I’m pretty easy-going, but I do have one absolute house-rule: in fact I feel so strongly about it that I have a sign on my bathroom wall: “Please close the toilet lid before you flush”.
It may seem petty or overly fussy for me to ask people to do this, and especially to go to the lengths of actually typing out and printing a notice, then sticking it to the wall above the tank, but consider this ….
When water splashes down into water, other water is thrown up in reaction. Everyone must have experienced this for themselves, or at least seen this effect in those amazing pictures where water is captured falling into water, and throwing up a beautiful crown of water in response. (Found one such and added it: it's not what I was actually looking for, but it's what I actually found.)
This reaction also applies to toilets. When you flush the toilet, water falls into water, and tiny droplets of water are thrown up from the bowl and get into the air – which you then breathe in.
This also applies to anything that you’ve just put into the toilet.
And, in my house, it’s not just you that would breathe in these tiny airborne droplets of your urine, fæces or vomit! If you really want to inhale microscopic fragments of your own bodily wastes, do it in your own home, not mine.
And it’s not just an inhalation hazard. Eventually the droplets would settle out of the air – onto everything within range.
I read somewhere that one’s toothbrush should be stored at least six feet away from the toilet. This seems to indicate that six feet is the radius of the “fallout zone”. Which means that not only my toothbrush should be six feet away from the toilet: also my face flannel, body scrubs, towels …
Just think of it: you could be brushing your teeth, or washing and drying your face or body with something that holds microscopic fragments of your own piss – or even worse, someone else’s!
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