s also an important message about bathroom hygiene, both in private homes and public restrooms, that often gets passed unnoticed. a lid.

Criminaldi and his fellow researchers insist they are not epidemiologists, so there are no precise calculations in terms of the potential spread of the disease. However, viewing him provides a graphical element for other studies attempting to estimate the qualities of bacteria-laden aerosols.

Intestinal bacteria that can be found inside the toilet -Escherichia coli, Norovirus, Salmonella or Campylobacter among, among others – can jump up to one and a half meters away when pulling the chain, due to the water vortex that is formed. It is therefore advisable to always flush the toilet once the toilet lid has been lowered and not before.

Two lasers were used for the study: one that continuously shined on the toilet from above and illuminated the scene, and another that sent rapid pulses of light across the top of the toilet bowl to highlight the movement of the particles. The high resolution images were captured simultaneously with the cameras.

Researchers have shown droplets reaching a height of up to 1.5 meters after a burst, traveling at speeds exceeding two meters per second in some places. Larger droplets land on utilities more quickly, while smaller ones can stay airborne for several minutes, the researchers showed. 20 minutes.

“We expected these aerosol particles to float, but they exploded like a rocket,” Crimaldi says. “The purpose of the toilet is to effectively remove waste from the bowl, but it also does the reverse, which is to spray a large amount of the contents upwards,” he added.

For these improvements to work effectively, it’s imperative to know where water travels, which this study shows more dramatically than ever before.

What are bacteria

Bacteria are one of the five kingdoms of nature., together with the animal, the vegetable, the fungus and the protist; They constitute the origin of life and the reason for its continuation. Some help us digest food, destroy disease-causing cells, and supply the body with vitamins; others are used to make healthy foods like yogurt or cheese.

Of the billions of bacteria that inhabit the human body, only about 100 can be harmful because they cause disease: they are infectious bacteria, which reproduce rapidly within the body, causing disease and which are treated with antibiotics. Some of the best known are strep, staph, and E. coli.