Health - Using public toilets

 

Is it OK to sit on public toilet seats?

Lotti Tajouri, Bond University

If you’re a parent or have a chronic health condition that needs quick or frequent trips to the bathroom, you’ve probably mapped out the half-decent public toilets in your area.

But sometimes, you don’t have a choice and have to use a toilet that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in weeks. Do you brave it and sit on the seat?

What if it looks relatively clean: do you still worry that sitting on the seat could make you sick?

What’s in a public toilet?

Healthy adults produce more than a litre of urine and more than 100 grams of poo daily. Everybody sheds bacteria and viruses in faeces (poo) and urine, and some of this ends up in the toilet.

Some people, especially those with diarrhoea, may shed more harmful microbes (bacteria and viruses) when they use the toilet.

Public toilets can be a “microbial soup”, especially when many people use them and cleaning isn’t frequent as it should be.

What germs are found on toilet seats?

Many types of microbes have been found on toilet seats and surrounding areas. These include:

• bacteria from the gut, such as E. coli, Klebsiella, Enterococcus, and viruses such as norovirus and rotavirus. These can cause gastroenteritis, with bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea

• bacteria from the skin, including Staphylococcus aureus and even multi-drug resistant S.aureus and other bacteria such as pseudomonas and acinetobacter. These can cause infections

• eggs from parasites (worms) that are carried in poo, and single-celled organisms such as protozoa. These can cause abdominal pain.

There’s also something called biofilm, a mix of germs that builds up under toilet rims and on surfaces.

Are toilet seats the dirtiest part?

No. A recent study showed public toilet seats often have fewer microbes than other locations in public toilets, such as door handles, faucet knobs and toilet flush levers. These parts are touched a lot and often with unwashed hands.

Public toilets in busy places are used hundreds or even thousands of times each week. Some are cleaned often, but others (such as those in parks or bus stops) may only be cleaned once a day or much less, so germs can build up quickly. The red flags that a toilet hasn’t been cleaned are the smell of urine, soiled floors and what is obvious to your eyes.

However, the biggest problem isn’t just sitting: it’s what happens when toilets are flushed. When you flush without a lid, a “toilet plume” shoots tiny droplets into the air. These droplets can contain bacteria and viruses from the toilet bowl and travel up to 2 metres.

Here’s what the toilet plume looks like.

Hand dryers blowing air can also spread germs if people don’t wash properly. As well as drying your hands, you might be blowing germs all over yourself, others and the bathroom.

How can germs spread?

You can pick up germs from public toilets in several ways:

• skin contact. Sitting on a dirty seat or touching handles spreads bacteria. Healthy skin is a good barrier, but cuts or scrapes can allow germs to enter

• touching your face. After using the toilet, if you touch your eyes, mouth, or food before washing your hands, germs can get inside your body

• breathing them in. In small or crowded bathrooms, you can breathe in tiny particles from toilet plumes or hand dryers

• toilet water splash. Germs can stay in the water even after several flushes.

What can you do to stay safe?

Here are some easy ways to protect yourself:

• use toilet seat covers or place toilet paper on the seat before sitting

• if the toilet has a lid, wipe it before use with an alcohol wipe and close it before flushing to limit toilet plume exposure. (But note, this doesn’t fully stop the spread)

• wash your hands properly for at least 20 seconds using soap and water

• carry hand sanitiser or antibacterial wipes to clean your hands afterwards if there isn’t any soap

• avoid hand dryers, if you can, as they can spread germs. Use paper towels instead

• sanitise your phone regularly and don’t use it in toilet. Phones often pick up and carry bacteria, especially if you use them in the bathroom

• clean baby changing areas before and after use, and always wash or sanitise your hands.

So is it safe to sit on public toilet seats?

For most healthy people, yes – sitting on a public toilet seat is low-risk. But you can wipe it with an alcohol wipe, or use a toilet seat cover, for peace of mind.

Most infections don’t come from the seat itself, but from dirty hands, door handles, toilet plumes and phones used in bathrooms.

Instead of worrying about sitting, focus on good hygiene. That means washing your hands, opting for paper towel rather than dryers, cleaning the seat if needed, and keeping your phone clean.

And please, don’t hover over the toilet. This tenses the pelvic floor, making it difficult to completely empty the bladder. And you might accidentally spray your bodily fluids.

