Flushing public toilets can spread COVID-19

BEIJING: Chinese researchers have recently reported that flushing public restroom toilets or urinals can spew clouds of particles carrying viruses, including COVID-19.

The study, published in the journal 'Physics of Fluids', found that COVID-19 particles from a flushing urinal can rise to two feet in the air in less than six seconds "potentially infecting the unsuspecting urinal user".

The researchers' work shows public restrooms can be dangerous places for potentially becoming infected with a virus, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other studies have shown that both faeces 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 study researcher Xiangdong Liu from Yangzhou University in China.

"The specific models are the volume-of-fluids model and the discrete-phase model," Liu added.

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 per cent of the particles travelling away from the urinal," said Liu. (IANS) 

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