We all use toilets every day, and yet they don’t exactly form part of everyday conversation. As often as we frequent them, there are some surprising and startling facts that most people simply don’t know. Here are just five that might make you say: ‘What the flush?!’
Your phone is 10 times dirtier than a toilet seat
Think about how many times you touch your phone every day compared to the number of times you wash your hands (and clean your phone) every day. Research has shownthat phones, on average, have up to ten times more bacteria on them than the average toilet seat. Yikes.
The first public toilet was created by dinosaurs
What’s been dubbed the world’s oldest public toilet was uncoveredin Argentina and dates back to 240 million years ago. This ‘common latrine’ was created by the Dinodontosaurus, a large reptilian mega-herbivore.
You’ve probably been flushing wrong
Flushing with the toilet seat down isn’t only for airplanes. Research showsthat a ‘toilet plume’ of bacteria is sent into the air when a toilet is flushed – a plume that can reach as high as 15 feet. Now just consider the way your face is directly in the firing line when you flush over an open toilet bowl. Put that seat down.
The average person spends 1.5 years in the bathroom in their lifetime
And of that time, people spend an average of 92 days sitting on the loo. That’s a fair amount of time. Probably a lot longer than actually necessary if we consider how much time most people spend on their phones in there.
The first cubicle is the cleanest
When it comes to public toilets (or even portable toilets in a row) the first cubicle is usually the one that is used the least – as people tend to go for the one furthest away for privacy. So it’s likely that the first one will then also be the cleanest. It’s science.
Paper towels are more hygienic than hand dryers
Yup. Studies have shown that air hand dryers have up to 27 times more bacteria than paper towels. When you’re placing your hands under them, you’re potentially getting blasted by germs at high speed.
Over or under? Definitely over
The debate over whether the toilet roll should be placed in an ‘over’ or ‘under’ orientation was decisively settled by a patent from 1891filed by the inventor of perforated toilet paper. This patent featured an unequivocally clear diagram demonstrating the ‘over’ position. So that settles that.