Lotti Tajouri, Associate Professor, Genomics and Molecular Biology; Biomedical Sciences, Bond University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate Change - Australia's emissions target by 2035

 

The Albanese government has finally set a 2035 climate course – and it’s a mission Australia must accept

Dan Himbrechts/AAP, The Conversation, CC BY-SA

Tony Wood, Grattan Institute

The federal government has announced a long-awaited climate change target for 2035, committing to a reduction in emissions of between 62% and 70% below 2005 levels. Environmentalists claim the target is a failure, while some business groups and the opposition are likely to slam it as economic sabotage.

Setting a range target has two advantages. First, it provides flexibility to respond to whatever unfolds on the environment, technology or political front. Second, it avoids a frustrating political debate fixated on a single, precise future target.

Announcing the target on Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said:

This is an ambitious but achievable target – sending the right investment signal, responding to the science and delivered with a practical plan. It builds on what we know are the lowest-cost actions we can deliver over the next decade while leaving room for new technologies to take things up a gear.

The target seeks to balance positive action with pragmatism. Achieving it requires a step-up in policies and implementation well beyond what has been achieved to date. This is a mission Australia must now accept.

A pathway to 2035

Climate change targets provide a clear vision of what the government is committed to delivering domestically. They are required under the Paris Agreement and affirm Australia’s membership of the global community.

The government announcement is aligned with advice delivered by the Climate Change Authority. That advice was delayed for months due to the election of US President Donald Trump – the policy repercussions of which the authority needed to consider – and the May federal election in Australia.

Last year, draft advice by the authority suggested an emissions reduction target of 65–75% by 2035.

More recently, a report from the Business Council of Australia claimed the cost of meeting a target above 70% was economically unacceptable.

If Australia is to meet its commitment to net-zero by 2050, and emissions fall in a straight line from 2030 to 2050, the 2035 target must be about 57%. Of course, this assumes that net-zero by 2050 is environmentally acceptable – which many, including the Grattan Institute, have argued is not.

And this week, the government’s National Climate Risk Assessment outlined alarming damage if emissions are not dramatically curbed. All this suggests Australia must set the strongest possible target.

So has the government’s target hit the sweet spot? Let’s tease that out.

Deeper cuts this decade

Australia’s emissions target for 2030 is a 43% emissions reduction, based on 2005 levels. We currently emit 440 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year – 28% below 2005 levels.

To achieve the 2030 target, our annual emissions must fall by about 18 million tonnes a year. Meeting this target remains challenging. If the 2030 target is achieved, the annual rate of reduction would have to rise to 23 million tonnes or 33 million tonnes to meet the 62% or 70% target levels, respectively.

That’s why today’s targets are not lacking ambition. If the 2030 target is not achieved, then meeting the 2035 target – even the bottom of the range – only gets harder.

Disappointingly, however, the government has not clarified whether it’s essentially committing to 62% emissions reduction – with the option of greater ambition – or whether it will go for a 70% reduction but accept 62%. Or is it aiming for something in the middle?

The policy challenge ahead

Meeting the target will require progress across the economy – not just in the land sector and electricity generation, where most of the action has been to date. To achieve it, a major acceleration in government policy is needed.

So far, the Albanese government’s climate policy offering has been limited.

In 2022, the government established the Capacity Investment Scheme, which guarantees a certain revenue to renewable energy investors. It is designed to accelerate clean energy generation to meet Australia’s target of 82% renewables in the electricity mix by 2030. No further policy exists to reduce electricity emissions beyond that point.

The government also strengthened the Safeguard Mechanism, an innovation of the Abbott government to control emissions from heavy industry. And the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) aims to drive down emissions from personal and small commercial vehicles. These policies must be ramped up to meet the 2035 target. The government has committed to reviewing the Safeguard Mechanism and the NVES, presumably to do just that.

Most of the light lifting in policy work has now been done. What’s needed now is policy to propel emissions reduction in harder-to-abate sectors of the economy – such as heavy vehicle transport and agriculture.

On Thursday, the government released a Net Zero Plan, along with blueprints for six major sectors of the economy outlining what needs to be done to get there.

Among other spending measures, it announced:

• A$5 billion in the National Reconstruction Fund to help industrial plants cut emissions
• $2 billion for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation
• $1.1 billion to encourage domestic production of clean fuels
• $40 million for kerbside and fast-charging of electric vehicles.

These are positive moves. But it’s still unclear how the government plans to integrate the policies with actually meeting the target.

Now the real work starts

Australia now has 2035 emissions targets and plans to meet them.

The target is a much-needed step on the path to net-zero, but it’s just the beginning. Delivering it will demand action across all sectors of the economy – and that work must start now.

The alternative – unchecked climate change – is not just irresponsible, but unthinkable.

Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate Change - Assessment Report - Australia's difficult future unless increased action is taken

Is this Australia’s climate wake-up call? Official report reveals a hotter, harder future if we don’t act now

Andrew B. Watkins, Monash University; Lucas Walsh, Monash University, and Tas van Ommen, University of Tasmania

Climate shocks threaten to devastate communities, overwhelm emergency services and strain health, housing, food and energy systems according to a federal government assessment released today.

The report, Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, confirms the devastating consequences of climate change have arrived. It also reveals the worsening effects of extreme heat, fires, floods, droughts, marine heatwaves and coastal inundation in coming decades.

The sobering assessment is a major step forward in Australia’s understanding of who and what is in harm’s way from climate change. It is also a national call to action. The sooner Australia mitigates and adapts, the safer and more resilient we will be.

Australia’s climate risk revealed

The assessment involved more than 250 climate experts, including the authors of this article, and contributions from more than 2,000 specialists. It was also informed by data and modelling from the Australian Climate Service, CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, the Australia Bureau of Statistics and Geoscience Australia, among other major institutions.

The report provides the vital evidence base to inform Australia’s first National Adaptation Plan, also released today.

Earth has already warmed by 1.2°C since pre-industrial times, and remains on track for 2.7°C by the end of the century if no action is taken. The assessment considers the impacts on Australia at 1.5°C, 2°C and 3°C of global warming.

The risks to Australia are assessed under eight key systems, as we outline below.

Graphic showing climate risks to Australia’s key systems. National Climate Risk Assessment

1. Health and social support

Climate hazards will severely impact physical and mental health. The most vulnerable communities include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the elderly, the very young and those with pre-existing health conditions, as well as outdoor workers.

At 3°C global warming, heat-related deaths increase by 444% for Sydney and 423% for Darwin, compared to current conditions.

Deaths from increased disease transmission are expected to rise. Vector borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever may spread in the tropics.

Attracting health care workers to remote areas will be increasingly hard, and services will be strained by rising demand and disrupted supply chains.

2. Communities

Coastal, regional and remote communities face very high to severe risk.

More than 1.5 million people in coastal communities could be exposed to sea level rise by 2050, increasing to more than 3 million people by 2090.

Communities within 10km of soft shorelines will be especially vulnerable to erosion, inundation and infrastructure damage.

Extreme weather events – including heatwaves, bushfires, flooding and tropical cyclones – will intensify safety and security risks, especially in Northern Australia.

Compounding hazards are expected to erode community resilience and social cohesion. Water supplies in many areas will be threatened. Economic costs will escalate and people may be forced to migrate away from some areas.

3. Defence and national security

Climate risk to defence and national security is expected to be very high to severe by 2050. This system includes emergency management and volunteers.

Defence, emergency and security services will be increasingly stretched when hazards occur concurrently or consecutively.

If the Australian Defence Force continues to be asked to respond to domestic disasters, it will detract from its primary objective of defending Australia. At the same time, climate impacts will cause instability in our region and beyond.

Repeated disasters and social disruptions are likely to erode volunteer capacity. Increasing demands on emergency management personnel and volunteers will intensify and may affect their physical and mental wellbeing.

4. Economy and finance

Risks to the economy, trade and finance is expected to be very high by 2050. Projected disaster costs could total A$40.3 billion every year by 2050, even at 1.5°C.

Losses in labour productivity due to climate and weather extremes could reduce economic output by up to $423 billion by 2063. Between 700,000 and 2.7 million working days would be lost to heatwaves each year by 2061.

Extreme weather will lead to property damage and loss of homes, particularly in coastal areas. Loss on property values are estimated to reach A$611 billion by 2050. Insurance may become unaffordable in exposed areas, putting many financially vulnerable people at further risk.

Coupled with increased prices for essential goods, living costs will rise, straining household budgets.

The economy could experience financial shocks, leading to broader economic impacts which especially affect disadvantaged communities.

5. Natural environment

Risk to the natural environment is expected to be severe by 2050.

Important ecosystems and species will be lost by the middle of the century. At 3°C warming, species will be forced to move, adapt to the new conditions or die out. Some 40% to 70% of native plant species are at risk.

Ocean heatwaves and rising acidity, as well as changes to ocean currents, will massively alter the marine ecosystems around Australia and Antarctica. Coral bleaching in the east and west will occur more frequently and recovery will take longer.

Ocean warming and acidification also degrades macroalgae forests (such as kelp) and seagrasses. Freshwater ecosystems will be further strained by rainfall changes and more frequent droughts.

