Why is it unlikely that bathroom smells can pose health risks?

Question

Based on a little bit of internet reading, it appears that odor molecules that enter your nose from human feces are of little concern to your health because the harmful stuff, like the pathogens, are not likely to be picked up and carried through the air.

This seems to make sense, however due to my limited knowledge of biology, I am having a difficult time distinguishing WHY the bad stuff is not likely to become airborne whereas other molecules can, and will cause damage by smell. Chlorine, for instance, will cause some significant damage simply by smelling the airborne fumes (which I assume are the molecules doing the damage).

I have to assume it is a natural defense mechanism that something that smells bad is not something you want to be around (CO being a major exception) but it seems that feces molecules are not a concern. Why?

Answer 1

Mostly, what you're smelling are volatile small molecules: stuff like butyrate, indole, mercaptans, hydrogen sulfide, etc. These molecules are thousands of times smaller than even the smallest pathogens, being measured in Angstrom vs. nanometer scales. Pathogens are just too large to be actually volatile, in the sense of freely escaping into the air. And fortunately, these volatile organics are not nearly as reactive as something like chlorine gas. (If they were, imagine the damage they would do, at a much higher concentration, to the person they were just inside.)

Now, if someone had literally just projectile-vomited (or if excreta were churned around, e.g., by flushing), it's possible that a very small pathogen like norovirus could spray outwards in an aerosol. Since norovirus has a very small infectious dose (on the orders of tens of viral particles) this could be enough to make you sick, and indeed, aerosols have been implicated in norovirus transmission, though it's not that common. But the smell would remain long after any viral particles in aerosols had settled down onto surfaces.