WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN YOU FLUSH

New York Post

 

Horrifying study shows what really happens to the air when you flush — and toilet ‘loading’ matters

By Rachel Sacks

Published Sep. 9, 2026, 10:45 a.m. ET

 

An invisible danger lurks in your bathroom.

 

Bathroom hygiene often focuses on what you touch — wash your hands properly, clean your towels and bathmats often and consider investing in a bidet.

 

Recent research, though, has unveiled a horrifying threat that’s unleashed into the air every time you flush.

 

Researchers at Flinders University reviewed 22 previously published studies of aerosols released when a toilet is flushed.

 

When water rushes around the bowl, turbulence throws microscopic droplets up into the air that contain bacteria, viruses and other biological material, such as fecal matter, from the toilet water.

 

Some of the studies included in the review detected these particles more than five feet above the floor — within many people’s breathing zones — and found some even remain airborne for at least 20 seconds after a flush.

 

And more microbial “loading,” or higher levels of bacteria in the toilet water, meant more amounts of invisible bacterial spray in the air.

 

Every tenfold increase in microbial concentration in the water was linked to around 2.6 times asmuch bacteria the amount in the air.

 

Many of the particles ranged in size from 0.3 to 10 micrometers, with a majority under 3 micrometers, remaining small enough to stay airborne and potentially be inhaled.

 

The review also found that flushing energy, or the amount of water in the bowl that’s being flushed down, contributed to the presence of bacteria in the air, with an additional liter of water associated with roughly a 1.3-fold increase.

 

Previous studies have even made the invisible spray visible to demonstrate just how far it can reach.

 

A 2022 study from the University of Colorado used a laser exhibit to create a visual representation of a commercial toilet launching aerosols to a height of about 1.5 meters in a matter of eight seconds.

 

However, closing the lid may not make too much of a difference.

 

A 2024 study in the American Journal of Infection Control found that although putting the lid down before flushing trapped larger particles, it did nothing for more microscopic ones, allowing them to escape through gaps between the lid, seat and bowl.

 

The more recent review also found limited evidence that the lid position made a difference in the air plume.

 

Researchers still recommend closing the lid as a precautionary measure to help somewhat prevent toilet “loading” from ending up in the air.

 

Additionally, regular toilet cleaning, handwashing and using the lower-volume option on dual-flush toilets can reduce the spread of germs.

 

While these are all feasible in a private home bathroom, the flush plume is concerning in public restrooms, with further research needed to develop interventions to reduce toilet-generated aerosols.

 

AH: This is why it's crucial for people to boost their immune systems. 

HIDDEN CHEMICALS LURKING IN 85 PERCENT OF PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS LIKE SHAMPOO AND SOAP

New York Post

 

Hidden chemicals lurking in 85% of personal-care products like shampoo and soap: study

By Allie Yang

Published Aug. 12, 2026, 10:32 a.m. ET

 

It’s good practice to check the label on products you put on your body.

 

But what if the label doesn’t tell the whole story?

 

A new study suggests that ingredient lists on labels are almost always incomplete. Researchers found 98% of personal care and cleaning products they tested had chemicals in them that weren’t disclosed.

 

Authors say some of it is accidental contamination that happens during manufacturing. But other ingredients such as fragrance enhancers were likely added on purpose and simply left out on the label, they claimed.

 

These sneaky additions aren’t necessarily harmless.

 

Of the products they tested, 85% had at least one chemical that can harm your health, authors said. These included chemicals shown to cause cancer, impair child development or affect the endocrine and reproductive system.

 

What’s worse, 26% of products specifically labeled “non-toxic,” “fragrance-free” or “hypoallergenic” actually contained the very things they claimed to avoid.

 

“People shouldn’t need a chemistry lab to know what they’re bringing into their homes or putting on their skin,” author Jenny Hua said. “The next generation of product safety must look beyond the label and test what is actually there.”

 

Researchers tested 113 products from major stores like Target, Amazon, Walmart and Dollar Tree.

 

These products included shampoo, hair styling products, sunscreen, lotion, baby care products, intimate products, body oil, hand and body wash, deodorant and lip balm, oral care, ingredient oils, such as essential oils, and cleaning products, including laundry detergent.

