Dennis P. Hagerty’s second-floor bathroom in Paramus, N.J., where a Kohler AquaStream Pro 9000 bidet seat produced a water jet that perforated his lower abdomen on Monday morning. The bidet has been disconnected pending investigation. Credit: Margaret Fazio for The New York Time5
Dennis P. Hagerty’s second-floor bathroom in Paramus, N.J., where a Kohler AquaStream Pro 9000 bidet seat produced a water jet that perforated his lower abdomen on Monday morning. The bidet has been disconnected pending investigation. Credit: Margaret Fazio for The New York Time5

PARAMUS, N.J. — A 43-year-old Paramus man was hospitalized in serious but stable condition on Monday after a residential bidet produced a water jet of sufficient force to perforate his lower abdomen, according to emergency responders, hospital officials, and a plumbing inspector who described the incident as “without precedent in the modern era of pressurized bathroom fixtures.”

The man, Dennis P. Hagerty, was using a Kohler AquaStream Pro 9000 bidet seat — a consumer model retailing for approximately $849 — in the second-floor bathroom of his home on East Ridgewood Avenue at approximately 7:15 a.m. when the device discharged a concentrated stream of water that, according to the Bergen County Fire Marshal’s preliminary report, “entered the victim’s body at a velocity consistent with industrial cutting equipment and exited through the anterior abdominal wall.” Mr. Hagerty was transported to Hackensack University Medical Center, where surgeons repaired what a hospital spokesperson described as “a through-and-through wound of the type more commonly associated with ballistic trauma than personal hygiene.”

“We don’t typically see this in a residential bathroom setting,” said Dr. Nina Chavan, the attending trauma surgeon, adding that Mr. Hagerty was “alert, cooperative, and understandably reluctant to discuss the specifics of his positioning at the time of the event.” She noted that the wound was clean-edged and approximately three-quarters of an inch in diameter, details she said she was sharing because the case would “inevitably become a matter of public record anyway.”

Mr. Hagerty’s wife, Lori Hagerty, who was downstairs preparing breakfast at the time of the incident, told reporters that she heard “a sound like a pressure washer hitting tile” followed by her husband’s scream. “I thought a pipe burst,” she said. “When I got upstairs, he was on the floor and there was water on the ceiling.” She added that the bidet had been installed three weeks earlier by a licensed plumber and had, until Monday, “worked fine, maybe even a little too well,” a characterization she immediately asked to retract.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission confirmed that it had opened an investigation into the AquaStream Pro 9000 and was “evaluating whether the product’s pressure settings fall within acceptable limits for consumer use.” A spokesperson for Kohler declined to comment on the specific incident but said in a statement that all AquaStream products “undergo rigorous testing and are designed to deliver a thorough, satisfying clean within established safety margins.”

Dr. Alan Pressler, a hydraulic systems engineer at the National Institute of Residential Water Pressure Standards in College Park, Maryland, said the incident raised “fundamental questions about what we consider an acceptable volume of force to direct at the human body in a domestic hygiene context.” Dr. Pressler, who has studied water pressure tolerances in consumer fixtures for an estimated fourteen years, said that most residential bidets operate at between 0.5 and 1.5 pounds per square inch at the nozzle. “The injuries described in this case would require something in the range of eighty to one hundred and twenty P.S.I.,” he said. “That is not a bidet. That is a water jet cutter that has been plumbed into a toilet.”

A plumbing inspector dispatched by the Borough of Paramus confirmed that the water supply line to Mr. Hagerty’s bathroom was connected to a standard municipal feed and showed no signs of modification. The inspector, Keith Brogan, who has served in the borough’s Department of Code Enforcement for an estimated nineteen years, said in an interview that the bidet’s internal pressure amplification system appeared to be “functioning as designed, which is the problem.” He added that he had never, in nearly two decades of inspecting residential plumbing in Bergen County, encountered “a bathroom fixture capable of producing a wound channel.”

Mr. Hagerty’s neighbors expressed a combination of concern and confusion. “Dennis is a quiet guy,” said Phil Amato, who lives across the street. “He redid that bathroom last month. New tile, new vanity, the whole thing. He was very excited about the bidet.” Mr. Amato paused. “Less so now, I would imagine.”

The Borough Council is expected to take up the matter at its next regular meeting on April 1, where Councilwoman Sandra DiFranco has proposed an emergency review of residential water pressure ordinances. “We have standards for everything — for fences, for driveways, for the height of hedges,” Ms. DiFranco said. “It is frankly unconscionable that a man can install a device in his own bathroom that is capable of perforating him, and no municipal code addresses it.”

Mr. Hagerty is expected to make a full recovery. His wife said he has asked that the bidet be removed.