Corona Daily 113: Criminalising Bladders

United Kingdom has done an excellent job with vaccinations. This month London had some days without a single covid-19 death. Weather is improving - time to go to beaches and parks. But some Brits will continue to wear masks for quite a different reason.

On 21 April, residents of Tooting officially lodged complaints demanding more public toilets. In the pandemic, public toilet access has been severely restricted. To save money, UK councils have been reducing the number of public toilets over the years, delegating the function to McDonalds, Starbucks, and other pubs and bars. This may create the ridiculous situation of having to buy a drink in order to go to the bathroom; but desperate people at least had an expensive solution. Now police patrols have a special duty to deter people from peeing and pooing in bushes, on beaches, in private spaces.

Many public toilets were closed last year because of the “covid-says-no” attitude. Newspapers talked about toilet plume in public loos. Sometimes cleaners were not available in lockdown times. Some restrooms blocked off every other urinal, a tactic that was named “social piss-tancing”.

Because the English love systems and queues, in parks certain bushes get designated as loos, and people queue up at those bushes. Two brothers have launched a website for “loo-cation” updates. People finding an open loo feed the information on the app, and people wanting to relieve themselves try to find the nearest place. A bit like finding the nearest Chinese restaurant on your Google maps.

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A pregnant woman from London developed a urinary tract infection after being unable to find a toilet on a trip to Hyde Park. Another woman suffering from a bowel condition was barred from using the loo at her local GP surgery. One woman from west London couldn’t visit her daughter’s grave as the loos on the way and at the cemetery were all shut. Another woman resorted to taking Imodium (medicine to treat diarrhea) before going shopping, and taking a laxative on returning home.

Dylan, 28, was trying to use the bushes when the park officers caught him and fined £195. When he sobbed and said he was out of work, they reduced it to £95. When he complained, the council said it’s not their responsibility to provide the public with a place to urinate. Pre-pandemic England had one public toilet per 12,500 residents.

One American professor calls it “criminalizing having a bladder”. Some American state laws specify that if the police catch people relieving themselves in public places and ticket them, they have to register as sex offenders.

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Some novel products have appeared. Peebol is a pocket sized toilet. It is a bag filled with rapidly absorbing granules, which converts urine into solid, non-odour, non-spill gel. You could quickly get inside your car, use Peebol. Then at home throw its contents, which are biodegradable, on the compost heap.

Sheewee is a device that helps women to pee standing up without exposing themselves. Its sales went up by 700%. Sales of urine funnels, adult diapers, and external catheters have all skyrocketed.

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Amazon first denied and later acknowledged their workers using glass bottles and plastic bags to relieve themselves. Lack of restrooms has become an unbearable issue for delivery workers, taxi drivers, police and others who work outside their home.

Homeless people have nowhere to go. Menstruating women have no place to change their sanitary wear. People with Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome always mentally map the toilets on the route before leaving home. Now, they have become disabled. Only those with strong bladders and bowels can venture out. Women have started dehydrating themselves before going out.

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UN has named 19 November as the annual “World toilet day”. 4.2 billion people in the world live without safe sanitation. 700 million, including 500 million in India, defecate in the open. As a result of this lack of sanitation, more than a million children under five die of diarrhea every year.

The pandemic has now made Europe and the USA more aware of this issue. In the post-pandemic action plan, access to safe sanitation must be on the first page.

Ravi