 

Each label listed 16 ingredients on average. Testing revealed the actual average number of chemicals in each product was 51, more than three times higher.

 

On average, there were four unlisted harmful chemicals per product. These chemicals included fragrance components, botanical components, phthalates and parabens.

 

What do these chemicals do to the body?

 

Fragrance components can have a broad array of effects, from irritating the skin to harming the respiratory and endocrine system.

 

Botanical ingredients come from plants, but that doesn’t necessarily make them safe or gentle. They can cause allergic reactions, irritation and authors also say they can introduce things like pesticides, heavy metals or solvents.

 

Phthalates are used to make soft plastic and have been shown to have impacts on pregnancy, child growth and development.

 

Parabens are used in cosmetics to prevent mold and bacteria, but there are concerns these chemicals could disrupt hormones, harm fertility, affect birth outcomes and increase the risk of cancer.

 

Many consumers already know about risks associated with these chemicals and go out of their way to pick products that specifically claim not to include these ingredients.

 

Yet over a quarter of the products tested showed ingredients they were specifically marketed to avoid.

 

Most commonly, products said they were “100% natural” but contained synthetic chemicals, authors said. The second most common were products that contained specific chemicals or chemical classes that were labeled as excluded from the product, including “fragrance,” phthalates, parabens, silicone and oxybenzone.

 

They also found that so-called “non-toxic” products had some of those aforementioned harmful chemicals and “hypoallergenic” products had ingredients that were allergens and could cause irritation.

 

Researchers believe all these chemicals could be coming into our products due to changes in manufacturing and gaps in regulation. With those gaps, they believe some companies are getting away with things like adding allyl cyclohexylpropionate on purpose to coconut oil to enhance its scent — while leaving it off of product labels.

 

Interestingly, there was only one category that passed testing with flying colors: oral care. Authors believe this is because oral care products are regulated as over-the-counter drugs rather than cosmetics.

 

For everything else, researchers say we need to bridge the gap to enforce better purity standards across personal care.

 

“These findings reveal substantial gaps in product transparency and demonstrate that ingredient labels alone cannot reliably convey product safety,” authors said.

11 YEAR OLD GIRL WITH CHILDHOOD EYE CONDITION BECOMES SECOND PERSON IN THE WORLD TO RECEIVE REVOLUTIONARY TREATMENT

PEOPLE

 

Girl, 11, with Rare Childhood Blindness Condition Becomes Second Person in World to Have ‘Revolutionary’ Treatment

By Adam England  Published on July 24, 2026 12:19PM EDT

 

An 11-year-old girl with a rare childhood blindness condition has become just the second person in the world to receive a “revolutionary” new gene therapy.

 

Catherine L’Estrange, from North Acton in London, was diagnosed with the rare condition Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) as an infant, according to a release from Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS [U.K.’s National Health Service] Trust.

 

The ultra-rare condition, which affects about one in 150,000 infants, can lead to almost total vision loss by the late teens as the retina deteriorates over time.

 

Per the Mayo Clinic, the condition can also cause symptoms including weight gain, kidney conditions and extra fingers and toes. It’s caused by changes in genes, whether new or passed down from parents to children.

 

Over her life so far, Catherine became night-blind, then colorblind, and then began to lose her peripheral vision.

 

The preteen was the first person in the U.K. and just the second overall to receive a new retinal gene therapy at St Helier Hospital in Sutton, a town in south London. She had the treatment in March, per U.K. newspaper The Times.

 

The hospital also treated the world’s first person — a 17-year-old girl from Canada — to have the surgery in August 2025, per the release.

 

BBS can be caused by mutations in more than 20 different genes, and the treatment is available for people with mutations in the BBS10 gene, per the release. The mutations cause small cells in the retina to die, leading to blindness.

 

Surgeons removed the gel inside one of Catherine’s eyes and injected healthy copies of the BBS10 gene into the retina, the Press Association (PA) reported, per a release obtained by PEOPLE.

 

Neruban Kumaran, a consultant eye surgeon at Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, told the PA, “By giving a healthy copy of the gene, it helps save those cells, and the hope is to either [stabilize] or improve vision.”

 

He said that tests had already been done on the patients who’ve had the surgery — since Catherine, a third child has also received treatment — and some had already said their vision in dim light had improved.

