Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume

It's called toilet plume.

A toilet plume is the invisible to the naked eye, cloud-like dispersal of raw, infectious sewage particles as a result of flushing a toilet. Flush particles rapidly rise out of the bowl and several feet into the air after flushing. Aerosolized droplets can remain suspended in the air for tens of minutes between users, posing an inhalation risk. These invisible particles go on to coat and spread onto surfaces like floors and counters or objects like hand towels, bathmats, or even toothbrushes.

"A 2024 study showed evidence that even closing the lid may still lead to small viral particles escaping through gaps under the lid, resulting in viral cross-contamination of the air and surfaces in a washroom."

This is what I remember, there's no actual solution to this. Still close the lid though!

I've also heard this was debunked, that there's not much difference between lid up or down, just clean your bathroom regularly

Unless your toilet lid is airtight, you'll never fully defeat the plume.

Just keep your toothbrush in a case

I think it can help to lay some toilet paper down before you flush. I found it to be less smelly after doing so.

This seems like the pinacle of sensationalized bullshit. You're going to be fine. Flushing the toilet has never killed anyone.

There are people who literally eat shit as a fetish. If you're afraid of the possibility of errant molecules, you need to go outside.

I call 'em "farticles"

Before and after. Unless you like that little splash of dirty water on your taint.

I lived in a house owned by a female vicar once, and all the seats had man traps. This is where the lid will stay up, but when you lift the seat up and let it go it falls back down. These seats would end up pulling the lid down also.

After a while I noticed that these toilets didn't actually smell that much, because the lid was pretty much always down. By preventing the piss and shit particles from getting up into the air by the lid, this meant that you didn't breathe in piss and shit, which meant that you didn't smell it.

Anecdotally it's pretty accurate, toilets smell less when the lids are kept down. Smell strength is directly proportional to the amount of particles in the air.

With cleaning in general, there is never fully anything. It's about abatement. If a measure is (for example) 80% effective, the whole chain forward will have contamination numbers 80% lower. So even if you keep your toothbrush in a case, it will have (again, made up numbers here) 80% less contamination. Which, depending on the microbe, it could mean the difference between a immuno-compromised person catching or not a disease.

Now, in your house, you do you. But it baffles me that the norm for public restrooms in the US, even in hospitals, is to have no lid at all.

Tell that to Betsy Donovan. She died when the toilet seat was left up.

People are fascinating.

There are people who follow the "10 second rule", i.e. food hits an unclean surface like the floor and they will pick it up and eat it.

Meanwhile, every single person who was born naturally has been shit on at birth. This is a thing that happens. And studies show that excessive cleaning of newborns leads to all sorts of allergies.

So there has to be a balance.

I'm sure a non-zero number of people have gotten ill from toilets flushing. I'm also sure that number is pretty small. And I'm as sure from studies that show that keeping the lid closed still lets particles out that it's going to happen.

I'm of the opinion that this is a very small problem.

But as it happens, I keep my toothbrush at my desk because it's more convenient for me.

So if it bothers you, keep your toothbrush in a cabinet and/or in one of those little cases.

Never heard these called “man traps”

I have soft close seats and lids, but they require you to partially close them before they engage.

There was a Mythbusyers where did cultures, which is when you put the sample in a growth medium (think ideal environment for microbe multiplication). This can only detect presence or absence of microbial contamination, and which kind.

As a science experiment, it's fundamentally flawed. A preventative measure must be evaluated by quantitative methods.

You know how antiseptic soaps / gels proudly display they kill 99.9 or 99.98% of germs? It's not 99.9% of species of germs, it's 99.9% of germs that come in contact with it. Because 100% is impossible, and our bodies can deal just fine with a little bit of foreign invasion. (Incidentally, regular soap is about 99% effective, so use whatever soap you like and leave the antibacterial stuff for only when someone is actually sick.)

Anyway, closing the lid (or any other measure) will not be 100% effective, but a half-second intervention that significantly cuts exposure. It's a no brainer, just close the fucking lid.

Of course nothing's 100% poof. But that doesn't mean that you should stop. There is a massive difference between the particle numbers.

has an infection ever occured due to the lid being close, seems like it would be too small to cause problems.

But if you close the lid, all the particles concentrate on it. Then when raise it back up and sit down, there's a chance you'll pick it all up with your back.

