You really should put the toilet seat down
And while it may also put some household arguments to rest, the real reason to close the toilet lid is a phenomenon known as a "toilet plume."
When you flush a toilet, the swirling water that removes your waste from the bowl also mixes with small particles of that waste, shooting aerosolized feces into the air.
Low-flow toilets have decreased this risk — they don't gush or blast as much as other types of johns — but countless old toilets are still in use today and can really spew.
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Why you should always put the lid down when flushing the toilet
It's one of the most annoying customs in many relationships, when one forgets to put the lid down before flushing the toilet
It's one of the most annoying customs in many relationships, when one forgets to put the lid down before flushing the toilet. But now a scientist has waded into the years old debate and explained exactly why people have a reason to moan about the disgusting habit.
Charles Gerba, a professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona, said: 'You get a good spray out of the toilet area. 'When droplets come out of the toilet, it looks like the Fourth of July.' July 4 is a federal holiday in the US to celebrate its independence.
Not putting the toilet lid down before flushing the water allows a cloud of bacteria to explode into the air. This showering of bacteria can settle on nearby surfaces in the bathroom, including toothbrushes, towels and even walls. It can be known as the 'aerosol effect' to some scientists, but others refer to the unpleasant scenario as 'toilet plume'.
Here's why you should always close the toilet lid when you flush
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The case against always leaving the toilet seat down
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The answer may surprise you — and gross you out
The average person flushes the toilet five times a day and, apparently, most of us are doing it wrong. Get ready for some hard truths about why you should always leave the lid closed when you flush.
When you pull the lever, in addition to taking whatever business you’ve left behind down into the sewer pipes, your toilet also releases something called “toilet plume” into the air — which is basically a spray filled with microscopic bacteria, including E. coli. According to research from 1975, the germs emitted in the spray can linger in the air for up to six hours, and disperse themselves all over your bathroom … including on your toothbrush, towels and beauty products.
"Contaminated toilets have been clearly shown to produce large droplet and droplet nuclei bioaerosols during flushing, and research suggests that this toilet plume could play an important role in the transmission of infectious diseases for which the pathogen is shed in feces or vomit,” reads a 2015 update on the 1975 study from the "American Journal of Infection Control." "The possible role of toilet plume in airborne transmission of norovirus, SARS and pandemic influenza is of particular interest.”
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The case against always leaving the toilet seat down
Any household shared by men and women inevitably deals with a pressing question: what do you do with the toilet seat after it's used?
Conventionally, it's considered courteous for men to always lower the seat back down after they've urinated.
But is that necessarily the optimal solution? As it happens, a few different economists have considered this question — and found that, if your priority is minimizing the total amount of toilet-seat moving (and therefore touching) that goes on or making things fair, it's not necessarily the best strategy.
