Donny Talks About Toilets

Summary

Hyperfixed Episode Summary: "Donny Talks About Toilets"

Release Date: January 16, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Hyperfixed, host Alex Goldman dives into a topic that many might overlook but resonates deeply with a significant portion of their audience: public restrooms. Prompted by numerous listener submissions, Alex, along with producer Amor Yates, explores the myriad issues surrounding public bathroom design, hygiene, and cultural attitudes.

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The Public Restroom Dilemma

Amor Yates begins by highlighting the overwhelming number of complaints received about public restrooms, which surpassed all other submissions. This surge in feedback underscores a collective frustration with the current state of public bathroom facilities.

Amor Yates (02:02):
"We had nearly a dozen public restroom complaints and I felt compelled to investigate this further."

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Donny Perry’s Comprehensive Critique

The episode centers around Donny Perry, a design-centric professional from Des Moines, Iowa, who passionately critiques every aspect of public restrooms. Donny argues that American public bathrooms are among the poorest designed products, emphasizing functionality over user experience.

Donny Perry (04:17):
"There is perhaps no product more poorly designed than the American public bathroom."

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Key Issues Identified by Donny

1. Toilet Seat Interaction

   Donny expresses a strong aversion to touching toilet seats with his hands. He proposes a foot-operated mechanism to lift and lower toilet seats, citing an encounter in a Brooklyn restaurant where a foot pedal was used for trash cans but not for toilets.

   Donny Perry (04:56):
   "Why doesn't this toilet seat and this toilet cover operate by foot pedal instead of me having to use my hands?"

2. Privacy Concerns

   The design of restroom stalls often leaves gaps that compromise user privacy, leading to uncomfortable and invasive experiences.

   Donny Perry (08:41):
   "The gap of shame as you briefly make eye contact in your most vulnerable position possible with people who are just passing by."

3. Soundscape Design

   Poor sound management in restrooms results in unwanted echoes and amplified sounds, creating an awkward and unsettling environment.

   Donny Perry (08:41):
   "Soundscape design is so important in the bathroom to me, and I walk into so many restrooms where it's just not even considered."

4. Faulty Motion Sensors

   Motion-activated sinks often malfunction, either being too sensitive or not responsive enough, frustrating users who rely on touchless options for hygiene.

   Donny Perry (10:36):
   "None of the motion sensors at the sinks work. None of them work."

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Expert Insights: Harvey Molage and Stephen Soifer

To shed light on these issues, Alex and Amor consult with Harvey Molage, a sociology professor and editor of the book Toilet, and Stephen Soifer, co-founder of the American Restroom Association (ARA).

1. Design Prioritization

   Harvey Molage explains that restroom design is often the least prioritized aspect of building projects, typically delegated to the lowest-ranking designers, resulting in subpar facilities.

   Harvey Molage (13:17):
   "That's why in the United States, you go into any of these buildings and the entry hall is brilliantly lit...But the restroom, it's like you call Home Depot, and they send the same crap to every restroom."

2. Cultural Attitudes

   The intentional design flaws, such as the peephole gaps, reflect deeper American cultural issues like prudery and discomfort with public displays of personal actions.

   Harvey Molage (14:54):
   "You can see America right? When you're looking through that crack...they are seeing America."

3. Advocacy and Solutions

   Stephen Soifer discusses ongoing efforts by advocacy groups to improve restroom designs, including the implementation of foot pedals and pushing for legislative changes to ensure better facilities.

   Stephen Soifer (19:00):
   "I've seen some designs for the pedals."
   Stephen Soifer (20:06):
   "People are making changes...There's a whole public restroom movement in this country."

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Microbial Reality: Insights from Microbiologist Jason Tetro

To address whether public restrooms are genuinely hazardous, Alex interviews Jason Tetro, a microbiologist with nearly four decades of experience.

1. Germ Comparison

   Contrary to popular belief, Jason explains that toilet seats are among the least contaminated surfaces in restrooms. Common items like cell phones, door handles, hand dryers, and soap dispensers harbor more germs.

   Jason Tetro (26:02):
   "The toilet seat is probably one of the least contaminated environments or surfaces that you're going to encounter in a restroom."

2. Transmission Risks

   The primary risk isn't from the toilet seat itself but from aerosolized particles created when flushing—a phenomenon known as toilet plume.

   Jason Tetro (26:18):
   "By putting your skin, fully intact skin, onto a surface, a fully intact surface... there's no risk of getting an infection from a toilet seat."

