Germaphobes rejoice: Someone has designed a self-cleaning bathroom!
As we discussed a few months ago, bathrooms are a pretty nasty place. Most people believe you need to fear the toilet seat, after all that’s where all the “action” goes down. But the real germy culprit has always been the bathroom floor where germs are allowed free reign.
Enter Boeing’s new self-cleaning bathroom, a gift to germaphobes everywhere. According to Engadget, the multinational corporation recently debuted new technology that instantly kills 99.99 percent of germs in your run-of-the-mill bathroom with nothing more than the power of far UV light.
What is far UV light? Well, the UV part stands for ultraviolet, which is a type of light that emits electromagnetic radiation. Humans are regularly exposed to the stuff from sun rays (that’s why sunscreen is such a necessity) and can withstand it to a certain extent. But at a certain level, like the far level, most germs don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell when exposed. If the light is powerful enough, UV light can ultimately destroy a germ’s structure and disrupt its DNA.
Rather than employing buckets of Lysol, Boeing hopes that by zapping bathrooms with just three seconds worth of UV light after every use, they can keep the spreading of germs down to a serious minimum. The company also designed the bathroom to require the least amount of touching possible. For instance, the toilet seat can be raised just by waving your hand in front of a sensor and everything in the bathroom from the soap dispenser to the trashcan cover can be manipulated without any touching.
Since Boeing is one of the biggest airplane makers in the world, they’re currently testing their new design in ultra-germy airplane bathrooms and hope to implement their innovations in the not-so-distant future. In no time, sitting next to the bathroom on flights won’t be (nearly) as bad as it used to be.
