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Boeing's Self-Cleaning Aircraft Bathroom Lets You Use Loo Without Touching Anything
coondoggie writes: With barely enough space to um, sit, and with high capacity usage, the commercial airline toilet perhaps is an engineering marvel but little else. Boeing however is looking to that notion with a self-cleaning aircraft bathroom -- known as the Fresh Lavatory -- that the company says uses ultraviolet (UV) light to kill 99.99% of germs in the loo -- and even puts down the toilet seat lid. "We're trying to alleviate the anxiety we all face when using a restroom that gets a workout during a flight," said Jeanne Yu, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Director of Environmental Performance in a statement. "In the prototype, we position the lights throughout the lavatory so that it floods the touch surfaces like the toilet seat, sink and countertops with the UV light once a person exits the lavatory. This sanitizing even helps eliminate odors."
Sure, it's a good idea to kill of germs with UV light - but that ain't self cleaning. Someone sprinkles all over the seat, and leaves shaving hair in the sink, and you're going to need a lot more than a black light bulb.
Sounds like this is a PR stunt to make passengers happy, without doing much on their end.
I do wonder how all the plastics in the room will hold up with the extra UV light.
I can see Boing (a US company) calling it a bathroom, a restroom, a toilet, or a head. But loo? That's Airbus territory.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Seriously. If I don't touch anything, I'm liable to piss all over myself.
Not as good as the self-cleaning street toilets I have seen in Paris.
And thus how Aircraft bathrooms get in the state they do - everyone tries to use them without touching anything.
That jewel goes to the pulldown tray in front of you... where you eat your meals.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09...
Soap doesn't kill germs. All it does is makes oily substances more likely to be pulled along by water than they were before.
Soap certainly kills some germs. There are lots of bacteria and viruses which are vulnerable to the SDS (sodium dodecyl sulfate), a detergent widely used in hand soaps, shampoos, and a bunch of other sudsy consumer products. The detergent disrupts the cell membranes of many bacteria, and it denatures (unfolds) important proteins in many strains of viruses and bacteria.
Sure, the improvements to mechanical cleaning and suspension of oily matter are important, too. And there are certainly some things (spores and other more robust pathogens) which are resistant to SDS and other detergents, particularly at short exposure times. But "soap doesn't kill every germ" is a long way from "soap doesn't kill germs".
~Idarubicin