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Here’s one more behavior to be hyper-aware of in order to prevent coronavirus transmission: what you do after you use the toilet. Scientists have found that in addition to clearing out whatever business you’ve left behind, flushing a toilet can generate a cloud of aerosol droplets that rises nearly three feet. Those droplets may linger in the air long enough to be inhaled by a shared toilet’s next user, or land on surfaces in the bathroom. (Sheikh, 6/16)

“Flushing will lift the virus up from the toilet bowl,” co-author Ji-Xiang Wang, who researches fluids at Yangzhou University in Yangzhou, China, said in an email. Bathroom users “need to close the lid first and then trigger the flushing process,” Wang said, and wash their hands thoroughly if closure isn’t possible. (Brulliard and Wan, 6/16)

"One can foresee that the velocity will be even higher when a toilet is used frequently, such as in the case of a family toilet during a busy time or a public toilet serving a densely populated area," Ji-Xiang Wang of Yangzhou University, who worked on the study, said in a statement. Other studies have strongly suggested that norovirus, a common cause of vomiting and diarrhea, can be spread via flushing toilets. (Fox, 6/16)

Given that other coronaviruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome are known to have spread through fecal-oral transmission, toilets could potentially be a source of “large-scale” novel coronavirus spread, the study’s authors wrote. “Toilets are a daily necessity but also become dangerous if used improperly, especially against the current scenario of a global pandemic,” the researchers wrote. (Bikales, 6/16)