Toilet

Therefore, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 wants to "achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation".

This allows the contents of the full pit enough time to transform into a partially sanitized, soil-like material that can be manually excavated.

[11] There is a risk of groundwater pollution when pits are located in areas with a high or variable water table, and/or fissures or cracks in the bedrock.

It is not connected to a hole in the ground (like a pit latrine), nor to a septic tank, nor is it plumbed into a municipal system leading to a sewage treatment plant.

In many Muslim countries, the facilities are designed to enable people to follow Islamic toilet etiquette Qaḍāʼ al-Ḥājah.

[34] The use of water in many Christian countries is due in part to the biblical toilet etiquette which encourages washing after all instances of defecation.

An accessible toilet is designed to accommodate people with physical disabilities, such as age related limited mobility or inability to walk due to impairments.

[48] The Neolithic village of Skara Brae contains examples, c. 3000 BC, of internal small rooms over a communal drain, rather than pit.

[49] The Indus Valley Civilisation in northwestern India and Pakistan was home to the world's first known urban sanitation systems.

In 2012, archaeologists found what is believed to be Southeast Asia's earliest latrine during the excavation of a neolithic village in the Rạch Núi archaeological site [vi], southern Vietnam.

More than 30 coprolites, containing fish and shattered animal bones, provided information on the diet of humans and dogs, and on the types of parasites each had to contend with.

[59] Johan J. Mattelaer said, "Plinius has described how there were large receptacles in the streets of cities such as Rome and Pompeii into which chamber pots of urine were emptied.

[63] By the Early Modern era, chamber pots were frequently made of china or copper and could include elaborate decoration.

This solid waste, euphemistically known as nightsoil, was sold as fertilizer for agricultural production (similarly to the closing-the-loop approach of ecological sanitation).

The water closet, with its origins in Tudor times, started to assume its currently known form, with an overhead cistern, s-bends, soil pipes and valves around 1770.

[66] The integral water closet started to be built into middle-class homes in the 1860s and 1870s, firstly on the principal bedroom floor and in larger houses in the maids' accommodation, and by 1900 a further one in the hallway.

It was the Tudor Walters Report of 1918 that recommended that semi-skilled workers should be housed in suburban cottages with kitchens and internal WC.

[67] Before the introduction of indoor toilets, it was common to use the chamber pot under one's bed at night and then to dispose of its contents in the morning.

[68] The practice of emptying one's own chamber pot, known as slopping out, continued in British prisons until as recently as 2014[69] and was still in use in 85 cells in Ireland in July 2017.

[citation needed] With the onset of the Industrial Revolution and related advances in technology, the flush toilet began to emerge into its modern form.

This period coincided with the dramatic growth in the sewage system, especially in London, which made the flush toilet particularly attractive for health and sanitation reasons.

William Elvis Sloan invented the Flushometer in 1906, which used pressurized water directly from the supply line for faster recycle time between flushes.

"High-tech" toilets, which can be found in countries like Japan, include features such as automatic-flushing mechanisms; water jets or "bottom washers"; blow dryers, or artificial flush sounds to mask noises.

Some toilets have automatic lid operation, heated seats, deodorizing fans, or automated replacement of paper toilet-seat-covers.

Toilet was originally a French loanword (first attested in 1540) that referred to the toilette ("little cloth") draped over one's shoulders during hairdressing.

[77] During the late 17th century,[77] the term came to be used by metonymy in both languages for the whole complex of grooming and body care that centered at a dressing table (also covered by a cloth) and for the equipment composing a toilet service, including a mirror, hairbrushes, and containers for powder and makeup.

Finally, it came to be used for the plumbing fixtures in such rooms (apparently first in the United States) as these replaced chamber pots, outhouses, and latrines.

Confusingly, products imported from Japan such as TOTO are referred to as "toilets", even though they carry the cachet of higher cost and quality.

Euphemisms for the toilet that bear no direct reference to the activities of urination and defecation are ubiquitous in modern Western languages, reflecting a general attitude of unspeakability about such bodily function.

[86][89][90] Other proposed etymologies include a supposed tendency to place toilets in room 100 (hence "loo") in English hotels,[91] a sailors' dialectal corruption of the nautical term "lee" in reference to the shipboard need to urinate and defecate with the wind prior to the advent of head pumps,[n 3] or the 17th-century preacher Louis Bourdaloue, whose long sermons at Paris's Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis prompted his parishioners to bring along chamber pots, and his surname was applied to the pots themselves.