What Happens When You Drink Toilet Water?

the loo the water closet the John or the toilet it has many names but one function transporting biological waste and other unwanted things from your house to the public sewer system quick TSA don't flush moist towelettes or baby wipes down the toilet they don't dissolve in water and make fatbergs which are disgusting and clog our sewers despite the fact that the toilet has one use this question still comes up for reasons I do not know can you drink toilet water No yes it's clear it's wet and it's water but that doesn't mean you can drink it in doing my research for this video I found a decent amount of inquisitive people really wanting to know if you can drink toilet water and others who believe it's completely harmless let's take a gander at a few of these shall we is toilet water bad for you answer toilet water can be extremely harmful to your health and should only be consumed in the case of extreme emergency what kind of emergency are you talking about there bud like you're in the middle of the Sahara Desert with no water in your only source is a public toilet and grading seems on point when I flush a toilet is the new water that fills up the bowl drinkable assuming it's tap water if not why not or how many flushes will it take what do you mean how many flushes will it take and why are you even asking this question in the first place is toilet water is clean as tap water I know that the toilet bowl itself is filled with bacteria and once the water is in the bowl it's not safe to drink but is the water it comes from just as clean as the tap technically speaking could someone drink water from the toilet if you had a 100% new and clean toilet yes moving on why is it safe for humans to drink from the toilet but not my pets what my daughter drained toilet water I was cleaning our room and heard splashing walked into the adjoining bathroom to find dear daughter scooping water out of the toilet bowl with her hands and putting them in her mouth I'm so grossed out I clean the toilet a few days ago but it's been used since then it's a source of fresh water as long as there wasn't any urine her feces in it at the time or chemicals in it she's fine my cats drink out a toilet upstairs because their water is downstairs our old dog only drank out of the toilets it's not dirty unless there's something in it making it dirty really it's not dirty unless there's something in it making it dirty what do you think goes into that toilet bowl milk and Cheerios now these people could be trolls or they could be genuinely ignorant about drinking toilet water it could be because they see their pets doing it and monkey-see monkey-do think it's probably safe at least for me I've never looked at the food my dog was eating and was like oh yeah give me some of that dry processed dog food with questionable ingredients at any rate if you're curious about drinking out of your toilet because your dog does it don't dogs are known to eat their own feces and a variety of other bacteria saturated things like raw meat dogs can do this because they evolved as opportunistic scavengers eating fresh meat or several day old meat they have enzymes they're released immediately in their stomach and food passes through their body much faster preventing them from getting sick from bacteria us humans have a much different in slower digestive system so don't do it for those of you who are still really interested in drinking toilet water I did you the favor of growing a bacterial culture from the toilet I took three different bacterial swabs one from the toilet bowl one from the tank and one from the tap here's the results in case you didn't believe me now you can see for yourself the toilet bowl is full of bacteria okay so you can't freakin drink it when you flush yes all the wastes visibly goes down the drain into the sewer system but there's still residual microscopic bacteria left over just how much is left over well through analysis of 11 different studies where bacterial cells were counted in human stool there was on average 90 billion bacterial cells per gram of feces with about 50% of those bacteria being alive the average weight of human stool per bowel movement is about 226 grams or the same weight as an 8 ounce sirloin 226 grams times 90 billion bacteria per gram with about 50% being alive comes to about 10 trillion living bacterial cells per bowel movement even with the flush carrying the waste away there's likely millions if not hundreds and millions of bacteria still in the bowl again just look at the petri dish but what happens if you don't heed my warning and you still drink the toilet water well there's two different scenarios that can go down the first scenario is pretty benign basically you get food poisoning and that's it your body tries to get rid of the bacteria in your GI tract by fever vomiting and diarrhea this is usually self resolving in two to three days with fluids and proper treatment and is not life-threatening the second scenario Shuchi and is far far worse than food poisoning sepsis is a massive systemic inflammatory immune response caused by the normally high bacterial infection in your blood known as blood poisoning blood poisoning is severe and often fatal this is because your blood is your life force it flows throughout your entire body carrying oxygen and nutrients to all your organs having pathogenic bacteria floating around in your blood to all your organs is pretty much worst-case scenario in blood poisoning blood pH is wildly thrown off pathogenic