Fatbergs

>> Speaker A: I mean, if you try and clean up a mess with a piece of toilet paper, heck, you watch these, like, braun and Downey and all these other, like, I don't even think I named a real paper towel brand. But you watch these paper towel companies make these ads, and the dude just so, like, laxadaisically traipses the paper towel through this big splash of, uh, it's always blue juice, by the way. Welcome back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded

from my home bathroom. I am your host, hunter Hoover. And, man, I love bathrooms, and I really like bathrooms today because we were out on me, uh, and my homie were out on a little outing, and, um, yeah, we were in a new place, and so it wasn't the most obvious, uh, where the bathroom was going to be. And so there was a learning moment where we had to go. How

worried are you to go to the bathroom in public? I obviously shared that I have no reservations when it comes to, uh, performing scoot out of my own home. Um, but, you know, sometimes a person finds themselves and any person in this world finds themselves out on what I like to call a strenuous walk that trends uphill in the wilderness. And you never know. Uh, moments before jumping on this record, I polished off a quarter pounder with cheese. Uh, so that'll come

back for a fun privy visit later. But, uh, sometimes you just polish off what might be just, like, a little bit of a randy cheeseburger, and then you have a mega time emergency in a porta potty, and it's real bad. Uh, like, right in the middle of your strenuous, uphill outdoor walk. Apparently, that's a thing that some people have experienced. Uh, I can't imagine trying to do a day uphill, strenuous outdoor walk with diarrhea. I can't imagine doing that.

And I've already shared on the show that I. Hey, also, uh, if you're joining us, for the first time, I'm going to talk about bathroom stuff. But, yeah, you have to hit that porta potty more than a few times. Sometimes you don't leave it for a long time. Um, but at least everything in this scenario was completely hypothetical. You know what I'm saying? It's all good because

it's not real. This week on privy, we're moving away from going J when you're at play to talking once again about the great innovation that is sewers. And before we have to take the most sideways, backwards route into talking about these things sometimes. Otherwise, you might as well just go google it. Uh, what if I told you right now, as I'm yapping into this microphone in my bathroom and as you're listening to it in your ear holes, that there was a monster lurking in our sewers, multiple of

them. And what if I told you that these monsters were best friends, nay, verily, cousins, nay, verily, best friends of soap, and we're going to talk about these monsters that are wreaking havoc. But I got to give you a brief recap on sewers, because at one point, things were incredibly stinky and incredibly dirty and incredibly full of bacterial buddies. And if that sounds a lot like every middle and early high school locker room experience, you're not wrong.

But as time went on, so things got stinky enough. Back in the day when you took a dumperooni, some cultures had bathrooms, and we're going to talk a little bit about that next episode, but a lot of them didn't, especially when you get into the middle ages, where they just dumped their skeet right in the streets. They'd poop in a chamber pot or pee in a chamber pot, and they'd just dump it out right in the street with the thought being that water and rainfall would wash this away.

Incredibly brown, incredibly stinky. What a time to have been alive. But at one point, things were so stinky and dirty and full of bacteria that enough people got sick. Like, not got tired of it, but they actually got sick. Um, and they started to do some very entry level bill Nye the science dude stuff to figure out if I drink water that has poop in it, it kind of makes me dummy sick. And I know that we hear that and we go,

uh, are we for real right now? But, yeah, that was, like, news to them that something about what was in your poopy, remember, the whole bacterial, viral, whatever theory of germ theory, there it is. Wasn't really on the scene at this point. And so it was just like, well, if I drink the water that's been next to Tony's skeet, I'm more likely to get sick. And they figured out that the stuff that was making everyone so sick,

it was causing cholera. Uh, the short and sweet of this is, once it was discovered that the poop from people was making other people sick, laws and sanitation standards began to be put in place. And we talked about that a little bit in our sewer episode, but many of the systems switched from, like, cess pits, which allowed the byproduct of human activity to seep into the drinking supply. Uh, and thus, infecting the drinking

water, um, the well water. And they switched from these cesspits to these septic tanks. Now, I'll put a picture out on the privy, social stuff for you to see, just a graphic of this, like, how it was playing. It's kind of wild to see how the cesspits polluted the drinking water. It's kind of awful. But this also, because all these sanitation and other, uh, necessary changes were being made, it also gave rise to complete reconstruction of city sewer

systems. These were often closed systems, which relied on the flow of water to remove waste as well as break down some of the waste products that would get caught in the mix. Um, getting caught in the mix is the technical term for being in a sewer, by the way. Um, at this time, it was mostly agreed that the wastewater would be pumped into bigger bodies of water, and then