 

“There is a hope that it may improve vision slightly, but it’s difficult to say,” he told the PA. “It’s not going to leave someone with perfect vision. But the hope is to [stabilize] and/or improve vision. Only time will tell.”

 

Catherine said, “If this treatment works, it will help me to carry on seeing things around me, and most of all I will be able to carry on reading books, which is one of my [favorite] things to do.”

 

Her father, the Reverend Timothy L’Estrange, explained that they didn’t expect gene therapies like this one to be available for many years, and likely after Catherine had lost her sight completely.

 

“Most children with BBS are undiagnosed until at least primary [elementary] school age, but we had a highly unusual infant diagnosis when Catherine was just a few weeks old,” he said.

 

He said in the hospital’s release that the family aimed to help Catherine develop her “independence and resilience” as much as possible in advance of her vision loss.

 

“We were surprised and delighted when we learned this treatment had become available, and that Catherine would be one of the first patients in the world to receive it,” he added, explaining that it would be “life-changing” for her to retain any vision as a result of the treatment.

 

Kumaran said, per the release, that the team was “so pleased to offer this novel treatment.”

 

He added, “Early positive feedback from the children and their families is very exciting and offers real hope to those affected by this condition.”

DOCTORS DISMISSED HER ENDOMETRIOSIS FOR YEARS

New York Post

 

exclusive

 

Doctors dismissed my agonizing symptoms for years — my misunderstood condition affects 190M people

By Kristina Kasparian

Published March 31, 2026, 7:55 a.m. ET

 

Most people go through life dreading a serious diagnosis and surgery. I spent my formative years begging for both.

 

At 30, while my peers were advancing their careers and growing their families, I couldn’t shower without vomiting from the strain it put on my body.

 

I couldn’t pull up my underwear or tie my shoes without my husband’s help.

 

I couldn’t stop fidgeting from the nerves that fired down my left leg. I couldn’t tolerate a seatbelt across my liver, a full bladder or more than an hour in pants. I couldn’t project my voice, not from a lack of confidence but because of the stabs I’d feel in my collarbone with every breath or cough.

 

I’d spend at least ten days in bed a month, especially (but not only) around ovulation and my period. I had intestinal blockages that made me holler on the toilet, bloating that made people give up their subway seats, and vaginal burning that made me shove a pillow between my legs after sex.

 

Chronically anemic but unable to stomach any iron, I’d collapse on the couch no matter what was urgent and how much I cared.

 

It was nothing new. It had just become unbearable.

 

This unnamed madness that had inhabited me since childhood eventually grounded my travels, limited the job offers I could accept post-PhD, buried me in debt despite my many scholarships and wrapped my brain in a fog that everyone assumed was burnout after grad school.

 

I knew what it was, but I couldn’t get a single doctor to confirm it.

 

“Can we please check if it’s endometriosis?”

 

I lost count of how often I asked doctors this question and how many of them said I was too young to have it, that it was rare, that I just had a UTI or IBS or acid reflux, and was I seeing someone about my anxiety?

 

It’s easy to focus on anxiety when a patient is an overachiever from an immigrant home. It’s easy to zoom in on the ovaries of a married woman in her reproductive age, even if she tells you she’s not looking to have kids. It’s easier to count follicles during ultrasounds than to count days of missed school, missed work and missed fun.

 

Even when my earliest periods were light and tolerable, I struggled with sharp pinching near my bladder, a bowling-ball weight in my pelvis, a monthly migraine that nothing would appease and disabling digestive problems: constipation, diarrhea, nausea and food sensitivities that appeared out of the blue.

 

These red herrings shouldn’t have been red herrings if doctors had been trained to recognize the classic whole-body constellation of symptoms triggered by endo.

 

But no matter how matter-of-factly I communicated what I was experiencing, I left every appointment empty-handed and invalidated.

 

At 17, an ER doctor was convinced I was bleeding out from a miscarriage even if I insisted it was “just” my period, that I’d always pass clots the size of half my palm.

 

At 29, I lost feeling in my vagina from a doctor who overdosed me with a lidocaine shot and injured me with a speculum while rummaging for my cervix, which I found out two years later was pulled out of position from adhesions — inflammatory bands of fibrous scar tissue that distort anatomy and impede organ function.

