Toilet Innovations Which Are Not Always Flushed With Success
The EPA reports that Americans use 24 gallons per person per day to flush toilets. That’s more than 7 billion gallons. A more recent study, probably more accurate because it considers the move to install low-flow toilets, pegs the total at 5.8 billion gallons per day, or more than 2 trillion gallons per year. That’s a lot of water reports Robert Glennon. (1)
In spite of all this, the flushing toilet is one of the greatest public health advances of all time. However, public bathrooms can spread infectious disease if not designed, maintained, and used properly. Urine and feces not adequately disposed of can quickly become ground for noxious bacteria. (2)
With this in mind, researchers set out to measure bacterial counts on surfaces and in the air of 61 frequently used public bathrooms in a large city in Taiwan. These were located in shopping malls, hospitals, offices, libraries, and train stations. They swabbed for microbes in toilet bowls, on urinal rims, and on adjacent floors, among many other locations. They also sampled the air with bio-aerosol impactors. (3)
Toilet and urinal bowls were generally pretty clean, since bacteria can be swept away with a flush. However, the lining between the toilet and the floor, and the floor itself around the toilet or urinal was highly contaminated with potentially disease-causing bacteria. Researcher also discovered that ventilation in bathrooms can make a big difference in terms of airborne bacterial counts.
Bacterial contamination of indoor samples from public toilets without ventilation were between 1.5 and 5 times higher than that of outdoor samples.
To counter the possibility of disease spread from public bathrooms, the researchers recommend that the problem areas they identified be cleaned frequently with proper disinfecting agents. Bathrooms should also be sufficiently ventilated. Ultraviolet-C lights could also be utilized to cleanse surfaces when bathrooms are unoccupied.
Another issue relates to the toilet lid. Loo etiquette has a new standard: put the toilet lid down as well as the seat, because leaving the lid up when flushing could lead to bacterial and viral transmission. Researchers determined that leaving the loo lid open after flushing might disperse contaminated droplets up to 1.5 meters, and these particles could hang around for up to 30 minutes. (4)
The number of particles expelled by a toilet flush is equivalent to a person talking loudly for over six and a half minutes—the true definition of a potty mouth, but researchers found no evidence of airborne coronavirus transmission in public toilets. “Some people have been worried about using public washrooms during the pandemic, but if you minimize your time in the bathroom, wash and dry your hands properly, and don’t use your mobile phone, eat or drink, then the risks should be low, especially if the bathroom is well maintained,” says Professor Erica Donner of the University of South Australia. (5)
Gates Foundation
About 3.6 billion people—nearly half of the world’s population—lack toilets or use unsafe sanitation. Living without a toilet is more than an inconvenience. It’s dangerous. Unsafe sanitation means contaminated water, soil, and food. It causes illness and death. According to the latest estimates, diarrhea and other sanitation-related diseases kill nearly 500,000 children under the age of five every year. (6)
In 2011, the Gates Foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet Challenge asked researchers if they could develop safe sanitation solutions that work without relying on sewage system or running water. (Sewers and treatment plants have historically been the best way to safely process waste, but they are extremely expensive to build, maintain and operate. They also rely on large amounts of water when many countries are suffering from water shortages.)
In the decade since this challenge was launched, the world has responded with the power of innovation. Scientists and engineers from across the globe developed hundreds of exciting ideas for how to design toilets that safely process human waste with little or no need for water or electricity. They created toilets that convert feces into valuable resources, including fertilizer, clean water, and electricity.
Other researchers invented other processes. To be sure, there are still challenges ahead to bring these innovations to market so that they can transform the lives of the billions of people who need them. Gates is optimistic that his can be accomplished in the next 10 years and beyond. (6)
India and Africa- More Mobile Phones Than Toilets
When the results of the 2011 census were published one stark finding stood out: more households had mobile phones than toilets in India. Fifty-three percent of households had a mobile phone, while only 47 percent had a toilet within their homes in that year. Five years later, the gap between the two seems to have widened as the march of telecom connectivity has outpaced the march of water connectivity in the country.
While the proportion of households with toilets has moved up, the proportion of those with mobile phones has grown even more sharply. In 2016, 88 percent of households in India had a mobile phone. (7)
Africa also has more citizens with mobile phones than access to clean water and toilets. A 2016 report covering 35 African countries found that only 30 percent of Africans had access to toilets and only 63 percent to piped water, yet 93 percent had mobile phone service. (8)
Toilets and Culture
Sometimes good intentions cannot overcome cultural aspects.Members of the Tarahumara Tribe, an indigenous, cave dwelling community in southern Mexico, were visiting the University of Arizona in connection with the release of a book of photographs about their way of life. When the hours guest used the bathroom, he was perplexed as to how to use the facilities. In the end, he emptied his bowels in her bathtub rather than the toilet, leaving the host with a disposal problem. In his culture, water is sacred and no sane person would ever contaminate potable water with human waste. (1)
Robert Desowitz provides another example. Health advisers from a western nation decided to use their government’s aid funds for a pilot project that would provide simple water-seal toilets to a selected village in Somalia. In due course, several hundred of the cast concrete devices were placed over soak-away pits that had been laboriously dug to the prescribed dimensions. (9)
The advisers then returned to their office in the capital, satisfied that they had propelled these people onto the road to modern sanitation and did not return until a year later. To their surprise they found the toilets to be horrible messes. Each one was stuffed with a pile of stones and made useless. When they asked why anyone would dump stones into a toilet, their respondents were surprised.
They were told that Somalis distract themselves when defecating by clicking two stones together and when finished they drop the stones into the most convenient receptacle, in the case of the new toilets, the water toilet seat.
This is another example of some of the problems that can arise when countries in the first world try to help countries in transition areas. The western desire to ‘fix’ certain things often falls on deaf ears or comes up against unforeseen obstacles. Without a true understanding of the culture of the people being ‘helped’ and trying to provide help from afar, things can go awry.
References
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