Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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First, apologies – if you’re as unfamiliar with England’s geography as I appear to be – for misleading you last week into thinking Thurrock is in Essex. I know it’s in Kent (and thank you to those who took part in the subsequent Facebook discussion). I’m wondering whether my error was a subconscious effort to counteract the bad press Essex receives, having heard of a campaign to prevent the use of the derogatory term, ‘Essex Girls’!
Tomorrow is Loo of the Year Awards day, which sadly, I’m unable to attend this year. Good wishes to everyone involved – from the organisers to exhibitors and attendees and in particular the toilet attendants and cleaners themselves, who have an unenviable job. I’d also like to thank the forward-thinking councils that prioritise the provision of clean, hygienic and well-stocked public toilets, over other less-important drains on the ever-diminishing budget. I hope you all have a wonderful day and well done to the winners!
Although it won’t have been sent to coincide with the Awards, I received a press release today from Waterless Co in the US, revealing that two researchers from Brigham Young University’s Splash Lab, which ‘seeks to unravel the physical mechanisms of fluid behaviours’, have conducted research into ‘splashback’ onto clothing, shoes, walls and floors, when men use urinals.
To help determine ways to minimise splashback, the pair used high-speed photography and image processing, in a quest to discover the effects of urine stream breakup; how different angles affects splashback, and the effects of velocity of the stream.
They ascertained that urine starts to break into droplets in the urethra long before it’s released into the urinal, which means the splatter process begins as soon as urine is ‘out of the gate’, so to speak.
They also discovered that urinating at a 90-degree angle directly onto the urinal wall, causes maximum splashback (interestingly, they found that most men urinate at this angle!). They also found that the closer you are, the smoother the flow and the less the urine breaks into droplets.
Apparently, urinating parallel to the urinal surface – toward’s the base – helps reduce splashback considerably, as does standing close to the urinal – which, says Waterless’s Klaus Reichardt, is just the opposite of what many men believe!
With New Year’s resolutions soon to be made, a simple adjustment in urinal use habit would be a great thing to add to the list, don’t you think?
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Yours,
1st December 2016