Fumes down toilet...not sink!!

[auntyjack]

[gruns]

What auntyjack was attempting to convey was that in her community in Australia, the greywater (sink, shower, washing machine) is pumped into the local water systems (is sodium lauryl sulfate really that biodegradable?), while brown(?) water, that is, poopy water, is handled by a waste treatment facility.  Where, depending upon the wealth of the area, they MAY attempt to treat heavy metal/organic contamination or they may just ferment it for a while then release it back into the local ecosystem, or even several miles out into the ocean. 

I would suggest not dumping ANY chemical waste down your drains, though.

Well, besides maybe acetone, ammonia, muriatic acid, sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide... can anybody name any others that are probably OK to put into public sewage lines in small amounts?

[scram]

I would never dump acetone in a toilet. I don't even like putting meoh in there. I just can imagine that being removed from water even completely through evaporation. I just wouldn't want someone else drinking water with meoh in it. One of my friends, and grad student getting his PhD in biology tells me one of the highest contaminants in tap water is ESTROGEN for christ sake. He says he runs test on the excessive amounts of which EPA knows about and they are testing on its toxic/mutative effects on the unborn. But after hearing him say "You will die if you drink Deionized water" I don't really know how to take him so seriously.
Is this true??? If you drank gallons of it i Imagine.

[hypo]

> I just wouldn't want someone else drinking water with meoh in it.

a) you think it's ok to drink water with shit in it
b) you don't shit in your toilet

[gruns]

Acetone is quickly broken down by bacteria.

Putting acetone in soil for a few days is a way to supercharge the bacteria in it, it's a technique used in mushroom cultivation.

[Pimpo]

Deionized water is not toxic . It simply doesn't contain the minerals and trace elements (ionic!) that tap water does, which are essential and continually lost by sweating and urination. So, if you would drink gallon after gallon of deionized water and eat and drink nothing else, you would die very soon.

[auntyjack]

yes, from what i remember de ionised/distilled water actually strips minerals etc from your body....whoever rated my post as incoherent is a fool

[Rhodium]

auntyjack: You did a far worse job explaining the odd plumbing situation etc. than gruns, who clarified your incoherent post.

I thought all modern industrial countries processed all their sewage, not just the septic part of it. That really sucks for the environment.

[scram]

That bacterial thing I think is probably much easier to control then the solvent removal portion of water filration. I mean, what is there, charcoal filters, a sulfer purifying process with other neutralizing processes. I don't know about that stuff but I've always wondered if post wacker solution containing MeOH and pd/cu contamanants would ever come out in the end. If you got 1 liter meoh in  dispersed in some couple hundred thous liters water I just can't see it evaportating completely out of that water and being removed through activated carbon. That's my curiosity. I didn't know about the acetone thing being biodegradable. I've always wondered exactly how much organic/chlorinated solvents dumped in the universitys' lab piping is actually removed in their on-site drainage system.

[Osmium]

> If you got 1 liter meoh in  dispersed in some couple hundred
> thous liters water I just can't see it evaportating completely
> out of that water and being removed through activated carbon.

That's what BACTERIA are for. MeOH and acetone are naturally occuring substances! Of course they are biodegradable!

> I've always wondered exactly how much organic/chlorinated
> solvents dumped in the universitys' lab piping is actually removed
> in their on-site drainage system.

What third world country do you live in?!
Pouring chlorinated solvents down the drain is a big no-no in every civilized lab.

[hypo]

...methanol is used as C-source in some biochemical processes...

[fnord]