proteins are released throughout your body and cells are dying from bacterial infection naturally your body freaks out it overreacts by producing an overcompensating immune response resulting in a cytokine storm cytokines act as signaling molecules to alert cells for example when a pathogen like a virus is in the body cytokines are released and bind to cells to tell them that a pathogen is nearby these cells then initiate the production of immune cells and inflammation reactions to remove the pathogen the system works great with sepsis it's not just a few pathogens but many many pathogens and their widespread to counteract this the body releases many many cytokines when an abnormally high amount of cytokines are released the immune system goes into a dangerous positive feedback loop the high number of cytokine signal a large amount of cells to induce an immune response the heightened immune response creates inflammation causing the release of more cytokines which then signal more immune cells this cycle continues getting increasingly chaotic this is known as a cytokine storm and the response is akin to removing termites by burning down your house sepsis and the following cytokine storm result in septic shock causing rapid heart rate drop in blood pressure and organ failure which typically results in a fatality sadly this very scenario happened to an 8 year old girl named Raley browning in the UK her parents and aunt prevented her from drinking water over a three-day period being severely dehydrated she took to drinking water from a toilet causing her to go into fatal septic shock and in case you're wondering yes all three are in prison however drinking toilet water doesn't always mean that you'll go into septic shock in 2017 a Tennessee State University student billed her roommates water bottle with toilet water the roommate showed signs of weight loss and stomach issues but did not have any serious injury or sepsis so what determines whether drinking from the porcelain throne will give you food poisoning or septic shock if you're immunocompromised or elderly you've pretty much sealed your fate if you're young and healthy the one factor that will determine expiration or regurgitation is the type of bacteria in the toilet bowl some bacteria are more deadly than others it depends what bacteria the person had in their colon when they use the toilet for example if you drink water contaminated with lactobacillus you'd most likely get food poisoning but if you drink water with e.coli h pylori Vibrio Salmonella or Clostridium you're in trouble these are notoriously pathogenic organisms that cause serious diseases a large concentration of these in your water would certainly cause sepsis for example many of these bacteria have pathogenic molecules called endotoxins which are found in gram-negative bacteria by the way all the gram-negative means is that these type of bacteria don't retain a colored stain in their cell membrane that's all endotoxins are one of the major factors that cause septic shock in an individual this is due to the fact that these toxins are potent stimulators of the immune system increasing the likeliness of a cytokine storm and subsequently septic shock endotoxins are so potent that they can cause an immune response at picogram per milliliter quantities translation it's so potent it's effective at concentrations of one part per trillion however there is some irony to these toxins endotoxins are only released in the when immune cells attacked bacteria for example the bacterium ecoli carries an endo toxin called lipid a in its outer membrane when attached to the bacterial cell the endotoxin carries little threat to the body once immune cells lyse the e.coli lipid a is freed from the membrane and released into the circulation at large quantities immune cells then come in contact with this endotoxin and begin to ramp up the immune response which is where the cytokine storm enters the scene alas if you did end up drinking toilet water even though you were told not to and have gone full septic there is still a glimmer of hope hospitals have developed a surprisingly specific and effective protocol in treating sepsis due to the fact that sepsis is an incredibly fatal circumstance because again you have bacteria releasing toxins in your blood that make your immune system go the standard protocol is pretty beefed up firstly patients are given antibiotics within the first hour of being diagnosed which helps to reduce the bacterial presence in the blood low blood pressure is treated with vasopressors like norepinephrine and are given to increase the patient's blood pressure the patient has also given a blood transfusion as well finally the rapid production of cytokines have to be stopped surprisingly this is done by giving the patient anesthetics certain inhaled anesthetics have been shown to reduce the production of cytokines thereby slowing down the immune response it's incredibly important for someone with sepsis to receive treatment within the first three hours of being diagnosed every hour that the person is not treated there is a 6% increase in mortality so remember despite your own curiosity or what other people say don't drink toilet water ever you

Channel: Dark Science

Views: 248,588

Keywords: toilet, toilet water, what happens when you drink, is it safe to drink, can you drink, is toilet water safe, questions for science, science, health, is toilet water clean, what happens if you drink, bacteria, sick

Id: 5OTI9COSVJs

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020