This review of TOILET appeared in Les Echos and just came to our attention.

by Stephen Hough at The Telegraph

More thoughts on the axes of peeing in public from a Brit on a trip to New York. 

Water Infrastructure Diagram extracted from a presentation given at the Coles Science Salon hosted by Bobst Library, New York University on Wednesday 23 February 2011.

The Atlantic Monthly ran a little review of TOILET in it’s “Cover to Cover” section. They also invited Molotch and Noren to put together a slideshow synopsis of the book.

The review was short but largely positive (academic jargon comes with the territory and is only a problem in some of the chapters, it seems):

Although some of the essays assembled here are infected with predictable academic jargon, this book offers precise insights—want to keep a public bathroom clean? Stick some flowers there. And it often cleverly illuminates what’s in plain sight—say, the reasons why New York has so few female cabbies—but is usually ignored or assiduously avoided.

Zizek has much to say about toilets.  In this segment, he talks about the way French, German, and American toilet designs can reveal a Levi-Strauss sort of meaning.  If you didn’t understand that, watch the video.

Gemma Tipton writes a thorough review of TOILET (it is obvious that she read the entire book).  She notes that Ireland has some of the same problems America and England are facing when it comes to public restrooms - even those that have been built tend to have restricted hours (or just get closed altogether) in the name of safety:

Increasingly, across Ireland, public toilets are padlocked to discourage anti-social behaviour, while huge stretches of motorway have been built with nowhere to stop for what Americans, masters of toilet euphemism, would call a comfort break. 

When you write a book about toilet and rest rooms, you end up listening to a lot of toilet stories.  

On an old tv show called “Rescue 911” which was hosted by William Shatner, one episode featured a child who got a foot stuck in the toilet.  In order to excise the child from the toilet (or the toilet from the child) firefighters had to remove the toilet from the house while the kid was still stuck in it.  They placed the kid-toilet unit on the driveway and then very carefully chipped away at the toilet until it broke open, releasing the foot.  The picture above explains how it might happen that a kid would end up with a foot stuck in the toilet.  Well, it kind of explains how a kid might end up with a foot stuck in the toilet.

What this picture does not explain is the following story, re-posted here courtesy of the New York Post.

MET FAN A ‘POTTY MOUTH’

By MURRAY WEISS and JEREMY OLSHAN

Last Updated: 9:05 AM, May 20, 2009

Posted: 1:47 AM, May 20, 2009

A hapless Mets fan tried to make a diving catch when her gold tooth fell into a Citi Field toilet — and got her arm stuck in the commode.

The unidentified woman’s bizarre Flushing adventure happened during last Wednesday’s game against the Atlanta Braves, sources said yesterday.

It’s unclear how long she was trapped screaming in the john, but stadium security guards and emergency medical personnel eventually showed up.

But they could not pry her loose on their own.

They called for back-up — dialing up a worker from Cardoza Plumbing, the company that installed all 646 ultra-low-flow toilets at Citi Field.

He rushed to the scene from his company’s Jamaica headquarters 7.2 miles away, the sources said.

The anxious victim, meanwhile, could only wait as the toilet continued to flush over her arm.

At one point, she became more entertaining than the game — which the Mets lost 8-7 — as fans gathered outside the bathroom near Section 338 to see the off-field action.

It’s unclear if the toilet had to be destroyed to free her.

The woman did not recover her tooth, but was plenty relieved just to leave the bathroom.

The Mets and Cardoza Plumbing declined to comment.

Some low-flow toilets use powerful vacuum suction to minimize the amount of water needed, but it’s unlikely that contributed to the woman’s hand being stuck, a Queens plumber said.

“The truth is, this kind of thing happens all the time — usually with wedding rings or cellphones,” he said.

“People have probably been getting their hands stuck in toilets as long as there have been toilets.”

In 2003, 41-year-old Edwin Gallart dropped his phone in the toilet on a rush-hour Metro-North train, and went in after it.

Railroad employees could not pry his arm loose, and it took an army of emergency personnel 90 minutes, using Jaws of Life rescue equipment, to free Gallart and his phone.

During the rescue, the track was shut down, passengers were evacuated, and dozens of other trains were delayed.

Last year, a woman in China spent two days with her hand stuck down a toilet when she tried to save a pet turtle that she had accidentally flushed.

murray.weiss@nypost.com

Why would anyone want to re-use a tooth that had spent time in a stadium toilet?  These are tough questions.  The other difficulty here is that once teeth fall out of the mouth, they generally cannot be successfully reinserted.  So even if it hadn’t spent time in a toilet, that tooth was not going to be chewing on any more apples.  Perhaps she just wanted it for a keepsake.  Who can say?

World Bank Finds that India loses 6.4% of GDP due to lack of adequate sanitation.

Quoting from the article linked above:

The estimated statistics quoted by the Planning Commission clearly stated that even though 49 percent of the country’s urban population is provided with an access to sanitary excreta disposal facility, only 28 percent have sewerage system and 21 percent only low cost sanitary latrine facility. Out of the 60 percent generated solid waste collected and disposed of, only 50 percent of it is disposed sanitarily. 

Kira, Alexander. (1976) The Bathroom, 2nd ed. Viking Adult.

Urinary trajectories of men and women.  Use the grid on the back wall to compare the distances accurately.  Why?  Useful for urinal design, especially urinals that could hope to accommodate both men and women, a critical design intervention that we are still waiting to see taken up widely.  One thing that gets in the way:  clothing.  Men can make the adjustments easily, with just a bit of unzipping.  Women have to remove more in order to make sure their clothes stay unsullied.  Maybe skirts and dresses are the new clothing of the free woman, free to use future unisex urinals?  Or maybe there is a way to lengthen or otherwise reorient the zipper so that women can pee just as freely as men (and use less water, too)?  

Kira, Alexander. (1976) The Bathroom, 2nd ed. Viking Adult.

Ever wonder why toilets have such large openings (possibly after dropping your phone in the toilet)?  Or maybe you’ve hoped they were larger?  Kira’s bird’s eye view demonstrates why the toilet’s opening is longer than it is wide.