drastically, this helped the cholera problem. So, in other words, you do brown and it goes into the septic system or into the sewer line that is attached to the city, and that is flushed via you dumping water down your toilet, or if you're lucky enough to have a flush toilet, um, it is flushed down and pushed out, and later it is spilled into larger bodies, usually of natural

water. Now, obviously, we now can look back and say, well, this might not be the best solution, um, but it is a solution to the contaminated drinking water problem. But, however, if you live downstream, you have to take on the problems of the folks upstream, because if they skeet and they rinse it out into the river, that's coming to visit you here pretty quick. So strap in, friend. Uh, yeah, they eventually had to like, history of sewer. We talked about that, but things with

filtration made things better. And over time, they had to move things farther and farther away from society to make room for the filtration systems, as well as to keep it away from the drinking supply of most people. Uh, and there's some maps of the sewers of cities that you can find. Um, they're fascinating to look at. I'll try to share a few of those as well. But this week, we're not just talking about sewers for sewer's sake.

I know how much y'all love talking about sewers, but we are going to marry friggin wed. Flipping unite that idea. Sewers with another aspect and facet of human life. For the longest time after the advent of toilet paper in 1857. Mark your calendars. 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and in 1857, toilet paper was

invented. That's what you need to know. About it. But shortly after the onset of the sewer system, people would regularly throw their toilet paper, their spent paper, in a waste paper basket, hence the name, instead of flushing it down the toilet. Now, this was mostly because flushed the paper would go into a collection tank where the materials would be broken down and reabsorbed into the

water supply. Also, if you're operating on a septic system tank, this paper back then could be incredibly hard on those tanks and cause them to fill up much faster. We don't need to rehash the history of toilet paper, but what we do need to do is we need to know that the toilet paper and other paper products found, I don't know, like, in feminine hygiene materials and elsewhere, they don't really break down in the ways

that you think they would. If you try and clean up a mess with a piece of toilet paper. Heck, you watch these braun and Downey and all these other, like, I don't even think I named a real paper towel brand. But you watch these paper towel companies make these ads, and the dude just so, like, laxadaisically traipses the paper towel through this big splash of. It's always blue juice, by the way, what's going on in their kitchen that they drink it so much? Blue juice? How

ironic would it be if it was just Windex? You know what I'm saying? But you take the paper towel through it, and they barely hold up. If you get a piece of toilet paper up on that mix, it turns to nothing. It becomes, literally particles in the air. Toilet paper is just like. It's like trying to sand a board with a fern. It just turns to nothing. And so hearing that it doesn't break down probably doesn't square as well in your brain as you might hope. Uh, but it's not technically

biodegradable, which. Thank you, Sam. Shout out to Sam Bagenstas last week for reminding us that toilet paper is not technically biodegradable. And that's how we get little toilet paper gardens all over the place. We don't need to rehash all this toilet paper stuff. But once urban plumbing began to be put in place, people did kind of begin flushing the paper away with the rest of the buddies.

Also, if you're jamming, sometimes I wonder your bathroom had to stink, because if you're wiping your bink and then sticking it in the trash next to you, are you just emptying that after every pass? Your dookie paper is just chilling right there. And I guess at the time, they were emptying things into the street a lot more, so they probably wouldn't just stank as it was.

But I'm sure it couldn't help. Like, if you had a toilet in your home and you were opting to throw your paper in a basket with smear on it. I can't imagine that does a lot for the smell of that bathroom space. That's just me. But in time, people began to flush the paper, and in more time, there was an increase in the fat content of the deposits, mostly due to an increased production of trans fats and

foods. Not to mention, people began to just not reuse the fats in food, and they would rinse them down the drain. Bombs away. Watch out, Mario, because here comes liquid fat down the drain, and those things are going down the drain, and there's a lot of fat and paper. And this at, uh, long last. Now that we are more than ten minutes into this brings us to the topic of our episode.

And you might have heard of Gettysburg, and you might have heard of St. Petersburg, but I bet you ain't ever heard of fatbergs. It was a stretch. A, uh, Fatberg is kind of like an iceberg. So if you think of an iceberg, picture it with me, if you will. And if you're like me, you can't picture an iceberg without picturing those, like, 70% of what's going on is under the surface diagrams that they show you in every self help and psychology and how to deal with people. Training thing. We

get it. We're icebergs. Guess what? They're probably melting anyway, so just cool it with the iceberg analogies. But think of an iceberg, and then instead of ICE, it's fat. Like, not. Its appearance is fat. It's not like a chunky, bunky. It is made up of fat now. Yeah, so that's the idea. Fatbergs were officially named in 2008 when pieces of a fatty stuff began to wash up on the beaches in

Wales, uh, England. And in 2010, they realized where they started calling these fat burgs, because they're like, wow, looks like chunks of iceberg, but it's kind of fatty and looks like lard. Uh, and in 2010, they finally put it all together where these things were coming from. The term fatberg was made an official word in 2015, which means that dough and Muggle were official words before Fatberg, but there isn't a lot

of. And honestly, like, if you're picturing them, I kind of think of those, like, adipose creatures from Doctor who. Um, if you're a doctor who fanatic. You're probably having what I like to call a dry spell for doctor who, uh, references, uh, in your life. I know I am. Uh, so there's one for you. Think of, like, little adipose buddies.