Loss of biodiversity will threaten food security, cultural values and public health. The changes will disrupt the cultural practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their connection to Country.

6. Infrastructure and the built environment

By 2050, the climate risk to infrastructure and built environment is expected to be high or very high.

Climate risks will push some infrastructure beyond its engineering limits, causing disruption, damage and in some cases, destruction. This will interrupt businesses and households across multiple states.

Extreme heat and fires, as well as storms and winds, will increasingly threaten energy infrastructure, potentially causing severe and prolonged disruptions.

Transport and supply chains will be hit. Water infrastructure will be threatened by both drought and extreme rainfall. Telecommunications infrastructure will remain at high risk, particularly in coastal areas.

The number of houses at high risk may double by 2100. Modelling of extreme wind shows increasing housing stock loss in coastal and hinterland regions, particularly in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

7. Primary industries and food systems

By 2050, risks to the primary industries and food systems will be high to very high. This increases food security risks nationwide.

Variable rainfall and extreme heat will challenge agriculture, reducing soil moisture and crop yields. Farming communities will face water security threats.

Hotter climates and increased fire-weather risks threaten forestry operations. Fisheries and aquaculture are likely to decline in productivity due to increased marine temperatures, ocean acidity and storm activity.

The livestock sector will face increased heat stress across a greater area. At 3ºC warming, more than 61% of Australia will experience at least 150 days a year above the heat-stress threshold for European beef cattle.

Biosecurity pressures will increase. Rainfall changes and hotter temperatures are expected to help spread of pests and diseases.

8. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

As part of the assessment, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples identified seven additional nationally significant climate risks:

• self-determination
• land, sea and Country
• cultural knowledges
• health, wellbeing and identity
• economic participation and social and cultural economic development
• water and food security
• remote and rural communities.

As the report notes, climate change is likely to disproportionately impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in terms of ways of life, culture, health and wellbeing as well as food and water security and livelihoods. It also notes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples “have experience, knowledge and practices that can support adaptation to climate change”.

Doing more. Doing better.

The assessment poses hard questions about how climate change will affect every system vital to Australia.

Ideally, such an assessment would be carried out every five years and be mandated by legislation.

Future assessments should comprehensively examine global impacts and their flow-ons to Australia. As the COVID pandemic showed, Australia is part of a global system when it comes to human health and supply chains. Defence, trade and finance all are international by nature. And climate change refugees from the South Pacific are already arriving.

The assessment makes clear that current efforts to curb and adapt to climate change will not prevent significant harm to Australia and our way of life. We must do better – and do it quickly.

Young people, and unborn generations, can and will hold us all to account on our progress from today.

Andrew B. Watkins, Associate Research Scientist in Climate Science, Monash University; Lucas Walsh, Professor of Education Policy and Practice, Youth Studies, Monash University, and Tas van Ommen, Adjunct Professor in Climate Science, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate Change - Heatwaves lead to faster ageing

                                                                                             Shutterstock

The invisible effects of climate change via the increasing number of heat waves are more profound than many people may have imagined from trends over the past couple of decades. Heat waves in general are a well known health risk through the effects of dehydration, loss of body mass and organ stress. The evidence is now building that heat waves increase the ageing process itself.

A long-term study of 24,922 people in Taiwan, published in Nature Climate Change in August this year, has found that a moderate increase in cumulative heatwave exposure increases a person's biological age "...to an extent comparable to regular smoking or alcohol consumption. The more extreme-heat events that people were exposed to, the more their organs aged".

To reach this conclusion, the researchers analysed data from medical examinations between the years 2008 to 2022 during which time Taiwan experienced around 30 heatwaves. The definition of 'heatwave' applied was a period of elevated temperature over several days.  The results from several medical tests including assessments of liver, lung, kidney function, blood pressure and inflammation was used to calculate biological age. 

The results from the study found that the more extreme-heat events that people experienced the faster the ageing process that occured. For every extra 1.3°C exposure for a participant, around 0.023 to 0.031 years on average was added to their biological clock.  While the initial numbers may appear small, over time with accumulated effects and across populations, the impact on public health would be meaningful and costly. As increasing heat is a key effect from climate change, this latest research demonstrates the wide range of implications for life on this planet.

Health - the menace of mosquitoes

A warm, wet spring means more mozzies. How to protect yourself from the diseases they spread

Cameron Webb, University of Sydney

Mosquito bites are annoying. They can also have deadly consequences. So what diseases do mosquitoes in Australia carry?

