No, you can’t flush your face masks or your gloves. Officials warn of sewer backups
Water officials across the country are urging residents to stop flushing their face masks down the toilet.
Sewage systems are seeing block-ups as residents stuck in their homes amid the coronavirus crisis send face coverings, Clorox wipes, latex gloves and other not-so-biodegradable items down the flusher. In cities like El Paso, Texas, water officials have been dealing with the issue since last month.
“We don’t want people flushing anything besides what your body makes and toilet paper,“ Carlos Briano, public affairs coordinator for El Paso Water, told McClatchy News. “That’s it.”
Briano said the city first saw issues with people flushing Clorox wipes used to disinfect their homes during the pandemic. These days, waste water officials are seeing throw-away gloves and face masks, too.
The problem appears to have bubbled up weeks after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a guidance urging people to wear face coverings in public to help mitigate the spread of the disease, which has infected nearly 672,000 across the U.S and killed more than 33,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“When it enters into the wastewater system, it just becomes one mass of different types of elements,” Briano explained, adding that it then “congeals with fats, oils and greases, food scraps” and other fibrous materials.
He said it’s hard to say which types of masks are being flushed — but that either way, they don’t belong in the toilet.
“It’s hard to speculate why people are doing it,” Briano added, “but we do ask the public to not do it.”
Water officials in Long Island, New York, are seeing similar issues of less than environmentally-friendly items ending up in the city’s sewage system. According to Newsday, residents have clogged local sewers by flushing socks, gloves, masks and even paper towels down their toilets.
Cleansing wipes that are advertised as “flushable” have also caused issues, officials in Long Island say.
“When you start pulling socks out of a pump, that’s pretty surprising, because usually you shouldn’t see that in a sewer system,” Vincent Desiderio, maintenance manager for a private company that operates Nassau County’s sewer system, told the newspaper. “When you start seeing pieces of fabric, and then you see socks and stuff like that, it’s pretty alarming.”
He said the materials are enough to “stop a pump.”
Between Jan. 1 and March 31, rag pile-ups were to blame for nearly 50 percent of sewer blockages in the county, Desiderio added.
In neighboring Pennsylvania, officials with the Littlestown Borough Water and Sewer Authority say rubber gloves and other cleaning items are “plugging up our equipment,” as well.
“Charles Kellar, Littlestown Borough Manager stated that the maintenance crews are experiencing extreme difficulties maintaining the system due to the fact that these items are clogging all of the pumps that are in operation at its lift stations and sewer treatment plant,” the agency wrote in a Facebook post Thursday.
Residents are urged to place such face masks and other cleaning items in the trash for proper disposal.