3. Hand Hygiene

   Poor handwashing practices contribute significantly to the spread of germs. Jason emphasizes the importance of washing hands thoroughly to mitigate health risks.

   Jason Tetro (27:54):
   "83% of the population do not wash their hands properly. That's basically what we found."

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Practical Recommendations

Drawing from the discussion, Alex and Jason offer actionable tips to enhance restroom hygiene:

• Close the Lid Before Flushing: Prevents toilet plume from dispersing germs into the air.

  Alex Goldman (31:00):
  "Shutting the lid before flushing, that is huge."

• Thorough Handwashing: Encourage proper handwashing techniques to reduce infection risks.

  Jason Tetro (33:38):
  "It's no longer an issue for me. But I can't say the same thing for them."

• Use of Foot Pedals: Where available, utilize foot pedals to minimize hand contact with surfaces.

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Conclusion

While public restrooms may not be as germ-infested as urban legends suggest, their design often neglects user comfort and privacy. Through listener feedback and expert insights, Hyperfixed highlights the pressing need for better restroom designs and personal hygiene practices. The episode underscores that while individual actions like thorough handwashing are crucial, systemic changes in restroom infrastructure are equally important for improving public health and user experience.

Notable Quotes:

• Donny Perry (04:17):
  "There is perhaps no product more poorly designed than the American public bathroom."

• Harvey Molage (14:54):
  "You can see America right? When you're looking through that crack...they are seeing America."

• Jason Tetro (26:02):
  "The toilet seat is probably one of the least contaminated environments or surfaces that you're going to encounter in a restroom."

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Call to Action

If you have experiences or problems related to public restrooms or any other topics, consider submitting them to Hyperfixed for discussion in future episodes. Join the conversation and become part of the movement to improve the everyday annoyances that impact us all.

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This summary was crafted based on the transcript and podcast information provided. For more insights and episodes, visit hyperfixedpod.com.

Transcript

[Alex Goldman]

On Death, Sex and Money.

[Brian Lowry]

We feature interviews with you, our community.

[Alex Goldman]

Of listeners, getting honest about uncomfortable things. I developed an illness where it isn't safe for me to drive.

[Harvey Molage]

A friend once said to me, sex is like air. You don't think about it until you're not getting enough. This is a similar sort of thing.

[Alex Goldman]

If you just replace sex with driving. Listen to deaf Sex and Money wherever you get. Podcasts this episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates praise and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states.

[Brian Lowry]

Why do people commit themselves to the things they do? Why are people so worried about sport?

[Alex Goldman]

Why?

[Brian Lowry]

Why wine? Why video games? I'm Brian Lowry and in this season of my podcast Know what yout See, I'm asking a simple question, but a really big one. What's the point? In conversations with people with a variety of passions and obsessions, we get the chance to look through a window and see what it means to truly focus on a realm of human experience. Join me on Know what yout See. New episodes begin November 26th.

[Alex Goldman]

Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. This is Hyperfixed on this show. Listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them. Or at least I try. And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. So before I introduce you to this week's episode, I want to formally introduce you to Hyperfix producer Amor Yates.

[Amor Yates]

Hey Alex.

[Alex Goldman]

So this week Amor noticed a surprising trend in our problem submission form. Apparently you all had a lot to say about the state of public restrooms. Amor, can you tell me why public restrooms in particular, as a problem, intrigued you so much?

[Amor Yates]

Yeah. So we had nearly a dozen public restroom complaints and I felt compelled to investigate this further. Not just because of the sheer number of these bathroom related questions, which I should also note is more than any other submission we have so far, but also because public restrooms might be the bane of my existence.

[Alex Goldman]

I mean, I'm not particularly fond of public restrooms either, but they're also not something I've given a ton of thought to. And it seems like you definitely have. So why do you hate them?

[Amor Yates]

Have you ever seen the 1999 Tarzan animated film by any chance?

[Alex Goldman]

No, I've never seen it because I was 20 at that time and I was like out doing cool stuff. Sorry.

[Amor Yates]

Well, there's a scene in the early years of Tarzan's life where he's swimming in a large pool of water, clandestine approaching a herd of elephants that are bathing and socializing because he's been dared to grab an elephant hair.

[Alex Goldman]

Huh.

