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What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets?
Public toilets and bathrooms may act as a contact hub point where community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 occurs between users. The mechanism of spread would arise through three mechanisms: inhalation of faecal and/or urinary aerosol from an individual shedding SARS-CoV-2; airborne transmission of resp...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier B.V.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8192832/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34146809 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148341 |
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author | Dancer, Stephanie J. Li, Yuguo Hart, Alwyn Tang, Julian W. Jones, Davey L. |
author_facet | Dancer, Stephanie J. Li, Yuguo Hart, Alwyn Tang, Julian W. Jones, Davey L. |
author_sort | Dancer, Stephanie J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Public toilets and bathrooms may act as a contact hub point where community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 occurs between users. The mechanism of spread would arise through three mechanisms: inhalation of faecal and/or urinary aerosol from an individual shedding SARS-CoV-2; airborne transmission of respiratory aerosols between users face-to-face or during short periods after use; or from fomite transmission via frequent touch sites such as door handles, sink taps, lota or toilet roll dispenser. In this respect toilets could present a risk comparable with other high throughput enclosed spaces such as public transport and food retail outlets. They are often compact, inadequately ventilated, heavily used and subject to maintenance and cleaning issues. Factors such as these would compound the risks generated by toilet users incubating or symptomatic with SARS-CoV-2. Furthermore, toilets are important public infrastructure since they are vital for the maintenance of accessible, sustainable and comfortable urban spaces. Given the lack of studies on transmission through use of public toilets, comprehensive risk assessment relies upon the compilation of evidence gathered from parallel studies, including work performed in hospitals and prior work on related viruses. This narrative review examines the evidence suggestive of transmission risk through use of public toilets and concludes that such a risk cannot be lightly disregarded. A range of mitigating actions are suggested for both users of public toilets and those that are responsible for their design, maintenance and management. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8192832 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier B.V. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81928322021-06-11 What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets? Dancer, Stephanie J. Li, Yuguo Hart, Alwyn Tang, Julian W. Jones, Davey L. Sci Total Environ Article Public toilets and bathrooms may act as a contact hub point where community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 occurs between users. The mechanism of spread would arise through three mechanisms: inhalation of faecal and/or urinary aerosol from an individual shedding SARS-CoV-2; airborne transmission of respiratory aerosols between users face-to-face or during short periods after use; or from fomite transmission via frequent touch sites such as door handles, sink taps, lota or toilet roll dispenser. In this respect toilets could present a risk comparable with other high throughput enclosed spaces such as public transport and food retail outlets. They are often compact, inadequately ventilated, heavily used and subject to maintenance and cleaning issues. Factors such as these would compound the risks generated by toilet users incubating or symptomatic with SARS-CoV-2. Furthermore, toilets are important public infrastructure since they are vital for the maintenance of accessible, sustainable and comfortable urban spaces. Given the lack of studies on transmission through use of public toilets, comprehensive risk assessment relies upon the compilation of evidence gathered from parallel studies, including work performed in hospitals and prior work on related viruses. This narrative review examines the evidence suggestive of transmission risk through use of public toilets and concludes that such a risk cannot be lightly disregarded. A range of mitigating actions are suggested for both users of public toilets and those that are responsible for their design, maintenance and management. Elsevier B.V. 2021-10-20 2021-06-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8192832/ /pubmed/34146809 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148341 Text en © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Dancer, Stephanie J. Li, Yuguo Hart, Alwyn Tang, Julian W. Jones, Davey L. What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets? |
title | What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets? |
title_full | What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets? |
title_fullStr | What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets? |
title_full_unstemmed | What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets? |
title_short | What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets? |
title_sort | what is the risk of acquiring sars-cov-2 from the use of public toilets? |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8192832/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34146809 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148341 |
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