Whether toilet water is clean or not depends on three factors: where the water comes from, the toilet tank’s clean condition, and the toilet bowl. Let’s talk one by one.
Some people say that as long as you flush the toilet after you use it, the water in the bowl will be clean as drinking water. Is it true? The answer is NO, although the water in the tank and bowl looks clean.
Table of Contents
Where the Water Comes From
Toilet water clean or not much depends on where the water comes from. That is, the way your house is plumbed will determine the cleanliness of your tailor water.
Toilet Water Same as Drinking Water
Generally speaking, most water supply pipes to the toilet are the same water to the kitchen sink. So the water running to the toilet tank is as clean as your kitchen drinking water. Then, the water is clean or not depends on how clean the toilet tank is.
Grey Water
Some toilets’ flush water is grey water, which is from the shower or other sources. So it is dirty.
Is Toilet Tank Water Clean?
Water is clean when on the back of the flush toilet, which holds the water to flush the toilet. The water from the pipeline to your tank is clean, but your tank condition decides whether the water in your tank will still be clean as drinking water, as the water will stay in the tank for hours before use.
The toilet tank is a frequently ignored part when you clean the bathroom. When you open the tank, most probably you’ll find rust, sediment, or even corrosion in it. Mold and bacteria are easy to grow in a tank, which will also make the water in it dirty.
Is Toilet Bowl Water Clean?
When the water comes out of the tank to flow into the bowl, it contacts the wide range of organisms on the surface of the bowl and those organisms quickly contaminate the fresh water.
The bowl is dirty although you clean it every day as unhealthy bacteria is easy to grow in a wet environment, no matter how well and how often you clean the toilet. According to WebMD, a toilet bowl contains 3.2 million bacteria per square inch on average.
There are deodorizers and cleaners that may help to keep the bowl clean and smell good but that cannot make the water clean because these products usually contain dangerous chemicals.
For example, Mr Muscle (a toilet cleaner) contains quaternary ammonium compounds and sodium hydroxide, you’ll have a health problem if you drink the bowl water with the residues of them.
Is Toilet Water Safe to Drink?
This may seem weird, but some people may ask so? In most cases, the toilet tank water is clean if your tank’s hygiene is good, otherwise, it is not, especially when it is flush to the bowl.
However, some people think that toilet bowl water quality is similar to that of tap water. It is strongly not recommended to drink the toilet bowl water, there may be dangerous organisms (ex. E. coli and Giardia) in it.
Final Thought
Toilet water is clean as drinking water when it goes to the tank; then most probably it is dirty after staying in the tank for hours; finally, it is immediately dirty after flushing to the bowl in contact with unhealthy organisms. So toilet water is not like tap water, it is not drinkable.
