Don’t poo-poo this headline news.
There’s a reason public toilets are equipped with U-shaped seats as opposed to the O-shaped ones you’d find on your porcelain throne at home.
The general public has long speculated that the horseshoe shape could be for hygiene purposes — so that you don’t come into contact with someone else’s bodily fluids or where their sensitive body parts touched — or that the urine might erode the porcelain. Some have even posited that the open-front seat accommodates various body shapes and sizes that the closed seat just cannot.
But the lavatory mystery has been solved.
“Open front seats and elongated toilet bowls for public restrooms minimize the risk of the user coming in contact with possible contamination from a previous user,” Hugo Aguilar, the senior vice president of Codes and Standards at The International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO), said in a statement to Nexstar.
Not to mention, the IAPMO’s Uniform Plumbing Code explicitly states that toilets that are used by the public require the open-front seats, and if they do not, they must at least have automatic seat cover dispensers. Not every state, however, follows the same plumbing regulations.
“Having an opening prevents the toilet seat from being contaminated, especially during urination,” according to a blog entry from the American Society of Plumbing Engineers, which also explained that the U-shaped seat on the John was originally created so that Janes could “wipe” more easily. “This also prevents genital contact with the seat.”
The few inches lacking on the toilet seat for cleanliness, however, are often the least of people’s worries when using the can.
Public restrooms are notoriously disgusting, especially in the Big Apple, where it was revealed that communal bathrooms are riddled with germs from bodily excrements or lacked soap and toilet paper.
After the report was released last month, The Post asked Manhattanites whether they’d use the city’s public loos — the resounding answer seemed to be know.
Many passersby said they’d rather hold it until they got home, horrified by the unsanitary conditions.
When a restroom is that dirty, people might try to hover over the seat so as not to come in contact with whatever grime or bacteria are on it. Experts, though, advise against it.
“Many people tend to hover or even sit on top of the toilet seat, leading to splashing of urine and feces on the toilet seat,” Dr. Poonam Desai previously said in a viral video online.
While she likes to wipe the seat and place a seat cover before she uses the toilet, she assured viewers that it isn’t “very likely that you contract a disease by directly sitting on the toilet seat,” although “it is kind of gross to sit on other people’s feces or urine.”
“If all of us sat on the toilet seat using a toilet seat cover, there would be less urine and feces on the toilet seat,” she added.
She also warned women that hovering while urinating can strain the pelvic muscles and lead to an “incomplete empty” of the bladder.
“So if you want to not only be sanitary but also protect your pelvic muscles, it’s probably better for you to sit on the toilet seat,” she said.