Why do public toilets have a gap under the door? It’s out of caring…

A survey by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that everyone spends about three years in the toilet in their lifetime. During these three years, you may be thinking about life in your own bathroom, taking a paid shit at work, or taking a short break in the toilet at a shopping mall.

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But you will find that the door of a public toilet is always a little bit empty compared to the one at home. You can't help but wonder, what is the purpose of such design?

Leaving a space blank is actually a hard rule.

There is a gap in the door of a public toilet because it is a national regulation.

According to my country's "Urban Public Toilet Design Standards", each toilet should have an independent unit space, and the distance between the partition panels and doors dividing the unit space and the ground should be greater than 10 cm and less than 15 cm.

Similarly, in the United States, public restroom doors must have a minimum of 9 inches (about 22.86 cm) of clearance, and some states even require 12 inches (about 30.48 cm).

Why do we need such regulations?

This is primarily for ventilation, allowing you to meet your physiological needs in a more "fresh" environment.

Public toilets are hotbeds for germs to grow, especially if there is not enough ventilation.

Studies have found that in poorly ventilated public toilets, the number of bacterial colonies can be up to five times that outside the toilet. Compared with ventilated toilets, unventilated toilets have higher bacterial contamination and carbon dioxide content.

Comparison of bacterial content in unventilated toilets (left) and unventilated toilets (right) / Lee, MC, & Tham, KW (2021). Public toilets with insufficient ventilation present high cross infection risk. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1-8.

The toilet door has a significant blocking effect on air flow, thus affecting the ventilation effect and sanitary environment of the toilet.

An experiment simulated the relationship between toilet door gap and pollutant concentration. The results showed that when the toilet door was close to the ground, the concentration of hydrogen sulfide was the highest, and the higher the toilet door was from the ground, the lower the concentration of hydrogen sulfide.

Relationship between average concentration of hydrogen sulfide and height of partition from ground / Ji Shaojie & Mao Jinfeng. (2012). Study on pollutant concentration in toilet under natural ventilation conditions. Clean and air conditioning technology (04), 22-24.

Hydrogen sulfide is a highly toxic gas with a rotten egg smell. Even extremely low concentrations of hydrogen sulfide can damage the human respiratory tract, and long-term inhalation can lead to death. For example, in 2019, a couple in Shanghai died in their bathroom due to hydrogen sulfide poisoning.

Leave some space for safety

In addition to ventilation, the toilet door is also shorter for safety reasons.

In fact, about 46 out of every 1,000 people will experience defecation syncope. It is mainly caused by autonomic dysfunction during or just after defecation, which causes a sudden drop in heart rate and blood pressure, resulting in insufficient cerebral perfusion and a brief loss of consciousness.

Since this type of fainting often occurs in the relative privacy of the bathroom, it is not easy to detect and the mortality rate can be as high as 35%.

The design of a public toilet door with a shorter section ensures, to a certain extent, that the situation inside the cubicle is noticed in time, allowing fainting patients to receive treatment.

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Japanese scholars once conducted a statistical study on 101 patients who fainted in the bathroom. The results showed that 63 patients suffered cardiac arrest because they were not discovered in time, and only 30% of them were successfully resuscitated; while another 22 patients were discovered by the sound of the impact when they fell to the ground, and the resuscitation success rate increased to 55%.

In addition, some scholars believe that shortening the toilet door can reduce the embarrassment caused by trial and error in the absence of toilet reminders, and it will also facilitate cleaning and prevent water accumulation.

When the toilet is clogged and water overflows, if the toilet door fits tightly against the ground, it can easily turn the cubicle into a water reservoir, which may not only cause greater damage to the facilities in the cubicle, but may also cause a safety accident if an uninformed person opens the door.

Of course, more importantly, when you go to the toilet and find that you don’t bring any toilet paper, this empty toilet door may be the only way to save you.

Source: Inspur Studio

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