VIDEO: Scientists show why you should close the toilet lid
Be prepared because you might never look at your toilet the same way again.
We all know that the bathroom might not be the cleanest place in the whole house.
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This is mildly ironic considering it's where humans do most of their washing.
Even so, with regular and thorough cleaning, it is still a place that is safe to enter and as long as you wash your hands after doing your business, there are no real concerns.
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But what happens when you flush the toilet and the toilet seat is still up? If you can't see anything leaving the confines of the toilet bowl then the germs are all still in one place, right?
Not exactly.
According to various doctors, researchers, and scientists, you might want to get into the habit of closing the lid before you flush your toilet.
With "before" being the important part.
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Thanks to engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder, we can now see exactly what happens when you flush a toilet with the lid still up.
The team used camera equipment and bright green lasers to reveal what the naked eye could not see.
You can see the full experiment here:
With what they have discovered, they hope to put it to use in the real world:
If it's something you can't see, it's easy to pretend it doesn't exist. But once you see these videos, you're never going to think about a toilet flush the same way again. By making dramatic visual images of this process, our study can play an important role in public health messaging.
The world is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, so any methods of reducing the spread of disease in the future is happily welcomed.
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Main image courtesy of iStock/Jummie