 

At 32, I was dismissed from a pain clinic after waiting nearly a year to be admitted, because the doctor subscribed to the outdated belief that endo was a gynecological issue that didn’t cause chronic pain and didn’t warrant multidisciplinary intervention.

 

Each time, my despair was undeniable, but I was simply told to come back if it got worse or to hold out until pregnancy or menopause when hormones would resolve the pain (spoiler alert: they didn’t).

 

It was lazy and ignorant medicine.

 

Yet it was, supposedly, my fault. A fertility doctor told me endo is a “career woman’s disease,” the consequence of dilly-dallying with pregnancy. I was blamed for relying on the narcotics I was prescribed instead of trying yoga or better sex hygiene or motivating myself to get better. When I’d ask for my medical files, I’d find gems in there about how demanding and difficult I was.

 

I’d love to tell you the journey of an endo patient is now radically different than it was decades ago when I was a teen. Sadly, this is still the global norm.

 

Most people don’t hear the word endometriosis at a doctor’s office but through social media. They learn from their peers that endo is a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows where it shouldn’t. They learn, as I did, that it’s common for endo to grow outside the pelvis, on any organ, as well as the spaces, ligaments and nerves between them.

 

At 31, I paid out of pocket and traveled six hours for my first of five surgeries. I naively thought diagnosis would bring total relief. I expected my life and career to click back into gear, but surgery was far from an overnight fix.

 

Being denied care for so long creates a disability.

 

I often wonder who I’d have been if I’d heard the words “it could be endometriosis” in my teens.

 

It would’ve changed the way I breathe, the way I pee, the way I make plans and set goals, the way I fear exercise and food and movement, the way my posture can’t be uncurled, the way I bully myself when I’m unproductive or unable. I might’ve continued my career in science, had fewer miscarriages, not spent hundreds of thousands on egg donation and surrogacy.

 

Maybe I wouldn’t get so angry each time I’m asked to consent to something before being informed. I wouldn’t need someone with me when I meet a new doctor, wouldn’t sit in the waiting room clutching a list of questions with clammy hands.

 

Despite affecting about 190 million people, endometriosis remains trivialized, underfunded and poorly researched. The greatest challenge in endo care is that the condition continues to be misconstrued as nothing more than a painful period though it is a complex and whole-body inflammatory condition.

 

Dr. Andrea Vidali, the Founder and Medical Director of the Endometriosis Surgical Specialists International (ESSI) and a reproductive endocrinologist/immunologist in New York, performs 500 specialized surgeries for endometriosis a year. Most US doctors perform fewer than 20, according to Intuitive Surgical. Vidali is also the co-founder of Endometriosis Summit, the only multidisciplinary endometriosis conference that gathers physicians, patients and activists.

 

By the time patients come to Vidali, they have experienced a traumatic medical history.

 

“Many of the poor outcomes we see in endometriosis are not the disease’s fault — they are the result of delayed diagnosis and surgeries performed without the necessary expertise,” Vidali told The Post. “We’re now studying the neurological and immune mechanisms of the disease. That’s where the real breakthroughs will come.”

 

Heather Guidone, BCPA, Program Director at the Center for Endometriosis Care in Atlanta, says the future of endometriosis care depends on recognizing endo as a complex, whole-body disease that requires specialized and multidisciplinary expertise.

 

“We need greater physician education and a more accurate public understanding of the disease,” she said. “When we invest in research and start listening to patients sooner, we can dramatically shorten the diagnostic delay and improve outcomes for millions living with endometriosis.”

 

In the words of Dr. Mona Orady, a specialized endometriosis surgeon in California, “If you think you have endometriosis, you most probably do.”

 

It took me nearly three decades to unlearn the stigma of being a demanding patient, of taxing the system’s resources by pushing for a second, third, tenth opinion.

 

Please know this: You are the expert who inhabits your body. Trust yourself and fight for the quality of life you deserve.

 

Kristina Kasparian is a writer, health activist, and entrepreneur with a PhD in neurolinguistics. Connect with her on Instagram @alba.a.new.dawn and kristinakasparian.com.

 

AH: That's doctors for you. They think they know your body better than you do. I have a story about that I may tell sometime.