How many toi­lets are there in the United States? What would hap­pen if they were all flushed at the same time? How dan­ger­ous is it to use the toilet?

If these are the sort of ques­tions that haunt you not just on Novem­ber 19 (Inter­na­tional Toi­let Day) but on a reg­u­lar basis, urine luck because I have the answers. Respec­tively they are:

  1. some­where between 225 and 350 million
  2. noth­ing good
  3. pretty dan­ger­ous, actu­ally

Fur­ther to num­ber three (to say noth­ing of num­ber two), some causes of seri­ous toilet-​​related injuries include severe pinch­ing of the gen­i­talia (most com­mon among young boys), dan­ger­ous fluc­tu­a­tions in blood pres­sure dur­ing evac­u­a­tion, and tod­dlers drown­ing after head-​​first encoun­ters with toi­let bowls. Other injuries result from stand­ing on the toi­let seat to reach high objects or slip­ping on the rim after inad­ver­tently sit­ting down hard on an open toi­let when both lids are up. Animal-​​related injuries include bites from black widow spi­ders who like to nest in and around seldom-​​used toi­let bowls and out­houses. In large cities, rats and even escaped pet snakes some­times climb through sewer pipes to bite unsus­pect­ing users in really sen­si­tive places.

Another greatly under-​​publicized dan­ger is that of toi­lets col­laps­ing under the weight of their users. The 2000 Nobel prize in pub­lic health was awarded to three physi­cians from Glas­gow for their 1993 case report on wounds sus­tained to the but­tocks by col­laps­ing toilets.

Famous peo­ple known to have died on the toi­let include Robert Pas­torelli, Lenny Bruce, Elvis Pres­ley, and British politi­cian Christo­pher Shale, who was found dead in a portable toi­let last year at the Glas­ton­bury Fair. The ear­li­est known toilet-​​related deaths include Japan­ese war­lord Uesugi Ken­shin (1578) and King Edmund II of Eng­land (1016). And in the cat­e­gory of sheer karma there is Michael Ander­son God­win, a con­victed mur­derer in South Car­olina who had his sen­tence reduced from death by elec­tric chair to life in prison. God­win sat on the metal toi­let in his cell while fix­ing his tele­vi­sion and when he bit one of the wires the resul­tant elec­tric shock killed him.

But the real dan­ger from toi­lets lies in the fact that Amer­i­cans use 400 bil­lion gal­lons of water daily, and more of that water is used for flush­ing toi­lets than for show­er­ing, laun­der­ing, lawn-​​watering, or any other domes­tic activ­ity. Obvi­ously appalled by this, in 1992 George H. W. Bush signed into law the Energy Pol­icy Act which made 1.6 gal­lons per flush toi­lets stan­dard (and prob­a­bly raised as much of a stink among Repub­li­cans as break­ing his “no new taxes” pledge.) The law went into effect in Jan­u­ary 1, 1994, for res­i­den­tial build­ings and Jan­u­ary 1, 1997, for com­mer­cial build­ings. Ever since its pas­sage, Repub­li­cans have been fight­ing an urgent rear-​​guard action against the law, which they find impos­si­ble to stomach.

Steve King (R-​​Kiron, IA) deliv­er­ing his speech at CPAC

As recently as a few months ago, Con­gress­man Steve King (R-​​Kiron, IA) used a speech at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. to com­plain about “lib­eral” ideas like energy-​​saving light bulbs and low-​​flow toi­lets. “How did a nation born of free­dom and lib­erty lose its free­dom and lib­erty in this way?” King said. “How does a nation that’s blessed by an extra­or­di­nary sup­ply of Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism sub­mit inch-​​by-​​creeping-​​inch to the total­i­tar­ian state that’s descend­ing upon us?” And in one of my favorite recent blog columns, a Repub­li­can gun-​​rights blog­ger explains how low-​​flow toi­lets are actu­ally a lib­eral plot to under­mine mar­riage.  But as early as 2000, Dave Barry was using the low-​​flow toi­let as a cam­paign plat­form dur­ing one of his qua­dren­nial runs for president.

Under the ral­ly­ing cry of “Power to the Potty!” Dave issued this stir­ring chal­lenge to all Americans:

So I am call­ing on you, the vot­ers, to stand up and be counted. Don’t let a bunch of éli­tist, infrastructure-​​obsessed, organic-​​tofu-​​eating, whale-​​saving, opera-​​listening, earth-​​tone-​​wearing PBS view­ers set the elec­tion agenda for you! Boot up your com­puter right now (Win­dows 98 users, allow six hours). Then go to [the PBS elec­tion web­site] click on the word “Forum” and cast your bal­lot for the low-​​flow toi­let issue. Let’s start a “move­ment,” vot­ers! Let’s see if we can make this issue “crack” the top ten, per­haps even reach­ing “num­ber one!” If we can, then I, as your pres­i­dent, will be able to force Con­gress to “pass” a mean­ing­ful Toi­let Reform bill. Because Con­gress will know that I have you, the vot­ers, behind me.

Clearly Dave’s move­ment was not, in the end, bulky enough to do the job for him. But who knows…maybe the coura­geous, prin­ci­pled Etch-​​a-​​Sketch guy will take up the chal­lenge anew this year and fight for the free­dom to fully flush. If he does, the blow­back will be thun­der­ous. Because, of that 400 bil­lion gal­lons of water that Amer­i­cans use every day to carry off their awful offal, nearly all of it is fresh, treated water. Water on which we spent a tremen­dous amount to col­lect, pipe, fil­ter, and treat to make it safe to drink. And that’s just the kind of loo-​​nacy that gets folks on both sides of the com­mode all wee-wee’d up.

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