What we flush matters for health, safety
What goes in the toilet, and what goes in the trash?
It's the kind of discussion one has with a 2-year-old, and is all the more delightful because it's a topic generally regarded as taboo in polite conversation. You get to say things such as only “the three Ps” — pee, poop and paper — go in the toilet. Everything else goes in the trash can. Right?
Alas, modern human life is much more complicated and the conversation far more difficult, though fundamentally important for health, safety and good manners. The last century has given us three new Ps to contend with: plastics, PFAS and pharmaceuticals. We should not flush these, though throwing them in the trash doesn't mean they won't harm us.
Microplastics are found in human blood. PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are known popularly as “forever chemicals” and are associated with a host of bad health effects — taint drinking water in numerous communities. Drugs meant to treat deadly disease in humans end up causing illness in other creatures when, discarded, they leach into the water.
Long dismissed as merely part of the waste stream, water will be cleansed and monitored at a level not previously attained to form a buffer against drought. It is more important than ever to revisit management of the three Ps.
The first two — the ones that pass out of the human body — are treated to kill pathogens. Liquids and solids are separated and, to oversimplify, liquids go to the ocean and solids are used to enrich farm soil.
Human waste fertilizes crops? Yes. Anyone who has bought a bag of Milorganite fertilizer to spread on their lawn and keep it green has in some sense become a customer of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, which produces the product from carefully treated biosolids, the word used to describe human waste.
Los Angeles was once dotted with “sewage farms” fertilized, disturbingly, with untreated waste. They produced vegetables that were considered safe to eat only if cooked. Now L.A.'s waste is properly treated, after which much of it is trucked to farmland in Kern County alongside Interstate 5. Crops there are lush and healthy. Adjacent, unsupplemented land looks like a moonscape.
The third P is more problematic. Toilet paper is made to dissolve, but there are arguments and lawsuits over some other products labeled “flushable” (baby wipes and moistened cleaning pads, for example) that municipal sanitation agencies say clog sewer systems and cost taxpayers and ratepayers millions of dollars each year to clear.
Should so-called flushables go into the trash instead? Yes. Municipalities have long lists of things people commonly flush but shouldn't, including facial tissues, tampons, dental floss and indeed any nonorganic material.
But don't think placing them in the trash renders them harmless. Plastics (like dental floss) in landfills become microplastics that leach any chemicals they were treated with right back into the water. Unused pills are bad news whether flushed or tossed. PFAS leach from some types of paper plates, takeout containers and other things that generally are placed in the blue recycle bin but shouldn't be.
Some used clothes, old carpets, in fact anything that “miraculously” resists stains, moisture or wrinkling, may leach PFAS. They obviously can't be flushed but really shouldn't go into the bin either — not the green one, the blue one or the black one. Many people put them there anyway.
The companies that produce these wonder products make them appear affordable because they “externalize” their costs — they offload them, unseen, onto our sewer bills; our medical bills; our bodies; the land, water and air.
The basic rule remains sound: Flush only the three Ps. For now, everything else has to go into the trash, though we need to recognize the hazards that filling our landfills continues to cause and move quickly to a more sustainable system.