Smarter rest stops
What to know about public bathrooms during a pandemic
It can feel as if you’re running an infectious gantlet when using a public bathroom, especially following the recent news of toilet plume, that cloud of aerosol droplets that can rise nearly 3 feet and linger long enough to be inhaled by the toilet’s next user or land on other surfaces of the bathroom.
And, in a way, you are. So what to do, especially now that many of us are starting to leave home a little more? Should we avoid shared restrooms — in parks, malls or recently reopened restaurants — like, well, the plague?
As an obstetrician and gynecologist, I spend a lot of time dispelling the myth that you can catch a sexually transmitted infection from a shared toilet seat (because you can’t — not even herpes, which is the most commonly believed myth). But what about the coronavirus? environment, where they land on walls (which you may touch while hovering over the seat — more on that later), the toilet seat, the floor, toilet and door handles.
We’ve known about toilet plume for some time. A new study suggests potentially infectious particles continue to be airborne for about one minute after each flush, and toilets can continue to generate an infectious plume several flushes after the original contaminated flush.
It’s truly the unwelcome gift that keeps on giving.
Skip the paper toilet seat covers. They are likely placebo — we have no idea if they offer protection from bacteria or viruses — and they could easily be contaminated with toilet plume, so touching them with your hands could be a source of infectious transmission.
If you need to dispose of a menstrual product in one of those little containers, touch the lid with a wad of toilet paper and sanitize your hands after. Those lids are among the worst surfaces in the bathroom stall: touched by many unwashed hands and showered with infectious plume.
If the toilet has a lid, close it before you flush so it traps the plume. Think of the lid as a mask for the toilet.
If an automated toilet is flushing, step back because those things spray.
How you dry your hands after washing probably doesn’t matter; paper towels or dryers are likely equal. But do avoid shared, reusable hand towels.
Get out of there quickly. Chatting in bathrooms is the new smoking in bathrooms — it’s a relic of the past. If you have to open a door to exit, use hand sanitizer after you leave. doors with no other option but the ground, try to get 200 feet away from foot traffic — and beware of plants such as poison ivy! Use hand sanitizer when you’re done. the bathroom and back.
We don’t know the risk of catching COVID-19 after entering a small airplane bathroom right after someone who is infected with the coronavirus, but, as I mentioned above, you should wait to enter a bathroom that someone has just exited — especially if the toilet seat is up — and then get out fast.
The airplane industry likes to say its bathrooms are as clean as those in any office building (data partly funded by the industry). And they are probably as clean as any bathroom with a facility-to-user ratio of between 1:50 and 1:75, and where the bathroom and sink are in a small closet exposed to turbulence and cleaned every four to 18 hours.