Urban Legends
Many urban legends have been reported regarding the dangers of using a toilet in a variety of situations. Several of them have been shown to be questionable. These include some cases of the presence of venomous spiders (primarily due to the Australian redback spider's reputation for hiding under toilet seats). In large cities like New York City, sewer rats often have mythical status regarding size and ferocity, resulting in tales involving the rodents crawling up sewer pipes to attack an unwitting occupant. Of late, stories about terrorists booby trapping the seat to castrate their targets have begun appearing.
An urban legend with many variations recounts an "exploding" toilet. 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 CSI a toilet was blown up by filling the bowl and blocking the pipe with dry ice. When the dry ice sublimated, the newly frozen water stopped the vapours from escaping, causing it to blow up. In the movie Holiday on the Buses, a toilet is blown up when a lit cigarette is thrown into the pan, which is filled with petrol; the characters had tried to flush it away, not realising it is not as dense as water.
Other common stories relate to the use of a vacuum in the toilets of airplanes.
Read more about this topic: Toilet-related Injuries And Deaths
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