🚽 A toilet flush can throw a mist of tiny droplets as high as your face (about 163 cm / 5 ft 4 in) and as far as 1.5 m to the side. Most of those droplets are smaller than 3 micrometres, small enough to float and be breathed in.

Some studies still found them in the air 20 seconds after you flush.

Close the lid before you flush. It won’t trap every droplet (they can still sneak out through gaps), but it stops the plume shooting straight up into the breathing zone.

Paper: Adiyani et al., Science of the Total Environment (2026).