[Amor Yates]

So while Tarzan is swimming toward these elephants, there's a smaller elephant skeptically examining this water that all his family seems to be enjoying and chatting in. And he says, mom, are you sure this water is sanitary? It looks questionable to me. This is how I feel about public restrooms. They are questionable, and I am not alone in this feeling. So this week, Donnie talks about toilets. Obviously, we can't reach out to all of the people that wrote into us, but there was one guy whose complaint with public bathrooms didn't quite encompass all the others, but it came pretty close.

[Donnie Perry]

My name is Donny Perry, and I am in my beautiful hometown of Des Moines, Iowa.

[Amor Yates]

This is Donny. He works for a company that produces stationary products like paper, journals, notebooks. So he thinks about design a lot. And I don't just mean the look of products. When Donnie is thinking about design, he's thinking about how products are used by people. And to him, there is perhaps no product more poorly designed than the American public bathroom.

[Donnie Perry]

Putting our conversation in context, I'm going to talk about toilets, using toilets, and the three parts of the toilet that I'm concerned with. We'll call it the bowl, the seat.

[Alex Goldman]

And the COVID Sounds like his problem is with toilets.

[Amor Yates]

No, Alex, this man has beef with every part of the public bathroom experience. But the physical design of the toilet is definitely at the top of that list. The problem is that Donnie P. Is standing up, and unless he's using a urinal, he has to lift the toilet seat to do this. But Donnie hates touching the toilet seat with his hands. He thinks there has to be a better way to do this, and he has a very specific idea of what that should look like.

[Donnie Perry]

One time, I was in a great barbecue restaurant in Brooklyn, and I went into the restroom, and all they had was a toilet. There was not a urinal. So I walked up to the toilet, and I was, like, forced to touch the seat, but right next to the toilet was a trash can. That trash can had a lid, but the lid operated with a foot pedal. Super common trash can design. And I thought, why doesn't this toilet seat and this toilet cover operate by foot pedal instead of me having to use my hands, reach down and touch it?

[Amor Yates]

But Donnie is so hardcore about this that he thinks there should Be a pedal lifting toilet seats in all restrooms, even residential ones. Like, if you go to a party at your friend's house, Donnie thinks you shouldn't have to use your hands to lift their toilet seat.

[Alex Goldman]

I can't imagine that someone hasn't already made a toilet like this.

[Amor Yates]

I don't know if I can say that nobody in the world has made this toilet, but I can say that Donnie has been looking for a toilet like this for years, all around the world, and so far, he's found nothing.

[Donnie Perry]

So I've been to Japan a number of times, and I think we can say with confidence, Japan is the world leader in toilet design in terms of everything that a toilet can do and how it can make you feel. They're runaway leaders. That said, you're still forced to touch Japanese toilets. So the leaders in toilet design have not solved it. And in the way that I would approve of. What I have seen is attempts to kind of make us feel less gross around toilets. But the attempts, for me, make me feel even worse. And one of the attempts is where the toilet seat is kind of wrapped in this plastic that rotates around into the back of the toilet like some magical sanitation's happening back there. That's supposed to make me okay with touching this. It only makes me feel great grocer when I. When I see those toilet seats. I suppose not having a cover on public restrooms is one way. Like, hey, that's one less thing you have to touch. But if I'm choosing to. If I'm choosing to use the toilet standing up, then I still have to touch the seat, and that's even grosser, in my opinion. And I walk into every bathroom experience just so grossed out and frustrated that. That we're not addressing this.

[Alex Goldman]

Amor, I heard you snickering at him. Are you laughing at poor Donnie?

[Amor Yates]

Of course not. But I love that you can just, like, hear him picturing the bathroom.

[Alex Goldman]

Dude, the disgust in his voice. It just sounds like it touches him to his core. He hates public restrooms more than anyone. Except maybe you.

[Amor Yates]

Honestly, though, I totally agree with him. I'm a. I'm a germaphobe, and I think touching the toilet is disgusting.

[Alex Goldman]

So how do you deal with this problem when you have to lift or lower the toilet seat?

[Amor Yates]

I use my foot.

[Alex Goldman]

You, like, you take your shoe off your foot and you swipe at it with it?

[Amor Yates]

No.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, explain what you do.

[Amor Yates]

When I go to the bathroom and I have to lift the toilet seat cover, I simply use the front bottom part of my shoe. To lift it up.

[Alex Goldman]

Did you pitch this idea to Donnie?

[Amor Yates]

Yes. And his response was hilarious.

