Flushing public restroom toilets or urinals can spew clouds of particles carrying viruses, including COVID-19
From the American Institute of Physics
August 18, 2020 -- Think you don't need
to worry about COVID-19 while using a public restroom? A group of researchers
from Yangzhou University in China recently reported that flushing public
restroom toilets can release clouds of virus-laden aerosols for you to
potentially inhale.
If that's not cringeworthy enough, after
running additional computer simulations, they've concluded that flushing
urinals does likewise. In Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing,
the group shares its work simulating and tracking virus-laden particle
movements when urinals are flushed.
The researchers' work clearly shows
public restrooms can be dangerous places for potentially becoming infected from
a virus, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other work has shown that
both feces- and urine-based virus transmission is possible.
"To do this, we used a method of
computational fluid dynamics to model the particle movement that occurs with
the act of flushing," said Xiangdong Liu. "The specific models are
the volume of fluids model and discrete phase model."
Flushing a urinal, much like flushing a
toilet, involves an interaction between gas and liquid interfaces. The result
of the flushing causes a large spread of aerosol particles to be released from
the urinal, which the researchers simulated and tracked.
What the simulations revealed is
disturbing. The trajectory of the tiny particles ejected by flushing a urinal
"manifests an external spread type, with more than 57% of the particles
traveling away from the urinal," said Liu.
But that's not all. When men use urinals
within a public restroom, these tiny particles can reach their thigh within 5.5
seconds when compared to the toilet flush, which takes 35 seconds to reach
slightly higher. Particles from urinals, however, "show a more violent
climbing tendency," Liu said. "The climbing speed is much faster than
toilet flushing."
Urinals are used more frequently within
densely populated areas, and the researchers point out that particles will
travel faster and farther, which poses a serious public health challenge.
This work underscores how important it
is to wear a mask within public places but especially restrooms.
"From our work, it can be inferred
that urinal flushing indeed promotes the spread of bacteria and viruses,"
says Liu. "Wearing a mask should be mandatory within public restrooms
during the pandemic, and anti-diffusion improvements are urgently needed to
prevent the spread of COVID-19."
No comments:
Post a Comment