Toilet paper
Toilet paper is a tissue paper product primarily used to clean the anus and surrounding region of feces, and to clean the external genitalia and perineal area of urine.
It is commonly supplied as a long strip of perforated paper wrapped around a cylindrical paperboard core, for storage in a dispenser within arm's reach of a toilet. The bundle, or roll of toilet paper, is specifically known as a toilet roll, loo roll, or bog roll.
There are other uses for toilet paper, as it is a readily available household product. It can be used for blowing the nose or wiping the eyes. It can be used to wipe off sweat or absorb it. Some people may use the paper to absorb the bloody discharge that comes out of the vagina during menstruation. Toilet paper can be used in cleaning. As a teenage prank, "toilet papering" is a form of temporary vandalism.
Most modern toilet paper in the developed world is designed to decompose in septic tanks, whereas some other bathroom and facial tissues are not. Wet toilet paper rapidly decomposes in the environment. Toilet paper comes in various numbers of plies, from one- to six-ply, with more back-to-back plies providing greater strength and absorbency. Most modern domestic toilet paper is white, and embossed with a pattern, which increases the surface area of the paper, and thus, its effectiveness at removing waste. Some people have a preference for whether the orientation of the roll on a dispenser should be over or under.
The use of paper for hygiene has been recorded in China in the 6th century AD, with specifically manufactured toilet paper being mass-produced in the 14th century. Modern commercial toilet paper originated in the 19th century, with a patent for roll-based dispensers being made in 1883.
History
Although paper had been known as a wrapping and padding material in China since the 2nd century BC, a reference to the use of toilet paper dates back as early as when the scholar-official Yan Zhitui wrote:During the later Tang dynasty, an Arab traveller to China in the year 851 AD remarked:
During the early 14th century, it was recorded that in what is now Zhejiang alone, ten million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets of toilet paper were manufactured annually. During the Ming dynasty, it was recorded in 1393 that an annual supply of 720,000 sheets of toilet paper were produced for the general use of the imperial court at the capital of Nanjing. From the records of the Imperial Bureau of Supplies of that same year, it was also recorded that for the Hongwu Emperor's imperial family alone, there were 15,000 sheets of special soft-fabric toilet paper made, and each sheet of toilet paper was perfumed.
Elsewhere, wealthy people wiped themselves with wool, lace or hemp, while less wealthy people used their hand when defecating into rivers, or cleaned themselves with various materials such as rags, wood shavings, leaves, grass, hay, stones, pessoi, sand, moss, water, snow, ferns, plant husks, fruit skins, seashells, or corncobs, depending upon the country and weather conditions or social customs. In ancient Rome, a sponge on a stick was commonly used, and, after use, placed back in a pail of vinegar. Several talmudic sources indicating ancient Jewish practice refer to the use of small pebbles, often carried in a special bag, and also to the use of dry grass and of the smooth edges of broken pottery jugs. These are all cited in the classic Biblical and Talmudic Medicine by the German physician Julius Preuss.
The 16th-century French satirical writer François Rabelais, in Chapter XIII of Book 1 of his novel sequence Gargantua and Pantagruel, has his character Gargantua investigate a great number of ways of cleansing oneself after defecating. Gargantua dismisses the use of paper as ineffective, rhyming that: "Who his foul tail with paper wipes, Shall at his ballocks leave some chips.". He concludes that "the neck of a goose, that is well downed" provides an optimum cleansing medium.
The rise of publishing by the eighteenth century led to the use of newspapers and cheap editions of popular books for cleansing. Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to his son in 1747, told of a man who purchased
In many parts of the world, especially where toilet paper or the necessary plumbing for disposal may be unavailable or unaffordable, toilet paper is not used. Also, in many parts of the world people consider using water a much cleaner and more sanitary practice than using paper. Cleansing is then performed with other methods or materials, such as water, for example using a bidet, a lota, rags, sand, leaves, corn cobs, animal furs, sticks or hands; afterwards, hands are washed with water and possibly soap.
As a commodity
is widely credited with being the inventor of modern commercially available toilet paper in the United States. Gayetty's paper, first introduced in 1857, was available as late as the 1920s. Gayetty's Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, watermarked with the inventor's name. Original advertisements for the product used the tagline "The greatest necessity of the age! Gayetty's medicated paper for the water-closet".Seth Wheeler of Albany, New York, obtained the earliest United States patents for toilet paper and dispensers, the types of which eventually were in common use in that country, in 1883. Toilet paper dispensed from rolls was popularized when the Scott Paper Company began marketing it in 1890.
The manufacturing of this product had a long period of refinement, considering that as late as the 1930s, a selling point of the Northern Tissue company was that their toilet paper was "splinter free". The widespread adoption of the flush toilet increased the use of toilet paper, as heavier paper was more prone to clogging the trap that prevents sewer gases from escaping through the toilet.
Softer, two ply toilet roll was introduced in Britain in 1942, by St Andrew Mills in Walthamstow; this became the famous Andrex.
