High-tech toilets may track your every, ahem, movement

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2018 (2487 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I had hoped that I would be able to get through the rest of 2018 without being forced to write yet another groundbreaking column about toilets, but I can see now that I was deluding myself.

As many of you already know, assuming you are still taking your prescription medication, I am something of an expert when it comes to the important role commodes play in modern society.

Over the years, I have written a great many hard-hitting columns on toilets, including major contests wherein you can win a toilet equipped with a big-screen TV and state-of-the-art stereo system, motion-activated night lights that transform your toilet into a 1970s-style disco ball, and a baseball fanatic whose cremated remains are being flushed down the toilets in every Major League Baseball park in North America.

https://youtu.be/f6VEiEaPWT0

There was also the gripping story of a Canadian stuntwoman who set a world record a few years back for being the fastest person on a toilet after equipping her throne with wheels and an engine and racing it at a speed of 75 km/h around Sydney Olympic Park in Australia.

Not to mention an alarming news report I have just read about an office worker who was sitting on the toilet when a three-metre-long python lurking in the bowl bit him in a sensitive area, by which I mean Bangkok, Thailand.

You will find this hard to believe, but despite my heroic commitment to defending the public’s right to know about toilet-related news items, my efforts have yet to be rewarded with a major journalism prize. Coincidence? Who knows?

But that is not today’s journalistic point. No, today’s journalistic point is that I am holding in my hands what is arguably the most alarming bit of toilet news I have read since… well… since a few paragraphs ago when I mentioned the snake hiding in the toilet.

According to a story in Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper, a brand-new high-tech toilet may soon be tracking your every movement, if you catch my less-than-subtle drift.

The story states researchers at the European Space Agency (ESA) and MIT have teamed up with sanitation specialists to create the “FitLoo,” which uses technology to screen human waste for early signs of disease.

Here’s the really exciting bit — data gathered by the sensors in the toilet bowl could be beamed to the users’ mobile phones so they can see how their health is changing or even directly to their physician so they could keep a remote eye on patients.

“The toilet offers an incredible opportunity for people to gain control of their health,” Michael Lindenmayer, digital health and smart sanitation lead at the Toilet Board Coalition, which represents many leading toilet manufacturers, told the paper.

“We do not listen to our bodies enough, but the toilet is listening every time we use it. There is a huge amount of health information that is simply flushed into the sewers every time we go.”

I think I speak for most forward-thinking consumers when I issue the following statement: “Blech!!!”

Think about it: We may soon be able to purchase toilets that will… OK, you know exactly what they will do… and then they will text that information directly to our cellphones so we can scan it while we are sitting in boring business meeting, such as the one I have just made up:

Your phone: “Ugh! You really need to stop eating Mexican food.”

You: “Excuse me! I’m in an important meeting right now discussing the Feeblemeister contract.”

Your phone: “Sorry, I just thought you’d like to know what that bean burrito is doing to your gastrointestinal system.”

You: “Close your lid and leave me alone!”

It’s not that I am a Luddite or anything; it’s just that I have never been comfortable with the fact that modern appliances — and now home plumbing fixtures — are able to access the internet and share the sort of information that we normally do not discuss in family newspapers.

It’s one thing having your fridge contact the local grocery store to re-order Häagen-Dazs ice cream, but it’s another thing entirely when your phone calls up your GP and rats on you because you made a late-night run to Taco Bell.

I wish this was the only toilet-related news I had to share, but, sadly, it’s just the tip of a huge swirling iceberg, which, when tipped over, reveals a deluge of commode-intensive news items.

I am referring here to a story in Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper warning the International Space Station has been infested by an infectious “space bug” organism, which scientists have warned could cause disease.

“A new study by NASA has discovered that different varieties of Enterobacter, a bug similar to that found in hospitals on Earth, have been discovered on the orbiting space base,” the story gurgles.

“The researchers focused on five strains of the bacteria which were isolated from the space toilet and exercise platform on the space station in March 2015.”

The good news is the researchers have stressed that the organisms do not yet appear to be strong enough to make humans ill or pose a threat to the astronauts inside the station, but we all know exactly what that means, don’t we?

When they say “don’t worry,” it means the space station will most likely crash land on Earth, possibly in my backyard, and these tiny space bugs will mutate into Killer Germs From Outer Space That Are The Size of Labrador Retrievers.

There’s more toilet news I’d like to share, but, sadly, I need to go check the mail, because I’m sure that journalism prize will be arriving any day now.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca