Sammy and Leo Marcus have turned their own sensitivities into prize-winning science. The twin brothers measured the audio levels of hundreds of public washrooms across their home city of Winnipeg to document just exactly how loud modern machinery is: blaring automatic hand driers, whirring paper towel dispensers, and startlingly loud automatic-flushing toilets.
According to the boys’ findings, not only do these noises cause anxiety, but they also often blow past legal noise thresholds, which can lead to hearing damage over a sustained period of time—even requiring ear protection, especially for janitors and others who work in bathrooms.
They call their project The Royal Flush, and it just won one of the top prizes for their age group in an annual science fair held by the Winnipeg School Division. While their research has ended, they now hope their work will prompt real change in how bathrooms are designed—not just for maximum hygiene, but also for the benefits of our eardrums.
On this episode of The CJN Daily, Sammy and Leo Marcus join to reveal the best and the worst of their findings; how they coped with strange looks, strict librarians and grungy stalls; and how, of all the buildings in their survey, Jewish institutions had the quietest restrooms.
Transcript
Ellin Bessner: Recognize those sounds? They’re automatic flushing toilets and touchless hand dryers in public washrooms. For 13-year-old Winnipeg student Sammy Marcus, who lives with a sensory processing disorder, those loud noises cause him a lot of anxiety. They’re so distressing that he tries to avoid using public bathrooms when he’s out of the house. Instead, he’d just hold it in until he got home. Clearly, not an ideal solution.
But the loud bathroom problem eventually sparked an idea in the scientifically minded teen. For the last few years, together with his twin brother Leo, who’s also startled by the loud noises, the duo set out to see whether the explosive flushing noises from automatic toilets, urinals, touchless hand dryers, and even the automatic paper towel dispensers were just a nuisance or, as they suspected, actually dangerous for people’s hearing.
With the help of their parents, Sammy and Leo made visits to hundreds of public washrooms in Winnipeg. Armed with a clipboard and a scientific decibel detector, which they bought on Amazon, a tape measure, and face masks if necessary, they surveyed over 600 devices in community centres, libraries, their school, a shopping mall, their father’s office, and even some synagogues in the Jewish community.
Their findings, which they’ve dubbed the Royal Flush Project, just won the Marcus twins top billing at the annual Winnipeg school science fair. Hello, I’m Ellin Bessner and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Monday, May 12, 2025. Welcome to the CJN Daily, a podcast of the Canadian Jewish News, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
While most public washrooms are designed for maximum hygiene with touchless surfaces, the noises that some of these machines make can be frightening for young kids and painful for people with hearing aids. Over the long term, the noise can be damaging for people like janitors who are exposed to it all day long. There are noise standards and health and safety laws in every province and territory which state that noises louder than 85 decibels on a sustained basis are dangerous, and people need to be provided with hearing protectors.
Sammy and Leo Marcus found most public devices clocked in much louder than that, with the loudest one they found being in a building on the University of Manitoba campus. The quietest ones were in Jewish buildings. The twins encountered some strange looks while on the job, and some pretty grungy washrooms to boot. But they hope all their effort and their findings will convince toilet manufacturers and industrial designers to do something about the problem they’ve flushed out. The Marcus twins joined me now from their home in Winnipeg, along with their mom Joanne, to explain how they did it and to share some tips and strategies for people who are sensitive to bathroom noises.
Leo Marcus: Hi, I’m Leo Marcus. We’re twins. I’m two minutes older than him.
Sammy Marcus: Hi, I’m Sammy Marcus. And even though he’s two minutes older, I’m two inches taller.
Ellin Bessner: That’s what it looks like to me too. And I think you have a deeper voice. Okay, well, congratulations on all the attention you’re getting from the public and other media. Our listeners probably have experienced the phenomenon that you researched, which is really loud, noisy bathroom equipment. I personally have as well, especially those hand dryers which are like being on the back of an airplane engine. Has anybody else in the world, in scientific journals or whatever, studied this issue that you know of?
Leo Marcus: So our project is the first of its kind.
Sammy Marcus: The only one, as far as we know.
Leo Marcus: The closest project we’ve found was by Nora Louise Keegan.