But instead of being, like, kind of floppy and soft, these fat bergs form a rock like solid mass of non biodegradable solids, such as wipes and toilet paper and condoms and solidified fat, oil, and grease, also known as fog. Fog. Fat, oil, and grease. Holy fog. Uh, the buildup of these mixes with the non biodegradable to form these hard, oily chunks of waxy rock like things fatbergs from here form where there are rough surfaces in sewer

pipes. So maybe the flow, um, has caused some sort of rough, uh, surfaces in sewer pipes where maybe human sludge has become too rigorous. Or the flow hits rough spots and starts to swirl. And if you've ever seen a river, you know how, like, it catches on the bank and it kind of does start to do that swirl, and it kind of gets the weird gunk over there. And apparently, that's a pretty good place to dip your fish and hook it is some fishing this week. Um, but this isn't a podcast about

fishing. It's a podcast about bathrooms. And it forms in this swirl. It's kind of like churning, if you will. It forms a buildup of fat and these deposits. And this happens a lot in cement and brick sewers. That's, like, the primary location where you'll find this swirl thing happen. It can also happen a lot, like where there's a tree root or something else has bust through the sewer line. But it isn't just fats.

Now, do you remember how our soap friends from a few weeks ago had their start in animal fats and oils? Well, it turns out when fats sit and churn in these weird sewer pools, and they combine with all of the unmentionables that a person may flush or dump away, they go through a process, these fats and the things that happened from too many cheesy bees. Shout out to the quarter pounder with cheese. Royale with cheese that I had at

the beginning of the episode. We're back. Um, they go through a process called saponification. Now, saponification or soapification, whatever. It's fancy science term. I'm not a scientist. It requires four components. Calcium, fatty acids, fogs, got them. And water. These mix with the non biodegradable materials a person would flush or rinse down the drain, and it can form what essentially feels and acts like concrete or like a big, powerful rock. A berg, if you will. And you know what you

don't want in a sewer? A sewer, which, by the way, if we forgot, is designed to have free flowing and moving human sludge. You know what you don't want in there? Free standing rocks and concrete. That's bad. Zero out of ten. Get it out. Sewers are supposed to have not cement in them. Poop, yes. Rats, probably. Early adolescent. Early adolescent hybrid kung fu tortoises, most definitely, but

not fat burgs. And, um, based on how many sewers have suffered from fat birds, maybe those crime fighting reptiles should be fighting big, ugly fat monsters who clogged the sewers. Like tmnt people. I know I just called your beloved turtles early adolescent hybrid kung fu tortoises. But consider this my Ip if you want the fat berg monster that the tmnt gentlemen have to fight. Yep, it's more widespread than all the rhinos I've ever

seen in sewers recently. You know what I'm saying? Uh, in fact, London, New York, Denver, Valencia, Melbourne and countless other cities have all had problems with Fatburgs. One of the largest Fatbergs was discovered in Whitechapel, London. It was 130 tons. 130 tons? That's too big. It was the size of what they equated to eleven double decker buses. And at the worst spot, it blocked 90% of the sewer. That's not good. That's incredibly bad. You don't want that

situation. They believe it got so big because of the structure of the victorian sewers, as well as how long it just has been in existence. Other fatbergs, including one weighing 15 tons, which was the size of a bus, was discovered in 2013. In September 2014, they found one the size of an airliner that had to be cleared by a sanitation team in London, and another, smaller one in Australia, was found later that year.

Fatbergs have become so prominent now that cities and states have begun to budget for their removal. Millions and millions of dollars. Another way they have seen fit to fight the scourge of fat burgs is by just teaching people education. Quit flushing your freaking paper towels. Don't flush your feminine hygiene products. Stop it. Most toilet paper nowadays is generally safe to be flushed, but stop flushing the other stuff,

like, don't do it. They also say, don't go dumping all your fatty deposits down the drain, or, lord forbid, down the toilet. And this brings me to a segment of hunter's anecdotes to keep you afloat. This hunter's anecdotes is, uh, about the time that I didn't know how to

dispose of a lot of grease. Um, so when I was in high school, there was a period of time where I would cook dinner for my parents, uh, and myself, uh, and I would start the dinner so that way it would be done as my parents got home, because they were getting home late. And at one point in this venture, I, um, think I had made tacos or hamburglar helper, that lovely little oven mitt. And I do as you do. You get the box out. And, um, I'm still at the stage where there's not a lot of

