4 ms·

> These results demonstrate that closing the toilet lid prior to flushing does not mitigate the risk of contaminating bathroom surfaces and that disinfection of

> These results demonstrate that closing the toilet lid prior to flushing does not mitigate the risk of contaminating bathroom surfaces and that disinfection of all restroom surfaces (ie, toilet rim, floors) may be necessary after flushing or after toilet brush used for the reduction of virus cross-contamination. I fear the collision of safety culture and robot technology that will make it cheap and easy to actually keep bathroom surfaces sterile. We'll adapt to our increasingly sterile bubbles and become increasingly vulnerable to Earth's microbiome. The same kind of objections apply to things like clothes, shelter and agriculture. I'm not advocating that we do away with these, or the idea of cleanliness. But our dependence on them comes with a cost that isn't always worth paying. Particularly where the cost is a compromised immune system.

goodpoint 3y ago
> We'll adapt to our increasingly sterile bubbles and become increasingly vulnerable to Earth's microbiome This is a huge oversimplification on how the immune system works, same as saying "what does not kill you makes you stronger". No.
moredingo3 3y ago
This has real world implications to prevent the spread of disease today. For example, the norovirus is a very contagious and nasty bug that quickly spreads to patients and staff. It is not something you want to encounter. This study implies that that PPE on staff in those environments is critical and could help inform their standard disinfecting procedures.
lukev 3y ago
I presume you're referring to the "Hygiene hypothesis" which links early childhood exposure to microorganisms with fewer allergies and autoimmune disorders. It's important to note that this has not been demonstrated conclusively, and when medical professionals talk about it they stress that it's not worth exposing yourself to fecal matter intentionally to "build resistance." Personal cleanliness is still one of the more important things you can do for health. A reasonable compromise seems to be: let your kids play in the dirt, but also teach them to wash their hands after using the bathroom.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  We've absolutely seen that people not exposed to certain types of bacteria don't develop resistances to it. There's a reason tourists have to drink bottled or sterilized water, after all. That said, your compromise seems right, but it missed the point of the parent post. Living in a hyper-sterilized world is going to have consequences.
- solarpunk 3y ago
  Yeah, folks gotta understand the hygiene hypothesis kinda relies on assumptions about baseline environments, it falls flat on its face if you consider environments with industrialized biological contaminants such as hospitals, factory farms, or open sewage.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  FYI I have psoriasis and I was consciously avoiding any dirt as a kid, I was just always repulsed by dirt and mud and whatnot (was not a huge fan of sand either)... Years later I find out that non-exposure to certain environmental bacteria (that usually exist in dirt) within a certain developmental window results in a much higher chance of getting stuck with lifelong psoriasis... F___ me
- Chico75 3y ago
  In case anyone is curious about research related to this area, you can read the short history from Karelia study to biodiversity and public health interventions (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10043497/#:~:text=The%20Karelia%20Allergy%20Study%202002,circuits%20and%20lower%20allergy%20prevalence https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10043497/#:~:te....) research paper that looks at the health condition disparities between the Russian and Finnish border kids.
DiggyJohnson 3y ago
