World of the Bizarre

Trapped in a bathroom during a fire ? Try the toilet snorkel

By T.K. Randall
May 1, 2023 ·  9 comments

The toilet snorkel had a genuine patent. Image Credit: Google Patents Developed by William O Holmes, the device - known as the toilet snorkel - was designed to prevent the user from choking to death on the smoke and toxic fumes created by a fire.

The idea behind it was that the space on the other side of a toilet's u-bend could provide a sufficient supply of usable air to keep a person breathing until help arrives.

The user was expected to stick one end of a long tube down the toilet and then attach the other end to their mouth so that they could breath in that... err.... 'fresh' air.

To prevent the user from choking on the gases inside the toilet, Holmes suggested flushing it first."It is common practice to attach a fresh-air vent in the form of a pipe or stack to the sewer line to provide optimum operation of the toilet," the patent reads.

"The air vent normally extends upwardly through the roof of a structure, such as a high-rise hotel, to expose it to ambient fresh air."

To further avoid this problem, the device itself could also be equipped with an air filter.

Ultimately, though, the device proved impractical (it was actually quite difficult to get the tube into the correct place) and undesirable - few people were willing to breath in the noxious fumes of a toilet bowl, even if doing so might save them from smoke inhalation.

All things considered, it's not exactly surprising that it failed.

Source: IFL Science | Comments (9)

Tags: Toilet, Fire