James Hilston, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger version.

Who of us hasn't inhaled that new car smell with pride and satisfaction? But it's more than a sense of economic well-being we're breathing in. Research links that intoxicating smell to a toxic cocktail of harmful chemicals, the Associated Press reports. Japan's top carmakers are already rolling out cars that tout better interior air quality as a selling point. That could prod American and European rivals and create a new auto-safety issue. Cabin fumes from plastics, vinyls and other interior touches can trigger headaches, sore throats, nausea and drowsiness. You know, the sort of stuff that makes operating heavy machinery inadvisable. Critics liken the problem to "sick-building" syndrome, which involves similar chemical agents seeping from walls, carpets and fixtures of new buildings, although the problem with cars tends to dissipate in six months along with that new car smell.

Yesterday's Morning File on toilet usage got a few readers off their duffs:

We said: The UriLift, the pop-up late-night urinal, debuted this week at the World Toilet Summit in Belfast. Not so Belfast. "Actually, this is not new," wrote Aaron Isaacs. "I have lived in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for the past three years but am a native Pittsburgher. On weekend evenings, there are 'pop-up' urinals here, too. They look like manhole covers during the week; they have four quarters, each of which is a urinal." Our Rotterdam correspondent did not indicate whether he has experienced the UriLift first-hand.

We said: "Most toilets flush in the key of E Flat." Reader Jude Pohl, a theater impresario, called his musical director, who has perfect pitch. "Carol, flush all the toilets in your house," he said. Carol, a Morning File reader, didn't need to ask why. Her results: A Flat, B Flat and F. But Jude grudgingly admitted he did get an E Flat from his toilet. He thinks we're only one-fourth correct; we're thinking Carol might need to update her plumbing.

We said: "The average person visits the toilet 2,500 times a year." Bill Kennedy of Latrobe was incredulous. That's "6.84 times a day. That seems like a lot of visits. Where did that figure come from? How were the data collected? Is it a global number. Does it include un- and under-developed countries? What is the range of ages covered? Come to think of it, guys our age getting up in the middle of the night and babies who basically never stop pooping/peeing may raise the average for the rest of the 'average' population."

We knew Bill would come around, if he kept going long enough. As for research methods, we'd rather not know too much. But if the World Toilet Organization (WTO) says it's true, it's true.

Let's proceed to the step after the toilet visit, and the research methods here are transparent. Last month, a bunch of trained observers lurked in bathrooms at Turner Field in Atlanta, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Grand Central Station and Penn Station in New York and the Ferry Terminal Farmers Market in San Francisco. Their task: to quantify the hand-washing habits of Americans after they relieve themselves. They observed 3,206 men and 3,310 women. The results aren't pretty, according to livescience.com:

Braves fans at Turner Field had the worst hygiene habits. Only 74 percent washed their hands -- 84 percent of the women, 63 percent of the men.

In the New York train stations, the men were once again not a credit to their gender -- a 64 percent washing rate compared with 92 percent for women.

San Francisco was very hygiene-conscious -- 88 percent of the market-goers washed their hands.

The lesson: If you're going to shake hands with somebody, your best bet is San Francisco, although to be fair to Atlanta, the Braves could have been involved in a close game, which might explain some fan shortcuts.

Overall, only 75 percent of men washed their hands post-toilet, compared to 90 percent of women, the observations revealed. But here's what really got the researchers from the (seriously) Soap and Detergent Association: In the telephone portion of the survey, only 24 percent of men and 39 percent of women say they always wash their hands after coughing or sneezing. In keeping with being a very informative Morning File today, you people should know that bacteria and viruses for the common cold and flu spread much more often through hand contact than by air through coughing or sneezing. Fifteen seconds of soap and water greatly reduces the infective crud on your hands. In other words, the Soap and Detergent Association wants you to BUY MORE SOAP. The study was released last week to highlight National Clean Hands Week, which we missed, because we were preparing for the World Toilet Summit.

From the AP
• Man Buys Smoker, Finds Human Leg Inside • Coach Stops Runaway Horse by Biting Ear • Man Allegedly Tries to Use 'Blurry' $100 • Police Break Up Brawl at Chuck E. Cheese • Suggestive Card Ruffles Farmer's Feathers • Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women • Toilet to Tap? San Jose Probes Plan • Seattle to Allow Pygmy Goats As Pets • Yankees Rookies Dress Up in Oz Costumes

Researchers watched 394 garden-variety Midwesterners for more than 5,000 hours, following them 12 hours a day, but totally ignoring the 6.84 trips to the toilet and any hand-washing. What they were after was the amount of time devoted to media use. Finding: More than two-thirds of people's waking moments involved some kind of media usage, says the report from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. (That figure dwarfs eating, working and lustful day-dreaming and includes newspapers, though we'd rather not know the percentage.) Roughly half of those people were doing one thing at time, such as watching TV, the other half doing more than one thing, such as listening to the radio while driving. Possibly surprising: 18-to-24-year-olds were found to spend less time online than older age groups, but perhaps not surprising after all, since many older people go online at work and, once in a while, it's actually work-related.

In Venezuela, a gallon of gas costs as much as a large egg, and an SUV-fill-up costs $3. Sounds great, but critics say oil-rich Venezuela's highly subsidized gasoline, which retails for between 10 and 15 cents a gallon, is bad for the country, The Christian Science Monitor reports. Besides creating non-stop traffic jams and increasing air pollution, they say the subsidy takes money from schools, hospitals and public transit, and gives it to the well-off, who own the cars. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

Check this out on your next visit to Brooklyn. As you cross the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan, you'll see a huge sign above the traffic: Leaving Brooklyn? 'Oy vey!' It's the brainchild of Marty Markowitz, president of the borough that is home to a large Jewish population, the Associated Press reports. "Oy vey," as you know, is a Jewish expression of surprise and dismay and clearly reflects Brooklyn's growing confidence and sense of superiority to that benighted inner borough known as Manhattan.