[Donnie Perry]

Frankly, I don't want the toilet seat touching my shoes either. So, yeah, I can use my foot. I can use something other than my hand. I can bring in a tool, I guess a little hook or a stick, something. But I feel like all of this is just poorly. Duct tape solutions.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, so this isn't his only issue with the bathroom, right? Like, what are his other issues?

[Donnie Perry]

I have two. The first one is, I think this is a common gross out is public restroom stall design where the door does not fully shut and it leaves the. The gap of shame as you briefly make eye contact in your most vulnerable position possible with people who are just passing by. That. That is. That is one thing. The other thing that really grosses me out is when public restrooms do not have sound. All public restrooms should have sound. This is where people go to, of course, use the toilet and all the sounds that come with that. But then this is where you're like blowing your nose. This is where you're. You're coughing. This is where, in worst case scenario, you might need to vomit. Right. Soundscape design is so important in the bathroom to me, and I walk into so many restrooms where it's just not even considered. There is no sound. It's just a tiled echo chamber where you hear everything your fellow bathroom users are doing magnified over and over again, just bouncing off the walls.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, so I can relate to that. When I worked at Gimlet, which was a podcast production company, they did a great job of soundproofing the entire floor of the building we were in. And. And the net result was when you went into the bathroom, it was like completely silent. Like, you could hear everything everyone was doing, every rustle of their clothes. So they had to start piping music in so that you couldn't hear everything everyone else was doing.

[Amor Yates]

Oh, do you remember who spearheaded that effort?

[Alex Goldman]

I don't, but whoever did was a visionary. But I think that whoever did also did so because all of us were like, this has to stop. Like, I can't use the bathroom in peace.

[Amor Yates]

It's hard to go when it's that quiet.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, so that's it. That's like all Donnie has to complain about.

[Donnie Perry]

Hold on. Third one. None of the motion sensors at the sinks work. None of them work.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, yeah, I agree with that one too. It's especially difficult for my daughter to somehow get her hands under that thing and actually make it. Make it go. But like, okay, so you're obviously not going to redesign the toilets in all of the public restrooms in America. What? How Are we going to hyper fix this problem?

[Amor Yates]

No, and Donnie knows that. But for our purposes, he kind of just wanted to know why all of these things haven't already been redesigned. You know? And this was more or less the theme of all the restroom submissions we received. People wanting to know, why are public restrooms so shitty? Like, if we know toilet seats are covered in germs, why haven't we developed a sanitary way to lift them?

[Alex Goldman]

Yeah, and why is there that little gap where people can see everything you're doing?

[Amor Yates]

Exactly. So I did that thing we do. I went looking for the person who wrote the definitive book on public restrooms.

[Alex Goldman]

And based on the fact that we are talking right now, I am assuming you found that person.

[Amor Yates]

Well, I found the guy who edited the book on public restrooms, which is.

[Harvey Molage]

Called Toilet, by the way. Nothing subtle about that.

[Amor Yates]

This is Harvey Molage. He's a professor emeritus of sociology at both NYU and UC Santa Barbara. And among other things, Harvey researches public restrooms.

[Harvey Molage]

And we did that deliberately because we wanted to get away from the shyness. Call it what it is. It is a goddamn toilet.

[Amor Yates]

So this book is a collection of essays that examines the sociology and psychology of public restrooms. And one of the things that's so fascinating about it is that over and over again, you see these writers arguing that the problems we have with the design of American restrooms are actually design choices. And if you look closely at them, you can learn a lot about our cultural attitudes on everything from gender to class to disability.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, that's a lot. Can you give me some examples?

[Amor Yates]

Yeah. Well, for one thing, I asked Harvey very broadly, why are public restrooms designed the way that they are? Everyone agrees they are uncomfortable and icky. So who is continuing to design them this way and why? And his answer was fascinating.

[Harvey Molage]

I've been involved in working with architects in public buildings, particularly NYU and ucsb, but also in London. I've worked with major architects of the world on big projects that are, in fact, adequately funded. In most cases, the design of the restroom is given to the lowest ranking member of the design team.

[Donnie Perry]

What?

[Amor Yates]

That seems crazy, I know. So what ends up happening is that when the building specs are being negotiated, let's say for a university building, they start with a blueprint where every room is allotted a specific amount of space and money. But then we get a science teacher who looks at this plan and says, no, my lab needs to be expanded. Well, obviously, that room is going to cost more money. So the additional budget and space gets pulled from, say, the commissary, but then the commissary designers are getting distressed about their vision, and so they pull from some other part of the building, and on and on it goes like that until there's one designer who has to furnish their room on a shoestring.

