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Regardless of where you travel in the United States, when you gotta go, you gotta go. And you may have noticed in your travels that the toilet seat(s) in your home are typically not the same shape as what you’ll see in public toilets.

True, there may be some design differences in at-home toilet seats. They could be round or more oval-shaped. They might even be more rectangular than roundish. Some fancy toilets seats might be padded or heated or automatically open and close. They can be any color of the rainbow, or BE the color of the rainbow. They could even have seashells or money embedded in them.

When I was a little kid, I SOOO wanted one of those seashell embedded toilets! I thought they were the COOLEST things, LOLOL!

But with rare exceptions, the toilet seat(s) in public restrooms are U-shaped with an opening in the front (they’re also known as “open-front style”), while the one(s) in your home is/are closed (like an O). It doesn’t matter if it’s in the men’s or women’s rooms.

Have you ever wondered why public toilets in the U.S. are like that? I did. So I decided to find out.

It’s actually done on purpose, to be compliant with code.

There were no uniform codes for toilet systems in the early 1900s. Sewage and septic systems were made, as the local code said. Plumbers would fix things however they could, and depending on how the toilet system was made in the first place, there could be leaks in the line. Realizing that was a health and hygiene problem, the American Standard National Plumbing Code was created in 1955. That, in turn, was adapted to become the Uniform Plumbing Code by the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO) in 1973.

That code states, “Water closets shall be equipped with seats of smooth non-absorbent material. All seats of water closets provided for public use shall be of the open-front type.”

Fancy, huh?

But why?

It all comes down to hygiene.

It’s been determined that with an open front, there’s less surface area that can make inadvertent contact with your “junk” (“junk” = Mens’ parts. Ladies’ parts. Anybody’s parts).

According to Lynne Simick, the Director of Code Development at IAPMO, the U-shape works particularly well for women. She’s been quoted as saying the gap in the seat is designed to “allow women to wipe the perineal area after using the toilet without contacting the seat.”. Simick notes that the design also benefits men. She says an open-front seat “eliminates an area that could be contaminated with urine” as well as “eliminates the user’s genital contact with the seat.”

The code is just that – code. It’s not law. So you’ll occasionally see a public toilet that’s O-shaped.  But the vast majority of them will be U-shaped, with an open-front style.

And now you know why.

Feature Image (adapted): Elyse Horvath / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED

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