Toilet-related injuries and deaths

There have been many toilet-related injuries and deaths throughout history and in urban legends.

Accidental injuries

Infants and toddlers have fallen headfirst into toilet bowls and drowned. Safety devices exist to help prevent such accidents. It is highly unlikely for adults or teenagers to drown in toilets due to their larger body size. Injuries to adults include bruised buttocks and tail bones, as well as dislocated hips that have resulted from unexpectedly sitting on the toilet bowl rim because the seat is up or loose. Injuries can also be caused by pinching due to splits in plastic seats and/or by splinters from wooden seats, or if the toilet itself collapses or shatters under the user's weight. Older high-tank cast-iron cisterns have been known to detach from the wall when the chain is pulled to flush, causing injuries to the user. The 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in Public Health was awarded to three physicians from the Glasgow Western Infirmary for a 1993 case report on wounds sustained to the buttocks due to collapsing toilets. Furthermore, injuries are frequently sustained by people who stand on toilets to reach a height, then slip and fall. There are also instances of people slipping on a wet bathroom floor or from a bath and concussing themselves on the fixture.

Toilet-related injuries are surprisingly common, with some estimates ranging as high as 40,000 in the US every year. In the past, this number would have been much higher, due to the material from which toilet paper was made. This was shown in a 1935 Northern Tissue advertisement, which depicted splinter-free toilet paper. In 2012, 2.3 million toilets in the United States, and about 9,400 in Canada, were recalled due to faulty pressure-assist flush mechanisms which put users at risk of the fixture exploding.

Injuries caused by animals

Animals also cause injuries. Some black widow spiders prefer to spin their webs below the toilet seat due to the presence of insects that can inhabit and surround it. Therefore, several people have been bitten while using a toilet, particularly outhouse toilets. Although there is immediate pain at the bite site, these bites are rarely fatal. The danger of spiders living beneath toilet seats is the subject of Slim Newton's comic 1972 country song "The Redback on the Toilet Seat".

It has been reported that in some cases rats crawl up through toilet sewer pipes and emerge in the toilet bowl, so that toilet users may be at risk of having a rat bite their buttocks. Many rat exterminators do not believe this, as pipes, at generally six inches (15 centimeters) wide, are too large for rats to climb and are also very slippery. Reports by janitors are always on the top floor, and could involve the rats on the roof, entering the soil pipe through the roof vent, lowering themselves into the pipe, and then into the toilet.

In May 2016, an 11-foot snake, a reticulated python, emerged from a squat toilet and bit the man using it on his penis at his home in Chachoengsao Province, Thailand. Both the victim and the python survived.

Self-induced injury

Some instances of toilet-related deaths are attributed to the drop in blood pressure due to the parasympathetic nervous system during bowel movements. Existing circulatory issues may magnify this effect. It is further possible that people succumb on the toilet to chronic constipation, because the Valsalva maneuver is often dangerously used to aid in the expulsion of feces from the rectum during a bowel movement. According to Sharon Mantik Lewis, Margaret McLean Heitkemper, and Shannon Ruff Dirksen, the "Valsalva maneuver occurs during straining to pass a hardened stool. If defecation is suppressed over long periods, problems can occur, such as constipation or stool impaction. The Valsalva maneuver can facilitate defecation. This maneuver involves contraction of the chest muscles on a closed glottis with simultaneous contraction of the abdominal muscles." This means that people can die while "straining at stool." In chapter 8 of their Abdominal Emergencies, David Cline and Latha Stead wrote that "autopsy studies continue to reveal missed bowel obstruction as an unexpected cause of death".

A 2001 Sopranos episode "He is Risen" shows a fictional depiction of the risk, when the character Gigi Cestone has a heart attack on the toilet of his social club while straining to defecate.

Exploding toilets

In the Victorian era, there was a perceived risk of toilets exploding. These scenarios typically include a flammable substance (either accidentally or deliberately) being introduced into the toilet water, and a lit match or cigarette igniting and exploding the toilet. In 2014, Sloan's Flushmate pressure-assisted flushing system, which uses compressed air to force waste down the drain, was recalled after the company received reports of the air tank failing under pressure and shattering the porcelain.