Using a public restroom is never an enjoyable experience, to say nothing about using a bathroom on an airplane. As someone who is 6’4″, let me just tell you that going to the bathroom on an airplane is quite rough. For me, it’s a matter of not being able to fit and having to brush up against the unclean surfaces. However thanks to Boeing, that may be a thing of the past as the company has recently developed a self-cleaning bathroom.
No one likes using a dirty restroom and no one likes cleaning them either, which is why this new technology is quite promising. Boeing plans to put these new bathrooms into their airplanes at some point in the future, and they are quite revolutionary. Basically the engineers at Boeing have created a prototype bathroom that uses ultraviolet lights to kill and zap 99.99% of the germs in a bathroom, according to a recent press release.
“We’re trying to alleviate the anxiety we all face when using a restroom that gets a workout during a flight,” said Jeanne Yu, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Director of Environmental Performance. “In the prototype, we position the lights throughout the lavatory so that it floods the touch surfaces like the toilet seat, sink and countertops with the UV light once a person exits the lavatory. This sanitizing even helps eliminate odors.”
The bathroom design calls for a toilet set that can lift and close itself in addition to hands-free sinks, dryers, soap dispensers, trash cans, and even a door lock. Right away you essentially do not have to touch anything, and then once you leave the bathroom, the UV lights kick on and kill all of the germs.
Boeing is still experimenting with the design and technology in these bathrooms, and we will have to wait until we begin seeing them in airplanes. Regardless, these self-cleaning bathrooms are quite promising and we look forward to them being implemented in the future.
Photo from Boeing