[Alex Goldman]

Ah, the poor schmuck with the bathroom.

[Harvey Molage]

And that's why in the United States, you go into any of these buildings and the entry hall is brilliantly lit, the floors are marble, the carpets are chosen with care. But the restroom, it's like you call Home Depot, and they send the same crap to every restroom.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, so bathrooms are obviously the last priority. But you were also saying that, like, the design choices reflect cultural attitudes in some way.

[Amor Yates]

Yes. You remember Donnie's thing about the gap of shame?

[Alex Goldman]

Oh, yes. And I remember thinking, like, isn't that just a function of the door having to open on a hinge?

[Amor Yates]

That's what I thought, too. But, Alex, according to Harvey, this is an intentional part of American bathroom design. And the reason behind it is pretty disgusting.

[Harvey Molage]

You can walk into an American restroom, and you can look between the cracks between the door and the wall, and you can see what someone's doing, including. And by the way, this then becomes American prudery, whether or not they're masturbating. And that has been a big deal to be able to see in, to see whether people are masturbating on their own or having sex with another human being.

[Alex Goldman]

Why the fuck would anybody care? That's the last thing I want to see. Listen, if people are doing that in a public restroom, that's. I'm not happy about it, but, like, I would like there to be less of a gap so I don't have to interact with that in any way. But it also does make sense, seeing as how prudish and sort of weird about sex Americans are. I get it. It sucks, though.

[Harvey Molage]

And so to ward off this possibility and discourage people from doing that, it means that no one actually has privacy. We do that in the United States, all over Europe, Britain. Wherever you go, the restroom stalls are floor to ceiling or close to it. So there's America. You can see America right? When you're looking through that crack, or worse, someone's looking at that crack, through you, they are seeing America.

[Alex Goldman]

Damn. That's like a pretty savage indictment of, like, American cultural social mores as a whole. This dude's brutal, and I didn't even.

[Amor Yates]

Prompt him for that question. We were just talking about what's up with American bathrooms. And he happened to mention this almost offhandedly. Harvey didn't really have an answer to the issue of the motion activated sinks or Donnie's toilet pedal problem. Those are more scientific and technical problems. He's more of a sociologist than a design specialist. But generally speaking, he told me that if there's something you don't like about public bathrooms, start talking about it.

[Harvey Molage]

Talk about it where you work, where you go to school, whatever. Talk about it where you go to a concert, take over. Ladies of the world, unite.

[Amor Yates]

He said this because I was complaining about the fact that women's restroom lines are almost always at least twice as long as men's.

[Harvey Molage]

And I, by the way, I hang around in some very progressive advance towns and cities. I'm still struck that women don't go. They don't go into the men's rooms and take it over in the 60s. And I'm old enough to have been alive then. There was an era in which people were doing it with gusto, in fact, and laughter and fun. So do it with fun, if that's your thing. And enter. That's a radical move. Enter in you have a need, fill it.

[Alex Goldman]

What a little cutie that guy is. Did he tell you anything else?

[Amor Yates]

Oh, yeah. So right before we got off, he was like, by the way, have you spoken to the American Restroom Association?

[Alex Goldman]

The American Restroom association, of course. There's a public advocacy group for better public restrooms. Why didn't I think about that?

[Amor Yates]

The American Restroom association is this organization that advocates for clean, safe and well designed bathrooms in the United States. But they do a lot of policy work as well. So we called up the co founder and treasurer of ara, his name is Stephen Soifer. And we told Stephen about Donnie's foot pedal toilet design. And immediately he was like, oh, yeah, I've seen that.

[Stephen Soifer]

Well, believe it or not, certainly during COVID that was something that was implemented in some public bathrooms.

[Alex Goldman]

Oh my God, it exists.

[Amor Yates]

Yes. The idea was that if Covid is spreading through people touching surfaces in shared spaces, then we need to create ways for them to exist in these spaces without touching stuff. In fact, Stephen said there were some public bathrooms that had been given a whole foot pedal overhaul.

[Stephen Soifer]

Yeah, yeah, they're a foot pedal. And same with like opening the public bathroom doors and you still see them, you know, every now and then. And it's pretty easy to do. I've seen some designs for the pedals.

[Alex Goldman]

I can't believe that such a thing exists.

[Amor Yates]

Clearly There aren't a lot of these. But Donnie's dream restroom is out there.

[Alex Goldman]

Which is great, but, like, it makes me curious now why this foot pedal design isn't more prevalent. Like, how expensive could it possibly be to implement?

[Amor Yates]

Actually, they're super cheap. Steven estimates you could probably mass manufacture them for 50 bucks at most. But it just goes back to that thing that Harvey told us. When designing a building or choosing what to update the bathroom is always the lowest priority. And unless a change to the restroom is required by law, there are very few businesses that will choose to update their restrooms.

[Alex Goldman]

So, Amor, I have to confess that I think that the whole fixation with toilet seats is, like, kind of silly, because I'm not convinced that they are nearly as gross as you think they are. Which, like, if you're in the audience and you think that makes me nasty, I apologize, but, like, I just don't. I just don't have the same kind of association that you guys do. But finding out from Steven that it would be so inexpensive to, like, put these foot switches on every toilet everywhere, like, that's even sillier because, like, these are rooms that everyone is using.

[Amor Yates]

Do you want to hear something else that's silly?

[Alex Goldman]

Ooh, nice segue.

[Amor Yates]

Do you remember Donnie's other problem about the motion sensored sinks and why they never work?

[Stephen Soifer]

Someone explained to me what the problem was with those sensors. They're. They're highly sensitive, so depending on how they're set, they will either go off easily or not go off at all. So, yeah, I think the technology is simply not good. And I do remember someone telling me that they constantly have to come in and adjust these sensors both on the sinks and the toilets. And then if they adjusted wrong, voila. You know, slightest movement on the toilet, it's going to go off.

[Amor Yates]

So sounds like the motion sensors just have a hard time computing all the movement in a crowded public bathroom. Like, what exactly is someone waving their hand in front of the sink sensor versus what's just dripping from a leaky faucet?

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, yeah, those things are terrible. Where do you even begin this fight? I mean, we both live in the New York area. I live in New Jersey, but spend a lot of time in the city. Do we just go to the city of New York and say, hey, you've got to fix the bathrooms?

[Amor Yates]

No. According to Steven, the person to go to is the building inspector, because the building inspector is responsible for enforcing the building codes. The problem is that there are nowhere near enough building inspectors in Hyde Park.

[Stephen Soifer]

I think there's one full time building inspector and a half time building inspector and they're going around inspecting buildings like they are so busy and there's so many things they need to do that. Where is the list, you know, where on the list of issues the public complaints about toilets come? I'd say pretty close to the bottom.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, so this is obviously a thing that's important enough to our listeners that we've gotten like a dozen messages about it. And I don't think we've gotten a dozen messages about anything else. But it doesn't seem like there's any real mechanism for change at the moment.

[Amor Yates]

There isn't a good mechanism or a fast one. But Stephen says people are making changes.

[Stephen Soifer]

Even if we start at the building inspector level, then we move up. So I know of groups, there's several groups across the country, believe it or not, toilet advocacy groups in New York city, in Washington, D.C. in Portland, Oregon, and they actually have gone to the city council and demanded more toilets. And I'm saying this for a reason. In New York City, there was a group that helped get the city council to pass legislation to require, get a load of this, at least one public restroom in every zip code area of the city. There's lots of changes that are happening, but they're infrequent, they're at the local level. And hopefully before I die, we'll actually have a public tour toilet movement in this country.

[Alex Goldman]

After the break. If this show is actually going to start a public toilet movement in this country, I think we have to know what needs a change of. So I set out to learn what about public restrooms is actually bad for us. Welcome back to the show. So before the break, we met this guy named Donnie who seemed to speak for a lot of our listeners when he told us that he thinks shared toilets are absolutely disgusting. He had a bunch of questions about public restrooms, why they are the way they are, and we answered them one by one. But there was one very important question that Donnie didn't ask. And to me it seemed like most of these other bathroom related questions were predicated on the answer to that one missing question, which is this. Are public bathrooms really that gross? Now, I understand that to a certain extent, gross is in the eye of the beholder. For example, some people think it's gross not to wash your legs. Other people think it's gross to sit down in the shower, even if it's your own shower. I've already been through this. I'm not getting into this again. But I wanted to talk to someone who could tell me on, like, a real microbial level if touching the toilet seat in a public restroom is actually any grosser or more dangerous than touching any surface in the New York City subway. So I called this guy.

