730
Oldie but a goldie (lemmy.world)

“WHO IS IN HERE??”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Linnce@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I had to present this paper for a fluid mechanics class during COVID and yes, the particles do spread. The radius of contamination was almost 1,5m.

Shared bathrooms in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, or assisted living facilities are used by patients who might be infected, thus making them a likely source of indoor cross-contamination. The pathogen-spreading potential of toilet flushes was investigated in toilets seeded with microorganisms that were later recovered from surfaces and in the air after flushing. The organisms in the bowl could not be fully cleared even after repeated flushing, and the droplets produced by flushing harbored the organisms that were used for seeding, which remained airborne and viable.

Recently, Johnson et al. (2013a) investigated different toilet designs and found that up to 145,000 sampled particles can be produced per flush.

Analysis of more recent data revealed that a large number of droplet emissions are not visible to the naked eye (d < 100 µm) (Figure 6b). These emissions account for more than 6 mL and can remain suspended in the air for a long time compared to the larger visible drops (with diameters up to 6 mm) that end up on surfaces.

The larger visible drops settle on surfaces within milliseconds, whereas the smaller, invisible drops are advected by local airflow (on the order of a few centimeters per second). Droplets settling on surfaces can be tackled in accordance with surface decontamination procedures of local infection control protocols. However, no system or protocol currently addresses air contamination. Furthermore, usual cleaning solutions not effective in neutralizing the most resistant pathogens, such as the spores of C. difficile, may even contribute to their dissemination by effectively lowering the surface tension, for example, down to 30 mN/m, compared to water at 72 mN/m, increasing the local Weber number and thus promoting fragmentation into either more or smaller droplets, depending on the fragmentation mechanism.

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-fluid-060220-113712

this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
730 points (96.0% liked)

Microblog Memes

11028 readers
324 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

RULES:

  1. Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
  2. Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
  3. You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
  4. Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
  5. Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
  6. Absolutely no NSFL content.
  7. Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
  8. No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.

RELATED COMMUNITIES:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS