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Public urinals can put you at risk for coronavirus, study finds.
Researchers at Yangzhou University in China have found that flushing urinals can release clouds of aerosols containing viruses that you can potentially inhale, a major concern during this COVID-19 pandemic. The group recently reported similar results with public flushing toilets and decided to look at the urinals.
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“More than 57% of the particles have moved away from the urinal,” said the researchers in the study published in Physics of Fluids.
The particles also traveled at an alarming rate.
The particle can reach 0.84 meters, which is roughly the height of a man’s thigh, in 5 1/2 seconds compared to the diffusion performance of the spray induced by the toilet which reaches about 0.93 meter in 35 seconds, according to the study.
Public urinals can put you at risk for coronavirus, study finds. (iStock)
The research team followed the movement of virus-containing particles when urinals are flushed through computer simulations.
“To do this, we used a computational fluid dynamics method to model the movement of particles that occurs with the act of flushing,” said Xiangdong Liu, one of the study researchers. “Similar to flushing the toilet, the urinal flushing process involves important interactions between the gas and liquid interfaces.”
The researchers said their findings raised concerns about public toilets.
Recently, researchers found a viral particle of “SARS-CoV-2”, the official name of the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, in the urine of a person with a confirmed case of the disease, which means that urinary transmission could be a previously ignored route of transmission, the researchers said.
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“This means that in addition to the toilet, the urinal for men, which is a common installation in public toilets for men, could become another dangerous element,” they concluded.
The study authors noted that urinals are typically used in crowded places, and because particles can travel faster and farther in a urinal, this poses a serious public health concern.
The research team suggested making masks mandatory in public toilets, adding that implementing anti-spill improvements to public toilets was “urgent”, especially during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
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