How opioid overdoses in public restrooms led an electrician to invent ‘safe bathrooms’
First, a light starts to flash. Then a high-pitched siren starts to blare. Then come the sounds of nearby doors being flung open, and the frantic footsteps of doctors and nurses rushing toward a restroom at the end of a hallway. They’re in a hurry for good reason. These distress signals have a specific meaning: Somebody in the bathroom is overdosing.
Thankfully, it’s a false alarm. But at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, a clinic that caters to Boston’s unhoused population in the heart of the city’s infamous “methadone mile,” bathroom overdoses are a near-daily occurrence. They happen so frequently, in fact, that the clinic has outfitted its restrooms with motion-sensor systems designed specifically for this purpose: to detect when people in bathrooms stop moving, allowing clinic staff to intervene before it’s too late.
