All the germaphobes who meticulously clean public toilet seats with sheets of toilet paper and thin seat covers may be wasting their time. It turns out that all the energy put into disinfecting the dreaded public seat doesn’t yield any health benefits.
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t work. The bacteria and whatever is on the toilet seat basically die off very quickly,” said medical ethicist from NYU Langone Medical Center Art Caplan on Boston Public Radio Wednesday.
Without water to live in, the bacteria and germs that health conscious bathroom goers worry about die off, says Caplan. “Most things don’t like living in the air. It turns out that you might prevent yourself from getting some moisture on you, but in terms of infectious disease or health problems, it doesn’t really appear to make any difference at all.”
Instead of panicking about bathroom cleanliness, Caplan thinks that people should spend more time cleaning their kitchen, where there is a far greater chance of getting in contact of harmful germs. “What people don’t do is they don’t clean up their kitchen and their cutting boards well enough, that's where there’s stuff lingering around,” said Caplan.
Caplan says airplane bathrooms may be the only place where covering the seat in a nest of toilet paper could be beneficial. “The air doesn’t circulate as well and things are more confined, but outside of that, it doesn’t matter, they didn’t find anything,” Caplan said.
Art Caplan is head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center. You can listen to his interview on Boston Public Radio above.