Moist toilet paper, called wet wipes, was first introduced in the United Kingdom by Andrex in the 1990s. It has been promoted as being a better method of cleaning than dry toilet paper after defecation, and may be useful for women during menstruation. It was promoted as a flushable product but it has been implicated in the creation of fatbergs; by 2016 some municipalities had begun education campaigns advising people not to flush used wet wipes.
More than seven billion rolls of toilet paper are sold yearly in the United States where an average of 23.6 rolls per capita per year is used.
In 1973, Johnny Carson joked in his Tonight Show monologue about comments made by Wisconsin congressman Harold V. Froehlich about the possibility of a toilet paper shortage. Subsequently, consumers purchased abnormal amounts, causing an actual shortage in the United States for several months.
Toilet paper has been one of the commodities subject to shortages in Venezuela starting in the 2010s; the government seized one toilet paper factory in an effort to resolve the problem.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, toilet paper shortages were reported in March 2020 in multiple countries due to hoarding and panic buying. At first, few believed the pandemic would be serious. Later, people realized they might need to stock up on certain items in case of a shelter-in-place order, or in case they did not know how long such an order would last; suppliers could not assure that they could keep up with demand. However, manufacturers continued to produce even more than they had before. Demand was higher for the types of toilet paper used at home. In some countries the bidet was already seen as a solution, and a survey before the pandemic had indicated an increasing number of Americans would be interested. Amid the panic buying during the pandemic, the Australian toilet paper brand Quilton donated a million of toilet paper rolls to vulnerable Australians who were struggling due to the shortages of toilet paper.
Description
Toilet paper is available in several types of paper, a variety of patterns, decorations, and textures, and it may be moistened or perfumed, although fragrances sometimes cause problems for users who are allergic to perfumes. The average measures of a modern roll of toilet paper is c. 10 cm wide, and 12 cm in diameter, and weighs between and. An alternative method of packing the sheets uses interleaved sheets in boxes, or in bulk for use in dispensers. "Hard" single-ply paper has been used as well as soft multi-ply.Sheet size
The format of individual sheets of toilet paper, which is given by a perforation line, varies nationally. In Germany, Holland, France, Poland, Switzerland, for example, about postcard size is standard, so about DIN format. In England, the usual format is already somewhat wider, about 115 × 135 mm. The most extreme landscape format with 115 × 102 mm exists in Thailand. The most extreme portrait format is 100 × 366 mm; a promotional toilet paper from Schmidt Spiele in Germany. Manufactured toilet paper sheet in the United States was sized ×. Since 1999 the size of a sheet has been shrinking; Kimberly-Clark reduced the length of a sheet to. Scott, in 2006, reduced the length of their product to. The width of sheets was later reduced giving a general sheet size of long and wide. Larger sizes remain available.Sheet ply
The ply of a toilet paper refers to the number of layers per sheet. Rolls are typically available in single-ply, 2-ply, 3-ply, and 4-ply.Roll length
Phrases like "single roll", "double roll", "triple roll", "jumbo roll", and "mega roll" commonly used in retail advertising refer to the number of sheets per roll. A longer roll needs to be replaced less often, but the very largest sizes do not fit all toilet paper dispensers, especially in older homes.Materials
Toilet paper is usually manufactured from pulpwood trees, but is also sometimes made from sugar cane byproducts or bamboo.Toilet paper products vary greatly in the distinguishing technical factors, such as size, weight, roughness, softness, chemical residues, "finger-breakthrough" resistance, water-absorption, etc. The larger companies have very detailed, scientific market surveys to determine which marketing sectors require or demand which of the many technical qualities. Modern toilet paper may have a light coating of aloe or lotion or wax worked into the paper to reduce roughness.
Quality is usually determined by the number of plies, coarseness, and durability. Low grade institutional toilet paper is typically of the lowest grade of paper, has only one or two plies, is very coarse and sometimes contains small amounts of embedded unbleached/unpulped paper; it was typically called "hard" toilet paper. A brand disinfected with carbolic acid was manufactured in Sheffield, United Kingdom under the Izal brand name by Newton Chambers until 1981. Mid-grade two ply is somewhat textured to provide some softness and is somewhat stronger. Premium toilet paper may have lotion and wax and has two to four plies of very finely pulped paper. If it is marketed as "luxury", it may be quilted or rippled, perfumed, colored or patterned, medicated, or treated with aloe or other perfumes.
To advance decomposition of the paper in septic tanks or drainage, the paper used has shorter fibres than facial tissue or writing paper. The manufacturer tries to reach an optimal balance between rapid decomposition and sturdiness. Compaction of toilet paper in drain lines, such as in a clog, prevents fibre dispersion and largely halts the breakdown process.
A German quip says that the toilet paper of Nazi Germany was so rough and scratchy that it was almost unusable, so many people used old issues of the Völkischer Beobachter instead, because the paper was softer.