Sammy Marcus: A Grade 8 student from Calgary who did a project like ours, but only on hand dryers roughly 10 years ago. There have been other projects on hand dryers and other studies, however, they have not been as large and have not necessarily gotten conclusive evidence for hand dryers. However, we haven’t noticed any studies on the other kinds of devices we decided to test for this project.
Leo Marcus: So this is the first time that toilets, paper towel dispensers, and urinals have been tested in this way.
Ellin Bessner: Not the soap ones, right? The electronic electric soap ones too, or you didn’t do those?
Sammy Marcus: We didn’t do that.
Ellin Bessner: Got it. Okay. I did find one, actually, not on soap, the National Institute of Health Study 2015. Prolonged exposure to high levels of occupational noise can cause damage to hair cells in the cochlea, making it hazardous for workers who have to clean the bathrooms as well as other people who use them. So it was very interesting. It’s actually an NIH study, but as you said, I think theirs was a much smaller sample and was conducted on a university campus. Okay, this is just to set the scene. So you talked about nobody else doing such a large sample. Where did you go? How many bathrooms and how many buildings? And tell me a little bit about the actual nuts and bolts of how you did this.
Leo Marcus: So we went to community centers, schools, universities, libraries, restaurants, and residences for toilets and
Sammy Marcus: Oh, and our local synagogue, actually two local synagogues, to see if
Leo Marcus: Washrooms were dangerously loud. So yeah, it’s a very large area.
Sammy Marcus: We tested 628 devices and made 1,277 measurements. We could probably come up with a number of individual buildings and washrooms we went to, though we haven’t recorded them in any already compiled way.
Leo Marcus: But it’s probably over 500.
Ellin Bessner: Right. And did you have to get permission first or you just kind of secret-shoppered it?
Sammy Marcus: You know, it depends upon the location.
Leo Marcus: Yeah. So some locations, depending on where they were, we would ask to see if we could go in and use their bathrooms for this, and some areas we didn’t because, well, it wasn’t necessary at our school.
Sammy Marcus: Essentially, we tell our science teacher we would like to go and test for our science fair project and then we go to the bathroom and we test for a science project. So that was one method. Another method was kind of okay, we have pretty much universal permission to just wander around as long as we don’t break stuff. Let’s wander into the bathroom with our testing equipment.
Ellin Bessner: Do you have your equipment with you?
Sammy Marcus: We do have our decibel meter which measures sound.
Leo Marcus: We set it to max for a 5 to 10-second duration, 30 to 35 centimeters away from the bowl at our max setting so it records the loudest sound. And right now we’re at around 81 max decibels.
Ellin Bessner: What are we now talking? What do you now, what’s it saying now?
Sammy Marcus: 79, 80, 81 around there.
Ellin Bessner: So let’s, we’re just having a conversation over Zoom. What was the loudest piece of equipment in a bathroom that you found? And what about the most like median?
Sammy Marcus: A lot of devices, it depended on the type. For tankless toilets, it was roughly 68 decibels.
Leo Marcus: For tank toilets, no, it was, sorry, between 85 and 100 decibels. 68.3% was in that range, and that is the percentage where hearing protection is mandatory. I think that’s safe. For Manitoba tank toilets, mostly they were.
Sammy Marcus: Safe with roughly around 80 decibels-ish.
Leo Marcus: Flush urinals were 79.8% below 85 decibels, but waterless urinals were completely safe with.
Sammy Marcus: Those landing in between 60 and 80 decibels.
Leo Marcus: Jet hand dryers were pretty much universally between 85 and 100 decibels and above.
Sammy Marcus: Normally around 105 decibels.
Leo Marcus: So those were extremely loud.
Sammy Marcus: All other hand dryers landed around 90 or so decibels most of the time.
Leo Marcus: But pre-filled paper towel dispensers were almost completely safe. But the loudest device we measured was.
Sammy Marcus: A hand dryer that measured 128 decibels. As you said earlier, though I don’t think you actually meant it as it is. It’s about as loud as a jet engine.
Ellin Bessner: And where was this one, do you know?
Sammy Marcus: University of Manitoba.
Ellin Bessner: So that’s the loudest bathroom thing you found in your whole city?
Leo Marcus: Yes.
Ellin Bessner: Did you ever go into a movie theatre? Those bathrooms are super loud.
Leo Marcus: No, we were not able to test movie theatres, partly because he really hates movies and.
