{"id":2181,"date":"2012-10-24T15:10:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T15:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/?p=2181"},"modified":"2023-07-11T17:16:07","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T17:16:07","slug":"its-a-trap-why-american-bathrooms-dont-smell-awful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/rant\/its-a-trap-why-american-bathrooms-dont-smell-awful\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s a trap! Why American bathrooms don&#8217;t smell awful"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mrericsir\/8117040470\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8471\/8117040470_2bf017a5f9.jpg\" alt=\"Why European bathrooms stink\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Above: a sink with no trap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you ever get up in the morning, head to the bathroom, take a nice deep breath and proclaim, &#8220;Gee, I&#8217;m sure glad my bathroom doesn&#8217;t smell like shit!&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course not. Because as an American, you live in a country where bathrooms only smell terrible after someone has recently defecated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What you may not realize is that most of the world isn&#8217;t so lucky. In fact, even modern European countries have bathrooms that smell absolutely terrible at all times. The smell often noticeably makes its way to the rest of the building, and I say this as someone who&#8217;s hard of smelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So why is America different? IT&#8217;S A TRAP!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ever since British plumbing guru Thomas Crapper invented the U-shaped &#8220;trap,&#8221; pretty much every sink drain in the US has used his design. Go look under a sink and see for yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The purpose of this invention is to contain a small amount of water in the U section that air cannot escape through. This prevents foul gas from the sewers from rising into your house and making your bathroom stink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For some reason in much of Europe, Mexico, etc. the trap never gained much traction. Instead, people prefer to save a couple bucks on plumbing (see above photo) and pretend that the disgusting sewer smell is normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s plenty of things I&#8217;ll never understand about the rest of the world. This is #1 on that list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you ever get up in the morning, head to the bathroom, take a nice deep breath and proclaim, &#8220;Gee, I&#8217;m sure glad my bathroom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","slim_seo":{"title":"It's a trap! Why American bathrooms don't smell awful - MrEricSir.com","description":"Do you ever get up in the morning, head to the bathroom, take a nice deep breath and proclaim, \"Gee, I'm sure glad my bathroom doesn't smell like shit!\" Of cour"},"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","autoblue_publish_document":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[845,841,389,38,844,1422,842,847,843,222,846],"class_list":["post-2181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant","tag-disgusting","tag-europe","tag-mexico","tag-photos","tag-plumbing","tag-rant","tag-sewer","tag-stench","tag-trap","tag-travel","tag-vile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2181"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9735,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions\/9735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}