experimenting. There is following directions as if your life depended on it cooking. But, yeah, it was some sort of beef product. That's all I remember. But I remember that either we hadn't boughtten some particularly fatty meat or something, because I'm, like, browning this meat, and there is an ungodly amount of fat and oil left over. And I think I remember even calling my mom and going, hey, I'm browning this beef. Which, by the way, great euphemism for what

goes on in the bathroom. But I'm browning this beef, and it's looking real greasy. Like there is a puddle of collected grease. Either she didn't answer, or she gave me real adult good advice. Either way, I know I didn't take it, because I think it was like, well, you have to collect it with a paper towel and dispose of it in the trash or something like that. I don't know.

All I was thinking was, that's a lot of work. So what I did was I scooped all of the burger out, and I took this pan full of just still hot burger grease, and I took it into everybody's favorite room, the bathroom. And I dumped that joker straight in the toilet and flushed. And I think I had to flush, like, twice because there was enough to where the first flush finished while I was still

pouring. Um, and, yeah, I just deposited probably 4oz or more of just straight burger fat straight down my toilet in my house growing up. So, um, shout out, mom and dad. Uh, I don't think anything ever was clogged, but I defo did this. And I remember doing it because I remember being like, why don't we just dump everything down the toilet? You don't have to really clean it up. And it definitely sees much worse things. And now I know the answer is because of fatbergs. So, thanks, fat burgs,

and thanks for. Sorry for what I did to you. This has been another hunter's anecdotes to keep you afloat. You know, when we're young, we just don't know. That's what we've learned today. Um, quit flushing freaking paper towels and other stuff. Like some countries have. Have started putting a flushable categorization on products. So they've labeled them like, you can flush this one, you cannot

flush this one. I like to think that maybe they put that on weird stuff like stuffed animals and, I don't know, like Pokemon cards and stuff like that, where it's like, this is not a flushy thing. You cannot do it. Don't do it. This scourge of the sewers has been clogging things up for centuries, and only now are we having problems. It's like all the fatbergs have decided now, just like all of the Pokemon game console cartridges have decided to give up their battery life after 20

years. Now the fatbergs are rising up, and they're clogging our sewers. The scourge of the sewers is here. These are called fatbergs. Sometime there are menaces there below in the sewers, causing problems for us all. They are the worst, all fat and clumpy and also bumpy. Fat burgs a woo. Big old chunks, uh, of fat and paper fat burgs a woo. In the sewers lies this caper. A big old fat burg's clogging sewers, causing problem, causing spewers. Nothing to do but bust up all them fat birds

a woo. It's like soap, but doesn't clean their fat birds a woo. Sanitation. Ah. Buddies are scared country spending woofie bucks on fat burgs. Awo. So, yeah, they have these huge chunks of fat and stuff, and you know what they're doing with it? One company that deals with fat burgs reports they deal with 400 to 600 Fatberg related drainage calls per month. That's too many. To get rid of them, they are using some special equipment that breaks the berg up into

smaller chunks. Essentially, they have these high powered special water jets that shoot like ten gallons a minute at like 3000 psi. It's like a water laser on these fat buddies. These busted pieces are removed manually or by what I like to call big vacuum. Super Fatberg vacuum at your service. And that's what they call me at buffalo Wild wings super Fatberg vacuum. But after that, they figured out how to convert the fatbergs into biogas or

biodiesel. It's long and expensive and a not cost effective workaround, but it is essentially just humans doing the best with this sewer problem that we have. And you know what? We did the best with what we had this week. I mean, I dumped fatty nonsense into my childhood toilet. So we all grew up a little bit today. This brings us to the end of another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for listening. Um, if you

would leave a rating or review. Uh, if you leave a review on iTunes, we would love to read that here on the show. Five star options are preferred. Spotify will allow you to rate but not review. Thanks, Spotify. Follow us on social media at Privycast and send us an email, recommendations, suggestions. Say hi. Let us know that we're not shouting out into the void here. Privycast@gmail.com. We'd love

to hear from you. As always, we'd like to thank Kevin McLeod for the use of barroom ballet as our intro and outro music. You can find Kevin's music, uh@incompetent.org. His music is licensed under Creative Commons license attribution 40. Uh, thanks, Kevin. We'd also like to thank pottington Bear for all the colors in the world as the hunter's anecdote, intro and outro music. You can find potdington Bear's music@pottingtonbear.com. Thanks, Pottington. This has been another

episode of privy. Thank you so much for joining us. And now, as always, and make sure it doesn't have paper towel or lady hygiene products in it. Don't forget to flush.