I had the same reaction to that paragraph. There is simply no convincing me to that such paranoia is rational. Bathrooms are a bit gross when it comes to germs and that’s fine. Focus on the important stuff, and let bygones be bygones.
- burnished 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - colechristensen 3y ago
    Yes, paranoia. You have about as many nonhuman cells in you as human cells. It’s hard to count. The would around you is full of microscopic life. You are absolutely covered in it. Your immune system did not evolve to function in a sterile bubble. Some people were traumatized as children to be so afraid of microorganisms that they make ridiculous decisions. The biggest culprit of foodbourne illness is sick cooks with poor hygiene. Not the failure to bleach every surface in your bathroom every time someone flushes the toilet. Oversterilization is a strong suspect in many sources of disease.
    - medler 3y ago
      > The biggest culprit of foodbourne illness is sick cooks with poor hygiene This study suggests ways to prevent those cooks from becoming sick
      - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
        It goes much further than that, and insinuates that one ought to manually disinfect all surfaces in the bathroom after flushing the toilet.
        burnished 3y ago
        ...as an alternative to closing the lid, which was the hygiene practice they determined was not effective.
Terr_ 3y ago
> cheap and easy to actually keep bathroom surfaces sterile I think that flatteringly overstates modern human abilities: Almost every surface on Earth either has life on it or is about to be get recolonized in short order. (Often after we did some temporarily-effective thing involving brute force radiation or unusual heat or volatile chemicals.) At best we'll end up with almost-sterile bathrooms that we're OK with because life that is both process-resistant and dangerous hasn't popped up yet. > We'll adapt to our increasingly sterile bubbles and become increasingly vulnerable to Earth's microbiome. There are two flavors to this that I think really need to be distinguished, because they lead to very different experiments and recommendations: 1. "Hygeine Hypothesis" - "Our immune systems need to be toughed up by winning battles against actual pathogens." 2. "Old Friends" - "Our immune systems need additional calibration by harmlessly interacting with the suite of benign things we co-evolved with." The former suggests that a certain level of (literal) inner turmoil and danger is required, whereas the latter suggests that it's a much more general issue of micro-ecological diversity and no pathogens are needed.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
unsupp0rted 3y ago
How often in nature do humans encounter their own aerosolized fecal matter?
- adolph 3y ago
  With small kids not unoften.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  Whenever they have beans for dinner
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    There’s a big difference between a fart and a toilet plume, I presume, in terms of viral/bacterial load. It might be like the difference between being in an airport for 5 minutes with a Covid stranger vs. sharing a bed with a Covid family member.
freedude 3y ago
My Grandpa used to say if a child didn't eat a pound of dirt a year it just wasn't healthy. This was usually in response to my Aunt's frenetic diatribe about a cousin getting dirty while on the farm. He was right. We got dirty on the farm. We ate dirt in the form of working and playing in the dust and mud. We would get "cleaned up" on the hot summer days by swimming in the river. Not only did we survive, we thrived. It was some of the greatest years of my life, eating a pound of dirt a year...
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  I worked on developing compartmental modelling software for consultants to use, so they could estimate how radionucleides moved around the environment. One of the parameters the consultants had to work out for their model was - how much dirt does a child eat in a year. I don't know what figure they ended up with.