[Brian Lowry]

My name is Jason Tetro. That's Tango, Echo, Tango, Romeo, Oscar, if you happen to be phonetically inclined. And what I do for the last. It's gotten close to 40 years now. Has been working on understanding those little invisible creatures called microbes.

[Alex Goldman]

Jason is a professor at the University of Ottawa. And in those 40 years as a microbiologist, studying things like bacteria, viruses, and other germs, he has only infected himself once.

[Brian Lowry]

That was just a very bad situation where I was working on something and someone got my attention while I should have been focused on what I was working with. And, yeah, it was pretty bad.

[Alex Goldman]

I figured if anybody could say definitively just how gross a toilet seat was, it would be Jason. So I asked him.

[Brian Lowry]

Well, you know, first off, have you ever seen, over the last, I'd say 10 years, you know, your cell phone is germier than a toilet seat?

[Alex Goldman]

Oh, yeah, plenty of those.

[Brian Lowry]

Or your door handles are germier than a toilet seat. Well, it's actually true, Believe it or not, the toilet seat is probably one of the least contaminated environments or surfaces that you're going to encounter in a restroom.

[Alex Goldman]

Jason said that it's actually pretty hard to catch germs from sitting on a toilet seat because in order for something to make you sick, it actually has to get inside of you.

[Brian Lowry]

By putting your skin, fully intact skin, onto a surface, a fully intact surface. There's no possible way for a portal of entry to be essentially engaged or invaded. So there's no risk of getting an infection from a toilet seat in that sense. Now, if you have cuts on your gluteus and you sit on a toilet seat, then, yes, the potential for Staphylococcus aureus to get in there or Pseudomonas aeruginosa to get in there and cause a wound, infection is possible. So you can never say it's impossible. But the likelihood for anyone to catch anything from a toilet seat is minimal to almost negligible.

[Alex Goldman]

Not only is it hard to catch anything from a toilet seat, Jason says that they are actually relatively clean compared to the rest of the restroom.

[Brian Lowry]

The ones that are actually the most contaminated happens to be the hand dryer and the soap dispenser.

[Alex Goldman]

Why the hand dryer?

[Brian Lowry]

Because at the end of the day, you're supposed to wash your hands a certain way you're supposed to get your hands wet, put some soap in there, keep rubbing for anywhere from 20 to 40 seconds. Or as I like to say, you say the Alphabet backwards or sing Happy Birthday twice.

[Alex Goldman]

Right.

[Brian Lowry]

But the problem is that most people don't do that. They do the little tinkle thing with their fingers or something along those lines. Or if you've ever watched Seinfeld, you do what Poppy does, which is you play with your hair, and then they hit the hand dryer, and then before you know it, you're covering that hand dryer and whatever happens to be on your hands. And that is the biggest problem of all. So the hand dryer and the soap dispenser, obviously the soap dispenser are going to be the germiest places.

[Alex Goldman]

So the two places which people go to to clean themselves are generally the grossest.

[Brian Lowry]

Yep, pretty much.

[Alex Goldman]

Do we have any good information about, like, how much better, like, hygiene in the world would be if people wash their hands properly? Like, how much less likely we would be to have flu seasons and things like that, or is Mostly just guessing 83%? 83?

[Brian Lowry]

Yeah.

[Alex Goldman]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Lowry]

83% of the population do not wash their hands properly. That's basically what we found. So the fact is, is that if you were washing your hands properly, that 83% would disappear. So, yeah, hands are responsible for pretty much everything that we've been seeing.

[Alex Goldman]

So the problem is not the unknown human matter that coats the sticky restroom floors, which, like, I don't want to minimize that, is really gross. But the real thing that's making us sick is us. It's less about public restroom design and more on us to use better hygiene in public restrooms.

[Brian Lowry]

You know, what you really should be scared of, though, is that you should actually think about it from this perspective. How many people would you imagine have probably done a courtesy flush?

[Alex Goldman]

So a courtesy flush means something different to everyone, I guess, depending on what you find courteous. But what Jason's talking about is when you flush the toilet halfway through doing your business to get rid of some of the smell for other people in the bathroom. Jason says that by being courteous to others, you are actually putting yourself at risk.

[Brian Lowry]

You have several openings down there, and one of them is for out, and the other one is for out. But sometimes the droplets will get in, and it will lead to that urinary tract getting contaminated.

