I suppose that, in some neighborhoods there is a genuine need to protect a toilet seat from either theft or vandalism but, in general, toilet seat protectors can be considered synonymous with toilet seat covers which are intended to protect the toilet user from germs, bacteria or viruses that might have found their way onto the surface of the seat.
How Best To Provide This Protection?
There are, perhaps, three methods that should be foolproof and they are all highly impractical.
1. Before anyone is allowed to enter, let alone use, the toilet; they must undergo a complete medical examination and be subject to rigorous decontamination procedures.
2. The toilet cubicle must be such that it can be sealed up airtight and then subjected to sterilization procedures (hot steam, ultraviolet, etc) after every single use.
3. No one is allowed to go to the toilet when away from their private home.
Unfortunately, other available forms of toilet seat protection do have shortcomings and may not be 100% successful. For example:-
- Get the users to wash themselves and the seat with a bidet hose (maybe with disinfectant in the water) – this often results in excess water being directed onto the cubicle floor to collect as a possible breeding ground for germs.
- Install and get them to use a squat or sit on bowl type bidet – but, people who are squeamish about sharing a seat with a stranger are not likely to use the same device that someone else has just washed their private parts in.
- Provide disposable, one use only, seat covers (to be used as toilet seat protectors) – people in a hurry might not bother to use them and, when they do, it is difficult to get the covers to balance around the top surface of the toilet seat. Then, how and where should they dispose of the used cover?
The biggest drawback with all of these is that they rely on the user doing something – which might be ignored or performed badly. It is always going to be a compromise but possibly the best toilet seat protection comes from a system where the users are not expected to do too much for themselves. An automatic system; that places a new seat cover firmly on the seat before the user sits down and, then, automatically disposes of it when the user has finished would seem to be an ideal solution.