goodpoint 3y ago

> We'll adapt to our increasingly sterile bubbles and become increasingly vulnerable to Earth's microbiome This is a huge oversimplification on how the immune system works, same as saying "what does not kill you makes you stronger". No.

moredingo3 3y ago

This has real world implications to prevent the spread of disease today. For example, the norovirus is a very contagious and nasty bug that quickly spreads to patients and staff. It is not something you want to encounter. This study implies that that PPE on staff in those environments is critical and could help inform their standard disinfecting procedures.

lukev 3y ago

I presume you're referring to the "Hygiene hypothesis" which links early childhood exposure to microorganisms with fewer allergies and autoimmune disorders. It's important to note that this has not been demonstrated conclusively, and when medical professionals talk about it they stress that it's not worth exposing yourself to fecal matter intentionally to "build resistance." Personal cleanliness is still one of the more important things you can do for health. A reasonable compromise seems to be: let your kids play in the dirt, but also teach them to wash their hands after using the bathroom.

zdragnar 3y ago
We've absolutely seen that people not exposed to certain types of bacteria don't develop resistances to it. There's a reason tourists have to drink bottled or sterilized water, after all. That said, your compromise seems right, but it missed the point of the parent post. Living in a hyper-sterilized world is going to have consequences.
solarpunk 3y ago
Yeah, folks gotta understand the hygiene hypothesis kinda relies on assumptions about baseline environments, it falls flat on its face if you consider environments with industrialized biological contaminants such as hospitals, factory farms, or open sewage.
pmarreck 3y ago
FYI I have psoriasis and I was consciously avoiding any dirt as a kid, I was just always repulsed by dirt and mud and whatnot (was not a huge fan of sand either)... Years later I find out that non-exposure to certain environmental bacteria (that usually exist in dirt) within a certain developmental window results in a much higher chance of getting stuck with lifelong psoriasis... F___ me
Chico75 3y ago
In case anyone is curious about research related to this area, you can read the short history from Karelia study to biodiversity and public health interventions (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10043497/#:~:text=The%20Karelia%20Allergy%20Study%202002,circuits%20and%20lower%20allergy%20prevalence https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10043497/#:~:te....) research paper that looks at the health condition disparities between the Russian and Finnish border kids.

DiggyJohnson 3y ago

I had the same reaction to that paragraph. There is simply no convincing me to that such paranoia is rational. Bathrooms are a bit gross when it comes to germs and that’s fine. Focus on the important stuff, and let bygones be bygones.

burnished 3y ago
[flagged]
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Yes, paranoia. You have about as many nonhuman cells in you as human cells. It’s hard to count. The would around you is full of microscopic life. You are absolutely covered in it. Your immune system did not evolve to function in a sterile bubble. Some people were traumatized as children to be so afraid of microorganisms that they make ridiculous decisions. The biggest culprit of foodbourne illness is sick cooks with poor hygiene. Not the failure to bleach every surface in your bathroom every time someone flushes the toilet. Oversterilization is a strong suspect in many sources of disease.
  - medler 3y ago
    > The biggest culprit of foodbourne illness is sick cooks with poor hygiene This study suggests ways to prevent those cooks from becoming sick
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      It goes much further than that, and insinuates that one ought to manually disinfect all surfaces in the bathroom after flushing the toilet.
      - burnished 3y ago
        ...as an alternative to closing the lid, which was the hygiene practice they determined was not effective.

Terr_ 3y ago

> cheap and easy to actually keep bathroom surfaces sterile I think that flatteringly overstates modern human abilities: Almost every surface on Earth either has life on it or is about to be get recolonized in short order. (Often after we did some temporarily-effective thing involving brute force radiation or unusual heat or volatile chemicals.) At best we'll end up with almost-sterile bathrooms that we're OK with because life that is both process-resistant and dangerous hasn't popped up yet. > We'll adapt to our increasingly sterile bubbles and become increasingly vulnerable to Earth's microbiome. There are two flavors to this that I think really need to be distinguished, because they lead to very different experiments and recommendations: 1. "Hygeine Hypothesis" - "Our immune systems need to be toughed up by winning battles against actual pathogens." 2. "Old Friends" - "Our immune systems need additional calibration by harmlessly interacting with the suite of benign things we co-evolved with." The former suggests that a certain level of (literal) inner turmoil and danger is required, whereas the latter suggests that it's a much more general issue of micro-ecological diversity and no pathogens are needed.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

unsupp0rted 3y ago

How often in nature do humans encounter their own aerosolized fecal matter?

adolph 3y ago
With small kids not unoften.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
Whenever they have beans for dinner
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  There’s a big difference between a fart and a toilet plume, I presume, in terms of viral/bacterial load. It might be like the difference between being in an airport for 5 minutes with a Covid stranger vs. sharing a bed with a Covid family member.

freedude 3y ago

My Grandpa used to say if a child didn't eat a pound of dirt a year it just wasn't healthy. This was usually in response to my Aunt's frenetic diatribe about a cousin getting dirty while on the farm. He was right. We got dirty on the farm. We ate dirt in the form of working and playing in the dust and mud. We would get "cleaned up" on the hot summer days by swimming in the river. Not only did we survive, we thrived. It was some of the greatest years of my life, eating a pound of dirt a year...

hermitcrab 3y ago
I worked on developing compartmental modelling software for consultants to use, so they could estimate how radionucleides moved around the environment. One of the parameters the consultants had to work out for their model was - how much dirt does a child eat in a year. I don't know what figure they ended up with.