North West's toilet pastimes revealed

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Reading, chatting and texting are among the favourite activities of Britons on the toilet, a survey in the North West has revealed.

The study findings also highlight that 2 million of us are talking – either on the phone or to family – and one in four admitted to sending texts.

Over the past year north west water firm United Utilities had to respond to 28,000 blockages in sewers mainly caused by items being flushed down the loo.

Customers also called saying they’d flushed their mobile phone into the loo or false teeth and could they be collected at the sewerage treatment works.

Today (Monday 19 November), on World Toilet Day 1 in 3 women worldwide risk shame, disease, harassment and even attack because they have nowhere safe to go to the toilet, so we should take better care of our toilets, water bosses say.

Common offending items like baby wipes and nappies, mobile phones, money, false teeth, bullets, guns, and drugs have all been recently flushed into the public sewer in the county costing £13 million every year to unblock pipes.

The water firm has launched its own Think Before You Flush campaign which tells customers to avoid abusing their bog by not flushing common offenders into the sewers.

According to United Utilities 86 per cent of all blockages are caused by careless use of the toilet.

Tony Griffiths from United Utilities says, "When you consider 1.25 billion people across the world live without a safe place to go to the toilet, we should take more pride and care of our loo in the house.

"Although these items disappear when you flush your loo, they don’t totally go away, they just settle out in their own pipes and the sewer pipes beyond people’s properties." he said.

"Many household products claim to be flushable but all they do is block your pipes. Think before you flush and just bin it.”

The study also suggested people mostly thought about food or wine while on the toilet, and that men were more likely than women to look around for a distraction.