Modern Toilets and Water Safety

Modern toilets

While we may take modern toilets for granted, archaeologists have discovered evidence of toilet seats from the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Minoans. In fact the ancient Romans may have had one of the first commercial lavatories in which you paid a fee to use the facilities. During the Middle Ages, chamber pots were used as a precursor to modern toilets. The contents of the chamber pot and bath water would have been dumped outside or away from the dwelling. Even in the great halls and buildings, there was no running water, industrial commercial lavatory or shower bases like our traditional bathroom facilities.

The evolution of modern toilets have progressed to the introduction of smart toilets, like the Japanese Panasonic version that can send datapoints to a health monitoring service. It has the ability to recognize you based on weight and percent of body fat and to analyze your output for anomalies. Modern toilets have also been optimized to flush away the greatest amount of waste and still conserving water. Most modern toilets use about 1.6 gallons or less of water to remove waste. This has been optimized through the study of hydrodynamics and fluid science to efficiently avoid clogging during use.

The awareness of modern disease and cross contamination helped with the adoption of modern flushing toilets as opposed to the use of cesspools or outhouses in the United States near the beginning of the 20th century. Coinciding with the more common indoor installation of the modern toilets and enhanced plumbing, Edward and Clarence Scott started to sell perforated toilet tissue. We may view toilet access as readily accessible in our society, the Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000 from the WHO, or World Health Organization, showed that 40 percent of total global population still does not have good access to appropriate facilities.

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