“A cold shiver runs up your spine and a small knot tugs in the depth of your belly!
Your eyes scan the dirty messy toilet seat! Your imagination runs rife, knowing what is lurking there. The acrid odour fills your nostrils. You know this unsavory smell means germs and bacteria….. Lots of them!.” This is a direct quote from http://www.sanicone.com/index.html, a company that sell disposable cones for women to urinate through, so they don’t have to sit on public toilets.
Let me start at the beginning, my friend and me were out shopping. She was whinging that her sock had fallen down before we went into the toilet, when she came out she was still whinging. I asked her why she hadn’t sorted it while on the toilet, to which she replied “eww you sit on public toilets?” She then went on to tell me you can get all sorts from toilet seats, including crabs. I don’t believe her.
I’ll tell you why. When I sit on a toilet, the only points of contact are my arse cheeks, which don’t feature much in the preparation of food or anything (honest). The point being no orifice ever touches the seat, therefore no fluid based disease can get there. Also taking into account wiping and hand washing it all sounds a bit far fetched. But, I need proof.
The delightful http://www.sanicone.com/index.html states that from toilet seat you can catch: 
· Sars
· Enteroviruses (responsible for gastroenteritis)
· Herpes
· Parasites
· Veneric Diseases
· Skin infections
· Colds and flus
· Intestinal illnesses
· Salmonella bacteria
· E. Coli
· Hepatiti
Which is all a bit bloody scary, so I turned to the NHS. Who, I (perhaps naively) believe to know the truth about such things. On crabs they say “You can get pubic lice by having close body contact with an infested person. They crawl from one hair to another; they cannot jump, fly or swim”. http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=2306§ionId=5 This is backed up by a woman who claims to be a specialist in microbiology, and infectious disease consultant on Yahoo answers http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080624150831AAmCaiD. Another contributor on the yahoo answers page about toilet seats and general toilet disease came up with “it depends if you lick it”.
The only one that I could possibly believe in was genital warts, because warts are passed by skin contact but this website http://kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/stds/std_warts.html tells me you can’t.
I know this is probably a biased perspective but on looking on the Internet, a lot of people seem to be telling me you can but not backing it up, so I’m sticking with logic and the NHS.
I would just like to add the following disclaimer, I don’t sit on all public toilets, if there’s wee on the seat, i’ll hover with the best of them. To give your opinion on the matter go to http://www.quizilla.com/polls/7923577/do-you-sit-or-hover-on-public-toilets-taking-into-account-obvious-sanitary-requirements and take the poll.
Tags: crabs, diseases, genital warts, Gonorrhoea, public toilets, sanicone, std