[Alex Goldman]

So what you end up with is a pretty gnarly urinary tract infection. What parts of the restroom design are making sanitation worse? Like, it can't just be people's bad habits. I mean, they must be baked in in some way to the way that restrooms are designed.

[Brian Lowry]

Yeah. And I've actually worked with on this in the past, trying to figure out what is the best approach to be able to reduce the likelihood of any kind of infection transfer or infectious microbe transfer. And there are a couple of options. One, and it's very simple, add lids. It's just if you have a lid, then you're not going to have aerosolization of the plume, and as a result of that, you're not going to have the contamination of the environment.

[Alex Goldman]

As much as Donnie hates having to touch the toilet, a toilet seat lid is actually his best protection from some of the most harmful elements of a public restroom. Jason tells me that any germs you might come in contact with on the toilet seat are nothing compared to the world of gross that is coming out of them in the form of toilet plume aerosols. So when you flush a toilet, the current of water forms a tidal wave of molecules that project toilet particles into the air as far as six feet away. I mean, we heard a lot about this during COVID right. Where we all became way too aware of the risks of airborne illnesses. So shutting the lid before flushing, that is huge. Before we close the lid on this conversation, I wanted to ask Jason, a person who thinks about germs a lot, what he does to protect himself from germs in the restroom. And this is what he said.

[Brian Lowry]

So the first thing that I do is when I get into a restroom, I kind of do, well, both an eye check and a smell check. The eye check is really to find out whether or not things are touchless. And then the smell test to find out whether or not there's been any kind of deposition that sort of has led to aerosols in the air. Because if you can smell it, then there's a very good likelihood that there was probably droplets that came with that that have been plumed out. I like to essentially hold my breath a lot. And then when I'm done, depending on what it is, if it's just sort of a handle toilet, then I'll use my foot. And if it's one of these infrared ones where they actually detect motion, then sort of as soon as I stand up, I'm holding my breath because there's going to be a plume because it's going to flush. Once I've done that, then I go to the sink, and then hopefully it's touchless. But if it's not then what I do is I essentially make sure that I have a lot of soap so that when I'm washing my hands, I can try and, you know, avoid anything that may have been picked up from the taps. And then hopefully I can use the back of my hand or my wrist or my elbow to close the taps and also to hit the hand dryer. And if it's paper towel, then I just grab the paper paper towel and I use the paper towel to open the door if I can use it. Otherwise, I'll open the door with my pinky and then I'll use hand sanitizer when I'm out. I mean, it sounds really crazy. It sounds almost like something that the army maneuvers would do. But at the end of the day, it's kind of like how I do everything from a risk assessment perspective to try and keep myself safe.

[Alex Goldman]

Yeah, I'm definitely not going to do even half of that, but I am convinced that Amor and Donnie and all of the people who wrote into this show, they're definitely onto something. The public restroom is gross. And we're gross. Like, people are gross. So I guess we're sort of made for each other. I mean, that's not the lesson, but yeah, do what makes you comfortable. Wash your damn hands. Close the lid when you flush. And I guess if you really want to, you can hold your breath the whole time.

[Brian Lowry]

There's so much knowledge that I want to share and so much of it is gross. And it's just like, for me, I become used to it. I become used to seeing microbes around. I know how to protect myself. I know how to stay safe. Like, it's no longer an issue for me. But then I think about it from other people's perspective who don't know what I know. And I actually don't feel bad for myself. I feel bad for them because I know I'm not gonna get infected, but I can't say the same thing for them. So it's kind of more like an empathy thing. I'm like a beta zed instead of Spock.

[Alex Goldman]

This episode of Hyperfixed was hosted by Amor Yates, who goes through an entire container of hand soap every four days. And me, Alex Goldman, who will literally just crap anywhere. Hyperfix was produced by Amor Yates and two self described dirty girls, Emma Cortland and Sari Soffer Sukinek. It was edited by Emma Cortland, Seri Soffer Sukanek and Amor Yates. The music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, who may or may not have a butt it was engineered by Tony Williams, who uses a warm bidet. Fact Checking by Sona Avakian. You can get bonus episodes, join our Discord and much [e-mail] join and if you want your very own diarrhea button from the Casey Wants to Believe episode, seems appropriate to plug that right now. You can get [e-mail] button. Also, this show can't exist without problems to solve, so head on over to hyperfixpod.com to submit your problems. Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from prx, a network of independent, creator owned, listener supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at Radiotopia fm. Thanks for listening. See you soon. Radiotopia from PRX.