As you well know, dirty toilet seats can make you sick, pregnant and shamed with all manner of embarrassing social diseases. But what most of us do to keep the seat from becoming a Petri dishes for all that nastiness can give us itches, rashes and other painful skin eruptions.
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That's what Ann Pietrangelo blogs on Care2.com. While scrubbing toilet
seats with strong cleansers made with harsh chemicals kills germs, those same harsh
chemicals are being put in contact with very sensitive skin.
Think about it. If you or your children have an unexplained rash around the upper
thighs or buttocks, it may be something called “toilet seat
dermatitis.” Untreated, it can lead to very painful skin eruptions with
a severe itch. The rash can also be caused by wooden toilet seats, especially if
they are painted or varnished. Again, sensitive skin on harsh chemicals.
Pietrangelo includes a statement
issued by the U.S. National Library of Medicine:
“Most
cases of toilet seat dermatitis are mild and easy to treat with topical
steroids. However, if not treated properly, the inflammation can
persist and spread, causing painful and itchy skin eruptions and
unnecessary discomfort for children and parents. Skin that's
persistently irritated is vulnerable to bacteria and may lead to more
serious infections that require treatment with oral antibiotics.”
The agency suggests wooden toilet seats be replaced with
plastic ones, and that harsh cleansers containing skin-irritating
chemicals be avoided. Adds Pietrangelo:
With so many illnesses and
conditions of unknown origin, perhaps we should take a closer look
inside the walls of our own homes. In our zeal to provide a clean and healthy environment for our
families, we are purchasing a multitude of different cleaning products
for our homes, rubbing and scrubbing it on, breathing it in, and
putting it right up against our bare skin. Like the foods we put in our bodies, every chemical cleaning agent we expose ourselves to has the potential to make us ill.
Her advice is to seek out alternative cleansers made of natural substances.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.