The average person flushes the toilet five times a day and, apparently, most of us are doing it wrong. Get ready for some hard truths about why you should always leave the lid closed when you flush.

When you pull the lever, in addition to taking whatever business you’ve left behind down into the sewer pipes, your toilet also releases something called “toilet plume” into the air — which is basically a spray filled with microscopic bacteria, including E. coli. According to research from 1975, the germs emitted in the spray can linger in the air for up to six hours, and disperse themselves all over your bathroom … including on your toothbrush, towels and beauty products.

"Contaminated toilets have been clearly shown to produce large droplet and droplet nuclei bioaerosols during flushing, and research suggests that this toilet plume could play an important role in the transmission of infectious diseases for which the pathogen is shed in feces or vomit,” reads a 2015 update on the 1975 study from the "American Journal of Infection Control." "The possible role of toilet plume in airborne transmission of norovirus, SARS and pandemic influenza is of particular interest.”

Luckily, today’s toilet technology minimizes the amount of toilet plume that’s shot into the air, but it’s still something about which it's worth being aware. "The bigger droplets and the aerosol likely don’t travel very far above or around the toilet, but very tiny droplets could remain suspended in the air for some time,” microbiologist Dr. Janet Hill told TODAY Home. "Since the water in the toilet bowl contains bacteria and other microbes from feces, urine and maybe even vomit, there will be some in the water droplets. Every gram of human feces contains billions and billions of bacteria, as well as viruses and even some fungi."

The easiest way to avoid this nastiness coating your bathroom is, simply, to close the toilet seat. "Closing the lid reduces the spread of droplets,” Hill explained. If you’re in a public bathroom where there is no toilet seat to be found, keep as clean as possible by not leaning over the bowl when you flush and washing your hands immediately afterward.