Ellin Bessner: Partly because it’s also too loud for you too, I suppose. Right.
Leo Marcus: And also because there aren’t that many movie theatres in our city, and they’re also very far apart.
Sammy Marcus: So it would be difficult.
Leo Marcus: Difficult.
Ellin Bessner: Is there any difference between boys’ bathrooms or male bathrooms and females? Is it louder in a male bathroom? You were talking about these urinals or is there any gender difference?
Leo Marcus: We found that it’s mostly the same.
Sammy Marcus: However, the extremely loud devices for toilets, the loudest ones were actually the first toilets we tested. A few years ago produced sounds that were over 115 decibels. Those were in the boys’ bathroom at our elementary school. But we did not find an extreme change overall other than that one instance of extremely loud bathroom.
Ellin Bessner: So boys, girls is no difference because of the urinal issue? Is what I mean.
Leo Marcus: Yeah, the urinal doesn’t. It does affect it, but not by that much.
Sammy Marcus: And the way decibels work, two different sources do not add together to create a louder sound. So it’s, if you add a urinal and it produces dangerous sound levels, that’s a problem. But if you add a safe urinal, that’s not going to change. If you have a dangerous kind of other device, it doesn’t stack in that.
Leo Marcus: Way like it does stack.
Ellin Bessner: So you’re, you’re cumulatively in the room as opposed to by device is what you’re trying to explain.
Sammy Marcus: Right.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, so what strategies do you recommend for people who have sensitivities? What works for you? What should people do?
Leo Marcus: So we suggest. Well, number one, if you have hearing sensitivity, you should try to use tank toilets like at your house. They have the white box behind it. They’re usually in residential bathrooms. We suggest using pre-filled paper towel.
Sammy Marcus: Dispensers which are pre-folded.
Leo Marcus: Yeah. So they’re already cut for you. And we also suggest using waterless urinals.
Sammy Marcus: If you were to be installing a waterless urinal somewhere and also be very.
Leo Marcus: Wary of public washrooms you enter.
Sammy Marcus: And be wary of general devices.
Leo Marcus: Yeah, we suggest using hearing protection if you have hearing sensitivity.
Sammy Marcus: I personally wear noise-cancelling headphones, but other people might have other coping strategies.
Leo Marcus: But we also suggest that you try to stay away if you have hearing sensitivity because it is still dangerous.
Ellin Bessner: And what about, you know, going to the breastfeeding bathroom or, you know, disabled bathrooms? Are you, you’re allowed to, I suppose no one’s going to stop you, but there’s only one toilet in there, right? Or it doesn’t matter.
Sammy Marcus: It doesn’t matter for the number of devices so much as whether each individual device is entirely safe. And if one device is activated and it’s the only device in the entire room that is dangerous, that one device will cause harm to every single person in the washroom. Meaning it’s better to just go into a washroom that is entirely safe. Now, the chances of one washroom having all safe devices with only one device is not going to change much to a larger washroom with more devices.
Leo Marcus: So. But using a washroom that only has one device and you’re the only person there means that while you’re using that device, nobody else is creating dangerously loud sound. So it is safer, but it doesn’t affect it if all the. If the one device that you’re using is unsafe, it can still hurt your hearing.
Ellin Bessner: And do you know, besides yourselves, other people who you’ve heard of that are impacted by this?
Sammy Marcus: Well, the goal of our project was based on the fact that we and many other younger people, especially when the two of us were smaller, but also many of the young people we know had difficulties with being in public washrooms. And according to our mother, we sometimes covered our ears and ran out screaming. And the goal for our project was to figure out, is this actually scientifically harming people’s ears or is it young people who do not like loud noises being disturbed?
Leo Marcus: And we have shown that washrooms are dangerously loud. And you should be right to feel unsafe because they can hurt your hearing. And when some people get older, they do have this hearing loss from hearing these sounds when they’re younger, so they’re less sensitive to them, but they’re still dangerously loud. So by making changes to make them quieter, it means that everybody has better hearing.
Ellin Bessner: And it’s not just also the physical, it’s also anxiety and triggering of emotional problems for people when you’re going in. And did it ever happen in your life that you’re just like, that’s it, I’m gonna hold it in until I get home.
Sammy Marcus: Yes, definitely.
