Flushing a toilet generates aerosols that could linger in the air for hours, possibly days.
With the Coronavirus situation in the country worsening with each passing day, there are many theories and researches that are being seen to implying a possible solution to contain the spread of the COVID-19 situation.
One such theory is whether flushing a toilet could lead to the spread of the novel coronavirus. Well, let's find out here.
A new study has found that public washrooms can indeed be hotbeds for the transmission of airborne diseases. Flushing a toilet generates aerosols that could linger in the air for hours, possibly days. Now that aerosols are widely accepted as the primary mode of transmission of the virus COVID-19 virus, there a risk of getting infected from aerosols generated by a toilet flush.
A study published in the journal Physics of Fluids said that blocking the path of faecal-oral transmission, which commonly occurs during toilet usage, is key to suppressing the spread of the novel coronavirus. Flushing a toilet generates “strong turbulence within the bowl”. The researchers say that the upward velocity of as much as 5 m/second is produced while flushing, which is capable of expelling aerosol particles out of the toilet bowl. Further, they note that 40 to 60 per cent of the total number of particles can rise above the toilet seat to cause a large-area spread, with the height of particles reaching more than 106 cm from the ground. Even after flushing (35-70 seconds) after the last flushing, the diffused particles continue to climb.
There have been researchers who have traced coronavirus in the gastro-intestinal tract of COVID-19 patients, and in sewage, but there is no conclusive evidence of infection taking place through from faeces, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). “There is some evidence that COVID-19 infection may lead to intestinal infection and be present in faeces… There have been no reports of faecal-oral transmission of the COVID-19 virus to date,” the WHO had said in a scientific briefing in March 2020.
“I would say that the chances of getting COVID-19 from flush-generated droplets are small. It is much more likely that the respiratory aerosols being exhaled by an infected person breathing within a poorly ventilated restroom pose a much greater threat,” co-author Siddhartha Verma from the Florida Atlantic University said by email as quoted by The Indian Express.
“Furthermore,” he said, “studies by other groups (cited in our paper) have discussed evidence that flush-generated droplets do pose a notable risk for the transmission of certain gastro-intestinal illnesses.”
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 "Flushing the toilet spreads COVID-19")
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