Don't Trust the Charmin

In a variety of places I've worked, I've noticed printed material left in the bathroom stalls. Sometimes these are magazines, but usually it's something more disposable that has been printed off the internet on the company printers. I assume people bring such things in to be able to have something to read in the toilet, but not have to bring Contamination back to their desks.

The reading matter left behind is usually stuffed in the seat liner container or otherwise outside of the direct path of feces or urinal spray, possibly from some bizarre altruism on the part of the carrier, anticipating the next occupant's desire to read riveting details on the nature of networking protocols or the subtle art of medical codebooks.

So, basically, the text left behind is usually way too tedious for me to tempt the Microbe Gods and actually handle the paper with my bare hands.

Today's literary leftovers had something to do with disease transmission, from the bit of text that was visible without braving the brown smear on the upper-left corner of the page. What I saw, and I'm paraphrasing here since I didn't actually pull the thing out, was something like this: "...multitude of methods to actively distribute parasites and plague in urban environments, including workplace telephones, water fountains, groceries, and high turnover toiletries..."

So I'm thinking, what exactly are "high turnover toiletries?" The only thing I could come up with as I pondered upon the porcelain bucket was toilet paper. Maybe toothpaste, but as I sat staring at the ragged white roll ensconced in the stall wall, I couldn't get the thought of toilet paper out of my head.

Someone thought plague distribution by toilet paper was a big enough deal to write an article about it.

Here I always thought toilet paper was my friend. A pleasant utility of the modern age to promote hygiene and prevent plague. But someone somewhere (quite possibly my workplace), was considering using these innocuous cottony sheets as a method to insert worms and viruses into my body.

And at about this point in my reasoning I needed to wipe.

So after a thorough examination of each sheet before I used them, I found myself getting back to my desk, opening up google, and searching for a clean electronic copy of the article in question (though I wonder what our IT people will think of my "'parasitic worms' +toilet" query if they are monitoring internet searches).

Anyway, nothing really useful or interesting came up. Even within the highly entertaining context of an epidemic of colon-dwelling worms, lab reports and statistical analyses are still boring. And no one really focused on the whole paper delivery system that I feared.

So perhaps my fears are unjustified. Perhaps we can all still comfortably wipe without danger of infestation.

But I'd check my toilet paper for tiny little eggs, if I was you.