So the question becomes, do you want shit more evenly spread out in the air or do you want concentrated shit on your back?

That same study also includes this figure,

But the study doesn't measure other surfaces or things like "a nearby sink" or "a hand towel". Perhaps for airborne particles they roam more freely, but what about surface particles? I feel like there is more to study.

A man trap isn't a style of lid though, it's more about how it's installed. The seat and lid are installed just a little too far back, such that the lid leans against the cistern but when you lift the seat it never full reaches 90°, and just falls back down. So guys always have to hold the seat up while they pee, and it's always down ready for women.

A soft close lid is the cure for this, actually. The tension in the soft close mechanism keeps the seat up.

People hear the poop part and overvalue the threat because they're icked out. That's just how humans are.

But yeah we have immune systems. These amounts can't possibly hurt anyone.

Which would make your colon a farticle accelerator...

You're... leaning back against the seat?

No one considers it a life or death matter. Just gross.

I had to look up who that was lol

My toilet clogs several times a year. I want to see that shit disappear for sure, and the water level return to normal.

You close the lid to avoid a plume of fecal particles. I close the lid because otherwise my dumb cat jumps directly into the bowl. We are not the same.

No can do. Lid stays up, i like to look down at my shit smugly as I flush it. It wasnt good enough to stay in my body, and I want it to know despair as I flush it down the tubes.

This is similar to why we all wore masks during the pandemic. No, they're not always effective, but yes, they reduce transmission rates.

You presume you don't?

YSK to not be scared of every little mundane thing in life. It will paralyze you

It's not a risk, it's a fact

My fancy Japanese toilet will automatically open the lid after flushing when things are still swirling around. I wonder if the ones made after covid still have that flaw.

toilets smell less when the lids are kept down

I'm assuming you mean when there's shit floating in it, because if your toilet just smells in general you need to clean it more.

Yeah, I'm of the mind that if I can't sense something, and I'm not getting sick all the time because of it, it's not bad enough to avoid. Lo and behold, I almost never get sick, even when my wife gets sick all the time. Now, it could absolutely be confirmation bias or some hidden 3rd factor that's causing this, but either way, bring on the fecal matter mistings!

Why do (especially public) toilets even have a lid that stays up?

Every other sexual post these days seems to be about eating ass, I’m not sure toilet plumes are high on the GenZ+ concern list.

Bathrooms smell after people have had a shit, even when they flush.

Bathrooms smell less when people flush with the lid down.

who keeps towels and toothbrushes in the shit room to begin with.

thats already gross.

I've put the toilet lid down since that mythbusters episode where they examined how much fecal matter got onto toothbrushes that are in the same room as the toilet.

Now my toothbrush isn't in the same room as my toilet but I still shut the lid.

Spoiler for the mythbusters episode.. It was a lot of fecal matter.. A lot.

I can’t see it, smell it, taste it, and it doesn’t make anybody I know sick. I’m not too worried.

Exactly, personally I like to keep them on the opposite side of my house so that you can't dry your hands at all.

Edit: I especially love it when my guests go to dry their hands and then have to start rummaging through my cupboards to find a towel, only, jokes on them! We don't keep that in the bathroom!

it baffles me that the norm for public restrooms in the US, even in hospitals, is to have no lid at all.

No lid is easier to clean, no expert but that might mean less dangers overall. Especially hospitals must have thought this through.

true, but if I gotta close the lid anyway to stop the cats from drinking from it, I may as well do it before flushing rather than after

I put the toilet lid down all the time.

I wouldn't consider being cautious about having literal fecal matter in my toothbrush mundane, but you do you.

As a science experiment, it’s fundamentally flawed. A preventative measure must be evaluated by quantitative methods.

It was fundamentally flawed by the fact that they contaminated their control toothbrush by bringing it into the toilet room in order to swab it.

Well you should be far more worried then. Because closing the lid or not won't matter. Your toothbrush is covered in it anyway. Unless you're covering your toothbrush when you're not using it.

Or ones that don’t have a lid and is permanently open…

Everything everywhere is covered in fecal matter. Mythbusters did an episode on it and their control toothbrush in the office had plenty.

Poseidon's kiss. There's no dread quite like using a porta-potty in a condition where there's a risk of that happening.