Do not use kitchen wipes on a baby or clog sewers flushing them down the toilet
First of all, be apprised that you should NOT use kitchen sanitizing wipes on a baby, if you’re changing diapers.
I’m pointing that out first because I just read it on the label of my kitchen disinfecting wipes, while I was checking to see whether the label said not to flush them down the toilet.
“DO NOT use as a diaper wipe or for personal cleansing,” it said. “This is not a baby wipe! DO NOT flush in toilet.”
This is another reason I don’t have children: I would be changing a diaper and think, “Oh no! We’re out of baby wipes! … No wait, I just saw a whole cannister under the sink in the kitchen.”
Another sign I’m no parent is I have no disposable diapers to dispose of by tossing them onto the pavement in a grocery store parking lot.
Other people do, and it’s kind of surreal: I mean, here we are, in the middle of a pandemic, trying to keep our social distance and not touch each other’s things, and one essential trip to the grocery store reveals the parking lot’s littered with biohazards.
It’s a good thing we’re not in one of those apocalyptic plague movies, or it would be over in like 10 minutes, the way people throw their germs around.
Speaking of biosolids, the only things that should go down your toilet are toilet paper and excrement, according to the Columbus Water Works, which has a way of tracking what else people flush.
The way it does that is by finding stuff clogging sewers and pumps, which can cause raw sewage to overflow into creeks — joining the toxic garbage people threw down in parking lots, before that washed into the storm sewer and into the creeks.
Water Works warnings about what not to flush aren’t new. The utility periodically has to remind people not to treat a toilet like it’s a wood-chipper or an incinerator.
Flush not
Now there’s a new trend to contend with: All those sanitizing wipes people are using during the coronavirus outbreak.
The fibers in them do not degrade like toilet paper. They stick around, and they can stick long enough to stuff a drain or stop a pump.
Some wipes’ labels warn not to flush them. But not everyone reads the label, of course, else people like me would know not to use kitchen wipes on a baby.
Another reason the label doesn’t matter much is this: Even wipes that claim to be flushable are not, authorities say.
“Disinfecting wipes, baby wipes, and paper towels should NEVER be flushed,” the Environmental Protection Agency says at www.epa.gov/coronavirus, where it answers frequently asked coronavirus questions.
Vic Burchfield, senior vice president at the Columbus Water Works, said workers more often now are finding wipes jamming pumps and pipes.
“It seems to have increased over the past few weeks,” he said.
The company’s gravity-flow sewers use Columbus’ north-south decline in elevation to drain sewage south to treatment facilities. When the sewage en route hits a basin it can’t flow beyond, a lift station pumps it to the next drainage.
When a station clogs, an alarm goes off, and workers run out and fix it.
If a pipe clogs, hundreds of gallons of raw sewage can flow into a creek before it’s caught.
People who don’t care about creeks should ponder their own plumbing, because the stuff they flush could clog their pipes, before it reaches the sewer, causing raw waste to backflow.
“It could happen in the house,” Birchfield said.
Anyone who has had to unclog a toilet may be aware of this, but it could be something you learn from experience, like changing a diaper.
You’re not supposed to flush diapers either, by the way.