And you thought snakes in a toilet were a nightmare.
Scientists now say the coronavirus could potentially spread across buildings, through toilets and drains – a particularly alarming prospect for apartment dwellers with suspicious plumbing.
The discovery was made in China, after researchers found the “long empty” apartment directly below a family of five swabs that tested positive for COVID-19. Despite the fact that no one was found in the apartment below, the investigators found traces of the virus on the sink, faucet and shower handle.
This suggested that the virus particles could potentially weigh on the infected family in the pipes in the vacant apartment, according to researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who published their findings this month in the journal Environment International.
The researchers cited an experiment that further confirmed their hypothesis. Using a tracer simulator, scientists found contaminated aerosols in bathrooms up to 12 floors above the family with COVID-19. The researchers believed that the coronavirus-laden aerosols from the family’s excrement floated in their homes through the building’s pipes.
Previous studies have shown that in addition to spreading via respiratory droplets – say crying or coughing – COVID-19 is also present in the stool.
And while researchers already knew that coronavirus particles could be pushed into the air with the power of a toilet flush, the new findings are even more difficult for buildings with shared wastewater systems. Often, gases can enter the systems through the pipes if not enough water is flowing through them, said Lidia Morawska, director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at Queensland University of Technology in Australia.
“If there is odor, it means that air is somehow transported to where it should not go,” said Morawska, who was not involved in the study, Bloomberg.
The new findings also follow up with a notorious case from the SARS outbreak in 2003. At that time, 329 residents of Amoy Gardens apartment complex in Hong Kong all received SARS. Investigators believe the building’s defective sewer pipes – which sent a “virus-laden aerosol plume” through the system – may be partly to blame.
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