We all end up in a predicament when we have to go to the bathroom, but we’re a long way from home. As we reluctantly find the nearest public restroom, wait in a line that goes out the door, and wish that we'll get a clean stall with enough toilet paper, we make the life-changing decision: Do we hover or cover the toilet seat. The age-old debate of what method protects our tush has been revisited by Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown of Asap Science to find out whether the toilet seat is really dirty or dangerous.
"It may be surprising but in a typical home, their cutting board has around 200 times more fecal matter on it than the average toilet seat," Asap Science said in their YouTube video, “Should You Hover Or Cover The Toilet Seat?” Although this may seem surprising, and downright baffling to us — especially those who keep a clean and immaculate home — even dish sponge has 200,000 times more bacteria than a toilet seat.
A rule of thumb when it comes to public restrooms: if it passes the sight test, it’s “OK.” The actual bathroom stall, believe it or not, may be cleaner than most other objects in the bathroom. Fear not germaphobes, while bacteria such as E.coli can survive on the toilet seat indefinitely, chances are that if you don’t have an open sore near your bottom, and there's nothing sharp on the seat, the bacteria won’t go into your body. This is because out skin acts as an excellent barrier to microorganisms.
Now, many of us tend to use toilet seat liners to reduce our contact with germs, but how foolproof is this method, exactly? “Simply flushing a toilet creates aerosolized bacteria, meaning that the toilet paper itself is lightly contaminated,” Asap Science says. This means that the risk of infection is more likely to come from improper handwashing, followed by touching your mouth, eyes, or other openings in the body.
While avoiding germs is inevitable, if you’re really worried about it, don’t waste toilet paper and hover over the toilet as an alternative. Otherwise, Asap Science suggests that you can sit with confidence, wash your hands, and proudly waltz on over to that door, where you'll touch the handle everyone else has touched. What it all boils down to is that you will most likely not catch a disease from a toilet seat.