Breaking the Law
Dangerous Restrooms
Episode 50
Thanks to the toilet sneeze, in most commercial restrooms, 18,000 threats of danger and illness are waiting every day. They hang in the air; Rest on the light switch; And lurk on the stall latch. Does this sound like an overstatement? Read on as we discuss an intersection of employee habits, business habits and dangerous restrooms.
First Things First for Restroom Safety
The vast majority of the time, you and your fellow employees use the restroom where you work without incident. Men and women alike tend to use the restroom at work 3 times each day on average. And though we will touch handwashing, this topic is about the MOST common-practice of all people using the restroom. Flushing.
The Restroom is the Smallest Biosphere
For most commercial locations, the restrooms tend to be small, out of the way rooms with closing doors for privacy. While there are many larger commercial locations that allow for no-doors (you can find part of that topic discussed on this podcast), most do not. Most offices and commercial locations have a standard closing door for entrance into the restroom. And within the main restroom, a series of stalls with closing latches. For men’s rooms, there are the addition of wall mounted urinals.
High-Touch Surfaces
As we’ve discussed previously, we recommend reducing the number of surfaces that MUST be touched to use the restroom. As commercial cleaning professionals, this centers on our mission of Cleaning for Health. But at some point, you’re going to have to touch that stall latch. Listen to the brief Podcast #50, below. E-Coli, Covid and numerous other viruses that survive your gut can land on that surface.
Combatting the Dangerous Restroom
Smart training, good cleaning, and the right technology are all factors in avoiding sick building syndrome. When cleaning staff are well trained, they make the area safer. When your property manager or owners understand that having standard lids on toilets is a better and healthier choice, that can make that change. Using technology like the Destiny UV-C Hand dryer, uses our own habits to improve the restroom air quality.
For Property Managers, Owners and Cleaning Professionals
DOC’s Facilities Consulting works with people in each of these roles to help them Clean for Health. Proper Janitorial Services can in fact decrease sick days and improve the overall wellness of your staff and your visitors. If you want more information on effective technology and training services, please contact us here.
Ray
Joel? (Yes, sir.) I didn’t know toilets could sneeze.
Joel
They can.
Ray
Now it’s all over me.
Joel
In honor of the spooky season.
Ray
There is nothing scarier than what’s in that toilet.
Joel
Exactly. But yes, toilets can sneeze, and a lot of people don’t know that. Think about your home, and that’s where it really hits a lot of people. Some people say that it’s so difficult to even get men to put the seat down, let alone the lid. And when somebody flushes a toilet or a urinal, what happens is a phenomenon called the toilet sneeze. There’s up to 6,000 droplets that go into the air and come up to about five feet. On YouTube, there’s plenty of videos of this done with lasers to show how much splatter actually comes up out of the toilets when we flush them. Some of it microscopic, which will gross out most people. And, even people that work in this industry don’t realize how dangerous flushing a toilet without covering it. And unfortunately, in the United States, we don’t have lids on most of the commercial toilets. So, every time toilets are flushed, these droplets go into the air. Well, what’s so horrible about these droplets is that anything that is in those toilets is now made airborne. A lot of studies were during COVID that showed things like E. Coli and the COVID and everything else that is going through the personal waste system into the toilet. Then when it flushes, it’s caught up in these microscopic droplets.
If you realize that the average person flushes a toilet five times a day, take out the one. When you get up in the morning and take away the one before you go to bed at night. That means that three times per day, you personally flush a toilet (at your worklace). That’s 18,000 droplets that go up in the air. Well, they can stay in the air for up to 48 hours.
Ray
Oh, my God.
Joel
So now let’s say you would work a five five-day work week. That means that just in a five-day work week, there’s 90,000 droplets that have been entered into the air.
Ray
That’s from one person.
Joel
So then let’s say that a small office, 25 people, that’s 2,250,000 droplets of toilet sneezes that are placed in the air each time a toilet is flush per week in an office of 25 people.
Ray
Wow. Okay, so that’s pretty gross.
Joel
It is. And when you realize that there’s even other videos that I’ve seen on YouTube that show that these droplets can go up to six feet, all of that stuff on the inside of a stall, the latch, the toilet paper, the toilet seat covers, the toilet itself, the partition walls, as well as escape into the open area, to the sink, to the soap dispenser, the knob or the push plate on the door.
Ray
So, this is literally any surface that’s exposed to that in the restroom.
Joel
That is correct. Okay. And Because of COVID, there’s a big push for indoor air quality and understanding that these droplets are things that people are going to breathe in. So, when you walk into a restroom, you’re breathing all that stuff in. You’re not just breathing if someone has sprayed something because there’s a temporary odor, you’re also breathing in whatever they just got done doing in that toilet. I know. It’s not for the faint of heart. So, informing everybody of what it’s like. And it is eerie. It’s spooky. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable. When I’m in a lot of business meetings and I talk about a toilet sneeze, the people literally start cringing and say, “Oh, my God, I got to tell my husband to put the lid down. Oh, I got to tell my kids I got to put the lid down. Oh, my God, I don’t think I’m going to use a public restroom ever again.” There’s things that can be done to help reduce this. Some of it is working with UV lighting, HEPA filters, proper cleaning techniques, and everything else. When you flush a toilet or a urinal, be aware that you’re releasing droplets into the air that are full of all kinds of spooky things.
Ray
Nice play there. One question before we wrap this piece up. Sure. As you are advising cleaning company professionals, owners, sometimes team managers, when you are out training at universities or elsewhere. What do you advise them on these situations? I ask because not being familiar with the ladies room, but the men’s room has urinals and toilets, neither of which traditionally have a cover.
Joel
Correct. In the United States, they Overseas, I know from some of the people that have followed up with me on LinkedIn in the past, they talk about how they have toilet seat covers and lids that actually go down over the toilets. That definitely helps in training people. If your facility has a lid, I would say, make sure you lower that lid before you flush the toilet. The other thing I talk to people about is making sure that you protect the employee who’s going to be cleaning there. Because usually one of the first steps we do when we go in to clean a restroom is to flush the toilets and flush the urinals. Well, if that comes up five feet, where’s the person’s head when they’re flushing the toilet? It’s right over the toilet. So face shield, having respirators on, even if it’s the KN95s or N95s, they should have some type of apparatus because of the aerosols that are being released into the air from the toilets and the urinals to help protect them. And then, of course, working on proper cleaning techniques and even looking to retrofit restrooms to have UV technology in them, whether it is from a gentleman here in the Rochester market that has developed it and has the patents for it, as well as looking at technology for UV and then the actual ventilation systems.
Joel
And again, that’s something that he does, and there’s some other options out there. But look at how to protect the people. That is a big point of people getting sick in the office space because sick building syndrome has been around since the ’80s. Nobody really paid a lot of attention to it. I read an article that talks about how a $20 spend can result in a $7,000 increase to the bottom line per person in a facility.
Ray
So, between good technology, good training, and understanding PPE, all good reasons to get a consultant and a cleaning coach.
Joel
Absolutely.
Ray
Thank you, Joel.
Joel
You’re welcome.