Leo Marcus: I know that us and a lot of other people avoid public washrooms because they’re loud, among other reasons. And that’s just easier to wait.
Ellin Bessner: Easier. Except you, that’s not good for you either.
Sammy Marcus: Yes.
Leo Marcus: Yeah.
Ellin Bessner: When you did this study, what was the reaction from your peers and friends? Because it sounds like you’ve been working on this project for a long time, not just for this year’s science fair. Right.
Sammy Marcus: We have been working on this project for three years, so the idea is much older. Two years ago we worked on this project specifically and only working on studying toilets. And we found that toilets were dangerously loud. Last year, science fair became mandatory, so we decided why not extend the project and research urinals. And we found that they are dangerously loud, but only over the long term. And this year we extended to hand dryers and paper towel dispensers just because we wanted a more comprehensive survey.
Leo Marcus: But we found that our classmates thought that we were crazy. And the bathroom guys, there was this one guy who, when he saw us testing the bathrooms, he said to his friend, “Bro, they’re testing the urinals,” and then ran out screaming. I find that many people with their volcano projects only do things that people have done before and they don’t innovate; they don’t necessarily try to be original.
Sammy Marcus: This is a problem somebody else has identified. They are testing it. Last year, when I was presenting our previous version of this project, I got repeated questions about what is urine? Every time, I calmly stated there was no urine involved.
Ellin Bessner: But ah, they’re just jealous. Look, I want to hear because going into public bathrooms can be completely gross and disgusting, I imagine. So I wonder, besides the noise, what weird or funny or remarkable memories do you have of actually being in some of these bathrooms? What stays with you today that you could tell us?
Leo Marcus: So, there’s this one building in one of the engineering buildings at the University of Manitoba. I particularly like it because it is at the end of 18 halls turned five different ways, in the middle of nowhere.
Sammy Marcus: You got completely lost and then you end up in this beautiful engineering building at the University of Manitoba.
Leo Marcus: It’s a very new bathroom, and I particularly like it because it’s so quiet. Not that the devices were so quiet; I think they’re between 85 and 90 decibels. But it was so far away from everyone, and probably one person uses that bathroom every month, but it’s such a nice clean bathroom.
Ellin Bessner: So, okay, wait, because the other ones that you’ve seen were disgusting. What was the worst?
Leo Marcus: Yeah, at the Grant Park Mall, Winnipeg, it is very not nice.
Sammy Marcus: It is absolutely disgusting. Like horribly disgusting.
Leo Marcus: And the smell.
Ellin Bessner: Not so much the lock.
Leo Marcus: The hand dryers had duct tape on them and some of them didn’t work. There was graffiti everywhere, and if it was my choice, I’d never go there again. But yeah.
Ellin Bessner: Did you ever get in trouble? Like somebody said, “Dudes, what are you doing?” Did they kick you out?
Sammy Marcus: Well, we didn’t. No one actually ever told us, “You are required to leave now,” aside from one case. We were in a public library, and the librarian told us when our father and the two of us were going into a washroom to test the toilet. The librarian said only one person was allowed to enter the washroom at a time. My dad informed the librarian that his sons, us, were testing for a science fair, and the two of us at least had to go in there because it requires at least two people to do the test.
Leo Marcus: Our dad acted as our chauffeur and key to the University of Manitoba for us because we would test on Saturdays and Sundays at weird hours, so nobody would bother us, and we wouldn’t have to retest so many times from other equipment being activated.
Sammy Marcus: So we just kind of wandered around for hours in obscure places just because, you know, we have the key to the buildings.
Ellin Bessner: That’s kind of a really powerful feeling. The other thing, Mom, I’m going to ask this question. People might think you guys were a little bit weird. Like, people aren’t allowed to have recording devices and cameras in community centers because of, you know, pornography or child protection, right? Did you have anybody that said, “What are you doing?” They thought it was dangerous or something?
Leo Marcus: No, she didn’t come at all. She really isn’t into the bathroom. You should tell them about going.
Sammy Marcus: Into Charizadiq and how Daddy decided.
Leo Marcus: Oh yeah, we went to our local shul, Shaare Zedek, and we sneaked in there because we weren’t technically supposed to be there. We were like on a spy mission, looking out to hold the door and then running across the hall to get into the other one.
