Given what we know about toilet bacteria, it's astounding that most household and a lot of public toilets still use a handle rather than a foot pedal or automatic flush.
Having a foot pedal attached to the toilet bowl for flushing is a great way to overcome the challenges with a flush handle, provide a clearner, germ-free experience. This would be especially usefulf for public toilets where the bowl and the rest of the toilet surfaces come in contact with multiple people.
In the next few pages, we are going to analyse the current situation, the extent of the problem and how the foot pedal can prove to be a useful solution for that.
How do people flush?
Currently people use their foot to reach the flush handle. To understand the magnitude of this, we looked at a survey conducted by Bradley Corporation - nearly two-thirds (64%) of Americans flush public toilets with their feet.
That means if you use your hands to do so, you're in effect stroking the nasty sole of a stranger's shoe. A full 60% use paper towels as gloves when opening bathroom doors, whereas 37% do that for faucet handles. Nearly half of the people surveyed reported opening and shutting doors with their hips.
During primary research, here's what people had to say:
"To avoid the grossness that flushing can cause, I simply hold my breath and extend my foot while flushing" - 26 yo, MIT IDM student
"Since the handle is not far from the bowl, and the aerosols fly and reach all the other surfaces around, I want to avoid touching it by all means and hence I use my foot to flush." - 28 yo, MIT Sloan 1st year MBA student
"Whenever I use my hands to flush, I make sure I'm using toilet paper in my hand so that I don't come in direct contact with the germs on the handle" - 31 yo, MIT Sloan 1st year MBA student
How dirty is the toilet flush handle?
When someone flushes a toilet, the contaminated water becomes aerosolized and the spray can travel upwards of six feet. The means the toilet handle has been exposed to that.
Generally, you'll find about 50 bacteria per square inch on a toilet surface. Flush handles have thousands of bacteria species on them, more kinds of bacteria than there are kinds of birds in North America. Those thousands of bacteria species are composed of three groups corresponding to just how they arrived on the handle — gut species, skin species and shoe species.
Here's a list of 5 types of germs you can get from a toilet flush handle:
1. E. coli is a bacteria that's normally found in our intestines, and if you're accidentally exposed to it, you could be struck down with diarrhea (sometimes bloody), abdominal cramping and vomiting.
2. Shigella bacteria passes very easily among people, especially when you forget to wash your hands (or if you're among the 95 percent of people who don't correctly wash their hands. These bacterium causes shigellosis, but you're probably more likely to recognize one of its trademark infections: dysentery.
3. Streptococcus is a common bacteria that's usually found in your throat, and if you've ever had strep throat or bronchial pneumonia you've had some experience with it. Streptococci can also cause contagious skin infections, including impetigo.
4. Varieties of Staph (Staphylococcus), for example Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), can live on a toilet seat -- and any nonporous part of a toilet -- for more than two months. And it only takes as few as three seconds for it to transmit from a seat to your skin.
5. Influenza and other viruses can live for as many as two or three days on nonporous surfaces, including the toilet seat and flush handle -- and some of these viral strains may live even longer.
Toilet Foot
It might sound like a disease you get from walking barefoot in dodgy bathrooms but, in fact, it's a new invention that lets you convert any toilet into one that can be flushed with a foot pedal.
To install, you simply remove the pull chain to the flapper in your toilet tank and attach the inflatable ball that's at the heart of Toilet Foot. You then run an air line out of the tank to the floor where a half-ball actuator sits. Replace the lid of the tank after putting on some spacers to not crush the hose and you're ready for foot flushing. When you step on the ball, it sends air through the line and blows up the ball in the tank. This causes it to float up, lifting the flapper with it and letting the tank drain.
