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Comment by zhemao | Hacker News Reader

The picture of the combo toilet-kitchen made me viscerally upset. That must be so unsanitary.

Several prisons I was housed in had the toilet in our cell, a couple feet from our bunks. We used a towel draped over the seat as a lid. This was typical for a 2 or 3 man cell.

Yup-I had that in my brief stint at the Yazoo City Maximum I was in. It had all the fun trappings of Dante's Inferno: armed guard towers, electrified fences, not a bird within miles. And that stainless steel toilet/sink right next to a thin mattress on the floor. breakfast at 4:30 am, as I recall.

Why would it, if you keep it clean? (And are not dumb.)

You would be surprised, but toilets tend to be the cleanest places nowadays.

However the one depicted is unsanitary for sure.

Not to be "that guy", but citation needed?

The absolute risk from accidental liquid contamination or aerosol intuitively seems unavoidable to me...

Little poo in the food never hurt nobody

Especially not if it's your own poo. You might keep reinfecting yourself with some bacteria or parasites that would otherwise have a slim chance of staying in the body, but the human immune system is pretty well-equipped to handle that.

Having your own toilet in your own kitchen is probably more sanitary than separating toilet and kitchen, but sharing them among multiple people.

There are all sorts of bacteria that are no problem in your lower GI tract, but would be massively dangerous elsewhere (your lungs, for instance).

The toilet seat is typically cleaner (in terms of bacteria) than the office desk. Certainly aerosol contamination is a risk, but that can easily be solved with a protocol of leaving the lid closed. And that's all assuming that bacteria are outright bad; it's becoming more apparent that too little exposure to bacteria is dangerous as well (can lead to auto immune disorders). Obviously I'm not suggesting living in faeces, but a bit of pragmatism can make something like this not a problem at all.

And it's easy for a kitchen without a toilet attached to become disgustingly unsanitary.

"Confucious says man who puts chicken and peas in soup very unhygienic".

They should at least put the lid down!

They left it open for the photo, and put some fresh food on the table next to it to drive the point home.

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