The Toilet Snorkel

The Toilet Snorkel Could Save Your Life The theory behind the toilet snorkel is that you are likely to become trapped in the upper floors of a burning high-rise building — a hotel, an office building, or a high-rise apartment or condominium building.



Most of the building is above the reach of any fire department's highest-reaching ladder trucks. You don't have firefighters' protective suits, helmets, masks, and breathing apparatus. What can you do? Well, if you had prepared by bringing along a toilet snorkel, then you could squat beside the toilet and breath sewer gas until the fire is put out, or firemen arrive with rescue breathing equipment, or the building collapses. The toilet snorkel could save your life! Or maybe it's just one more thing to worry about. William O. Holmes filed for a U.S. patent in February, 1981, writing: The recent rash of fires in high-rise hotels and deaths occasioned thereby has given rise to the need for a breathing device and method for supplying a hotel guest and/or fireman with fresh air until he can be rescued. The device and method of this invention provide for the insertion of a breathing tube through the water trap of a toilet to expose an open end thereof to fresh air from a vent pipe connected to a sewer line of the toilet, to enable the user to breathe fresh air through the tube. U.S. Patent 4,320,756 was issued in March, 1982.

We live in an age of wonders! The toilet snorkel hose has a soft elastomeric (rubber or plastic) snorkel-type mouthpiece "having a teeth-engaging bite ring [18] formed integrally therewith", thus enabling the user to "bite-down onto the mouthpiece to hold it in sealed communication with one of his respiratory intake passages (mouth)." Well, yes, that will be your mouth, unless you are one of those rare individuals with teeth in your nostrils. As he says: "It is well known that upon flushing of the toilet, a water trap will form in the toilet bowl to block sewer gases from entering the bathroom proper. Conversely, the water trap functions to prevent toxic smoke in the bathroom from passing thereby." So, the device provides the lesser of two evils: you can breathe sewer gases instead of toxic fumes.