Solutions to the Pollutions
History Notes
During the mid 1800s, Londoners started installing the modern flush toilets.
While these were a step forward from the handy chamberpot kept in the sideboard that most Londoners used, they dramatically increased the volume of water and waste that was now poured into existing cesspits.
These often overflowed into the street drains, designed to only cope with rainwater, but which now also carried outfalls from factories, slaughterhouses and other activities, contaminating their way through the city before emptying into the River Thames.
The water closet (WC) was "a giant step forward for personal hygiene and two steps backward for public sanitation".
Cholera had been widespread during the 1840s, partly because many people believed the disease was due to air-borne "miasma" or "bad air". No one then knew that the disease was water-borne.
After that discovery was made, by London physician Dr John Snow in 1854, sanitation reform soon became a high priority. The consolidated Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was established in 1848 to set about ridding the capital of an estimated 200,000 cesspits – an objective accelerated by the "Great Stink".
The Great Stink of 1858 occurred during an unusually warm summer, when the smell of untreated sewage almost overwhelmed people in central London. The MPs, and everyone else who could, "left for the country".
You pay!
When drains and sewers are misused, you or the Local Authority (that's still you) pay for the removal of blockages. It could involve the cleaning up of homes, land and rivers affected by sewer flooding.
Sewage flooding due to household pollution is entirely avoidable. Don't do it.
Accidents can always happen. For the rest, the person responsible is you.
Don't do this!
| Do not flush: | Do not pour: | ||
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Do this instead!
If you are
- In the Kitchen put your "FOG" in a Fat Trap and don't put food scraps down the sink.
- In the Bathroom and Toilet wrap items, put them in resealable bags if they are smelly, and put them in a bin. Take unrequired medicines to the pharmacy.
- In the Laundry or by a Gully Trap wash your paint brushes there but check with the Local Authority for what else goes where.
For everything else:
If it isn't listed here, ask your Local Authority for free advice or Contact Us for more information, telling us whereabouts you live and we'll get back to you.
You don't want to meet it again!
Millions of items of sanitary waste are flushed down our toilets every year.
Sanitary items block up the sewers, and clog up and occasionally damage the treatment plant screens that filter them out.
Over a year, the amount of rainwater from one roof illegally connected to the sewers is the same as the wastewater from 50 houses.
During heavy rainfall, the flow in some sewers increases greatly from the rainwater wrongly entering the wastewater system. If the wastewater system cannot handle this volume of water, then the excess is allowed to flow into the rivers or sea. This prevents a backup of wastewater from flooding out into streets and homes.
This wastewater is not filtered or treated and contains every sort of waste and disease.
Wastewater also flows into the stormwater system and waterways when a sewer is blocked by Household Sewer Pollution put there by householders. The waste and diseases released in this way pollute rivers and beaches. This is a health hazard, harms wildlife and people, and is "not a good look".
But that's not all. The sewage treatment plant can never capture all the Household Sewer Pollution and some of it goes through the outfall to the river or sea. No filter can stop the especially small and thin items. Things such as cotton bud sticks, panty liners and condoms escape, and end up on the beaches.
If you don't like the idea of these things being on the beaches or floating where you swim, remember this – if you don't put them in the sewers, they can't get out.
Always "Bag it for Landfill".
You don't want to meet it again.
Do you?