Sammy Marcus: You weren’t 13 yet, right? Daddy told them at the security that you were going to Minyan, and then you all rushed into the bathroom. Well, yes, but now you’ve done your b mitzvah, and you go to Minyan, so you don’t have to hang out in the bathroom.
Ellin Bessner: Yes, but that’s a good story. I like that, Mom.
Sammy Marcus: Yeah, well, I told them afterward because, you know, it’s not nice to sneak.
Ellin Bessner: All right, so dish. Is the synagogue bathroom too loud, too, or how would they?
Leo Marcus: No, they use pre-filled paper towel dispensers, so you don’t have to cut the paper during Shabbat, which makes it much quieter. They mostly have tank toilets, which are also quite quiet.
Sammy Marcus: But they also happen to have the nice convenience of having a lot of soundproof barriers to avoid interruptions in other parts of the shul, so that probably also helped.
Ellin Bessner: So they win for design.
Sammy Marcus: Yes.
Leo Marcus: Vicky can’t test the JCC. Yeah.
Ellin Bessner: Oh, you tested the JCC. All right, let’s hear it.
Sammy Marcus: Yes, we did. Yes, we did. At the time, I didn’t actually test any of the washrooms in the main part of the JCC for regular community things. I actually just tested the washrooms in the office section, which was both very peaceful. The devices were not particularly quiet, but it was also a very easy place to test because no one interrupted me. I can’t remember why. It was like a weird time of day or something.
Leo Marcus: Oh yeah, we also tested at AB Chabad, which I think was also pretty safe. Good job, Jewish institutions.
Ellin Bessner: Where’d you get the device? I want to know, that gizmo that you have there.
Leo Marcus: I think this one’s from Amazon.
Sammy Marcus: We bought it for this project. It didn’t cost much, and I think it’s a pretty nice one.
Leo Marcus: It’s a pretty nice one.
Sammy Marcus: But it wasn’t supremely expensive.
Leo Marcus: You can even use a phone app instead of this, but this is much more precise.
Ellin Bessner: It looks more professional too when you walk in.
Sammy Marcus: Yes, and it’s also less likely for you to be asked, “Are you doing pornography?”
Ellin Bessner: Exactly. That’s what I meant before. Okay, so finally, what happens now? Did you win a prize, like with cash money or a trophy?
Leo Marcus: We won a gold medal.
Sammy Marcus: The gold medal is essentially a prerequisite for getting any other special awards.
Leo Marcus: We also won best in category for our age group. We won the Platinum Award. We also won the Innovators Award, which is, I think, $250.
Sammy Marcus: And a special nice trophy from the.
Leo Marcus: University of Manitoba for having a project.
Sammy Marcus: Based on a real-world problem with real-world applications.
Ellin Bessner: Amazing. Amazing. So what happens now? Are people in the science world or bathroom industry, like, I don’t know, people who make toilets, have they reached out? Dyson? I don’t know who makes those loud things, but is that what they use? Speaker A: Dyson, those hand dryers that you stick your hands in? I don’t know. Have they reached out to you at all or are you sharing with them?
Leo Marcus: So no, hand drying companies, toilet companies have talked to us specifically, but the…
Sammy Marcus: The associate vice provost at the University of Manitoba has asked for our testing information for future renovations at the University of Manitoba. And we’re also planning on maybe talking to people in the government about extending some of the worker safety laws and possibly user safety laws for washroom equipment due to the fact that it is currently violating already established laws, as well.
Leo Marcus: As turning our project into a research paper to show even more people that this is an issue.
Ellin Bessner: Is there anything else you want our listeners to know about what this experience has been like for you?
Leo Marcus: Well, I want to say thank you for letting us on the show, and it has been very fun to share this information with you.
Sammy Marcus: I would like to say that, one, we did a lot of testing. And I just like to say be curious and follow whatever questions you would like to answer in science, but maybe try to listen to your mother when she says maybe spend less time in washrooms this year, right?
Ellin Bessner: There’s a whole world that smells better outside.
Sammy Marcus: Yes, most definitely.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of the CJN Daily, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation. Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany. The executive producer is Michael Fraiman, and the music is by Dov Beck Levine. If you have any experiences with this bathroom noise issue, write to us at [email protected], and thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- Read more about the Winnipeg School Division’s science fair, where the Marcus teens presented alongside 130 other projects.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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