• AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      My comment was explicitly pointing out that closing the lid can have the opposite of the intuitive effect and make things worse even though you’d expect it to make them better. It seems that I misrepresented the study’s findings, though, as while closing the lid does make particles remain airborne for much longer, so my overall point is sound, closing the lid does reduce the number of particles that initially become airborne.

      • null@lemmy.nullspace.lol
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        1 day ago

        closing the lid does reduce the number of particles that initially become airborne.

        Significantly – 30-50%.

        So to be clear: close the lid

        • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          That’s not the conclusion the study’s authors drew. The particles being airborne for longer means they can float further and contaminate things further away from the toilet, and also are more likely to end up inhaled. That could be a bigger problem than the number of particles initially released, so the study didn’t make a recommendation of whether the lid should be up or down. More research is required before anyone should be issuing definitive commands in bold to strangers on the internet.