Toilet seethe

Getting on your smartphone while sitting in the toilet poses a health risk, American medical researchers said in a study published in the journal PLoS One on 3 September.

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, found that 46 percent of 125 adults they studied — while they were undergoing screening colonoscopies at the hospital — were more likely to have painful or itchy hemorrhoids or swelling of the blood vessels around the anus and rectum than those who don’t use their phone while seated in the loo. 

Dr. Ernesto Gonzaga, a gastroenterologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and who did not contribute to the study, explained that prolonged toilet sitting increases pressure in the veins around the rectum, which can contribute to hemorrhoids, ABC News reports. 

Meanwhile, a toilet planned to replace the often smelly portalets at the entrance to the Runyon Canyon hiking trail in Los Angeles, California, did not sit well with some locals. 

A spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the installation of a prefabricated restroom at the front of the 65-hectare park that is a stone’s throw from the famed Hollywood sign was approved by the city’s Recreation and Parks Board last year, Agence France-Presse  reports.

Putting up the restroom with two stalls, however, is “an epic waste of money,” park neighbor Shira Scott Astrof told the local ABC affiliate.

The cost of the toilet is a whopping $960,000 which people living nearby could not help but smell corruption with the eye-watering price tag — after the city slashed its fire department budget last year.