Bleedin' obvious: Crouching toilet, hidden danger?
We all know the Brits like a bit of toilet humour, but whether it warrants money for funding is another matter. Nevertheless, scientists at the Royal Liverpool Hospital have made other people’s business their business.
This study investigated whether British women prefer to crouch over public toilet seats, and whether this position (as opposed to sitting on the seat itself) was better or worse for urine flow rate and residual urine volume. Basically, if you don’t sit down, do you need to go more often?
Amazingly, of the 528 women asked, 85% of women crouched over public conveniences, 12% put paper on the seat, but once they had done that they were happy to sit down, and only 2% of women actually sat on the seat. Even when asked about using the lav at a friend's house, still 38% of women
said they would rather not touch the seat, preferring to crouch over it. Such crouching behaviour can leave women with 150% more urine than if they had sat down properly.
The paper states that you get 20% more urine flow if you sit down, and goes on to suggest that women with small bladders should “sit comfortably on the toilet whenever possible” to make sure they do not leave residual urine in the bladder after crouching. We’ll just go with the flow on this one.
[Moore, K.H. et al. (1991). Crouching over the toilet seat: prevalence among British gynaecological outpatients and its effect upon micturition. British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 98, 569-572.]
Toilet facts:
An average person visits the toilet 2,500 times a year. About 6-8 times a day, so you spend about three years of your life in the toilet!
The original 1828 French meaning of toilet, or toilette, is the “act of washing, dressing, and preparing oneself”. As time went on, the word evolved into actually being the room or facility in which one arranges their toilet.
The first toilet paper was invented in England in 1880 and sold not on a roll, but as individual sheets in a box. We use an average of 57 sheets of toilet paper a day!
Most of the toilets made today use only 1.6 gallons of water per flush. Toilets made before 1980 typically used 4.5 to 7 gallons per flush! Economy-flush toilets have put an end to such wastage.