And with warmer weather on its way and rain expected to continue, how can you prepare for the coming mosquito season?

Mosquitoes are deadliest animal

Mosquitoes kill more people than any other animal. Worldwide, more than half a million people die each year from mosquito bites that transmit malaria parasites.

Australia is fortunate to be free of major outbreaks of malaria, though occasional cases do occur.

The most common mosquito-borne disease in Australia is caused by Ross River virus. Around 5,000 cases are reported each year and, while never fatal, the illness can be severely debilitating. Symptoms include fever, rash, joint pain and fatigue.

Mosquito populations fluctuate year by year. A/Prof Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), CC BY-NC-SA

Murray Valley encephalitis virus is responsible for very rare but potentially fatal disease. It’s detected most years in northern Australia.

There has been a resurgence of the virus in southeastern parts of Australia following flooding in recent years. Mosquitoes pick up the virus from waterbirds throughout the Murray Darling Basin before they pass on the pathogen to people. Mosquito and waterbird populations both boom after flooding.

Mosquitoes in some coastal areas of Victoria can also pass on the flesh-eating bacteria that can cause Buruli ulcer.

What about Japanese encephalitis?

Japanese encephalitis virus can cause fever, headaches, vomiting and, in rare cases, death.

Over the summer of 2021-22, there were 45 cases of Japanese encephalitis in southeastern Australia. This virus was never expected to spread so widely. In some parts of Australia, people died due to mosquito bites for the first time in around 50 years.

Scientists and health authorities thought Japanese encephalitis virus would transmit in a similar way to the closely related Murray Valley encephalitis virus, with outbreaks typically occurring after flooding that provided ideal conditions for both mosquitoes and the waterbirds carrying the virus.

But we now know pigs – especially feral pigs – are in the mix too, along with a range of other animals.

With gaps in our understanding of what drives local transmission, predictions of Japanese encephalitis activity are now proving to be less reliable. This makes it hard to work out the threat it may pose this summer.

Last summer, despite the lack of any substantial rainfall, the virus turned up even though mosquito (and waterbird) populations were generally low.

The virus also wasn’t limited to those areas where we’d expect to see it. There is growing evidence it’s made its way to the east coast, with the virus detected in the suburbs of Brisbane.

Ongoing wet weather can provide ideal conditions for mosquitoes. A/Prof Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), CC BY-NC-SA

How will the weather impact mosquitoes this season?

Like all insects, mosquitoes thrive in warmer weather. But they also need water.

It doesn’t really matter if it’s a “wet” or “dry” summer, mosquitoes are always active. But sometimes there are more – lots more.

In most parts of Australia, there is currently no shortage of water. Some regions have had record rainfall this winter, with more on the way.

The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting above-average rainfall through to the end of the year. Once the weather warms up, it could be a “buzzy” start to mosquito season.

This doesn’t mean outbreaks of mosquito-borne disease are inevitable. But we need to be alert to the risks and how best to protect ourselves and family.

Scientists like me trap mosquitoes across Australia each summer to track changes in their abundance, as well as activity of pathogens. A/Prof Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology), CC BY-NC-SA

Monitoring mozzies

More rain means a greater risk of mosquito-borne disease. But outbreaks aren’t easy to predict, so surveillance is critical.

Australian state and territory health authorities undertake monitoring of mosquitoes and the pathogens they carry each year. The objective is to provide an early warning of elevated risk of mosquito-borne diseases. This may be due to increased mosquito activity or the detection of mosquito-borne pathogens.

Given the uncertainty around Japanese encephalitis, it’s also important to monitor locations where the virus has not yet been detected.

How to stay safe this spring and summer

There’s a lot you can do to protect yourself and family from mosquito bites and mosquito-borne disease.

A vaccine is available for those at risk of Japanese encephalitis. See your local health professional for advice on accessing the vaccine.

But there aren’t vaccines for the other local mosquito-borne diseases. Nor are there any specific treatments for these diseases. So preventing mosquito bites is the best way to protect yourself.

If you’re outdoors when mosquitoes are active, cover up with long pants, a long-sleeved shirt and covered shoes. Apply an insect repellent containing diethyltoluamide, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus to all exposed skin.

Skip the stickers, patches and wristbands, as the evidence shows they aren’t a reliable way to prevent bites.

Keep your property free of mosquito breeding grounds, too. Mosquitoes can lay eggs in any container that fills with water: a plant saucer, a bird bath, discarded plastic buckets, bottles or tins. Tip them out each week, cover them up or throw them away.

Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Medical Science & Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute; Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.