Getting to know your drain!

Introduce Yourself
It is highly unlikely that you have formally introduced yourself to your drains, and while we’re not asking you to go that far, we hope you will take this opportunity to learn a little bit more about where your drain leads and where the things you send down it may end up. Everything we put down the drain can have an effect on our personal environment – including cleaning products. It can affect the water we drink, and enjoy for recreation. Household chemicals, if improperly used or discarded can leach into the soil or filter into neighboring waters.

Where Does Your Drain Lead?
The answer to where your drain leads can be slightly different depending on what kind of drain we are talking about. So let’s start there. I would like you to meet your household drain. This drain can lead one of two places. It can lead to the sewer or to a septic tank depending on the system you have in your house.

The Sewer
If your drain leads to the sewer, you may think that you don’t have to worry about what goes down your drain, but nothing is further from the truth. Many of the chemicals we use in our homes are toxic. The toxic chemicals are not only dangerous to the health of your family when you use them in your home, but also can contaminate the water supply when they are dumped down the drain. You may think that they get diluted enough when they are dumped not to cause a problem, but that may not be the case. In some cases small amounts of hazardous materials that you can find around your home can ruin one million gallons of water. Many of the municipal water treatment plants rely on bacteria or other organisms to decompose the waste, but some of the toxins can pass through unchanged, leaving the water polluted. The bacteria they are counting on to purify the water may also be killed, and rendered ineffective. If that doesn’t happen, it can also damage the pipes that carry the water, corroding them, which may cause them to release fumes. Sewage treatment plants are designed to treat sewage, not hazardous chemicals, so flushing them down the toilet isn’t the answer either.

The Septic System
If your drain leads to a septic system, you may know that the concept behind them is that the waste water is put into a tank that is buried underground. Some of the products are decomposed, and the remaining wastewater goes into a drain field to continue to breakdown. When there are toxins dumped or spilled into the drains, it can cause the bacteria that help in the process to die, and thus the process may no longer work properly, and surface waters may become contaminated. This can cause a lot of problems ranging from smell to contaminated yards to spoiled ground water.

The Storm Drain
A third kind of drain is a storm drain. These are the drains along the side of the road that do not lead to the sewer. They collect water from outside our homes and carry it untreated to the waterways. They lead directly to streams, rivers and lakes. Some people dump their left over products into these drains thinking it is a safe way to rid their home of the unwanted chemicals. They are intended for flood control, not for dumping. When we wash our cars or change our oil, any run off may be going directly into our lakes and streams. This makes knowledge of the products we use essential to the preservation of our water supplies.

So what can you do to protect your waterways?

• It is important to know what kind of products you have in your house. When you purchase chemicals for use in your home you may want to check out the level of warning that accompanies that product. POISON means highly toxic; DANGER means extremely flammable, corrosive, or highly toxic; and WARNING or CAUTION means less toxic.
• Select less toxic alternatives to conventional cleaners, drain openers, and other products. Try to use non-toxic substitutes whenever possible.
• Check with local government how to dispose of Household Hazardous Waste, or take them to a local hazardous waste collection center.
• Share left over cleaning supplies with others, or use them up.


It may seem that the amount of toxic products that you use may not have an affect on the water you use, but putting that with the chemicals of all of your neighbors, it can really add up to a big problem. There is no question that without clean water, the earth would be uninhabitable. We take for granted the water that we use everyday. Many of us may think about saving water through water conservation, but it is as important to save our water from the chemicals we are using in our homes.

Tampa Bay Estuary Program – Household Chemicals,
http://www.tbep.org/tips/cleanliving.html
EPA > Polluted Runoff (Nonpoint Source Pollution) > Do’s and Don’ts Around the Home,
http://www.epa.gov/owow/nps/dosdont.html
NASD: Disposal of Hazardous Household Waste,
http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001201-d001300/d001236/d001236.html
Household Chemicals,
Clean Water…It Starts with You – Onsite Sewage Systems,
http://www.gov.bc.ca/wat/wq/brochures/sewage.html
Stop Pointless Personal Pollution,
http://www.epa.gov/owow/nps/dosdont.html
NASD: Disposal of Hazardous Household Waste,
http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001201-d001300/d001236/d001236.html
HHW Consumer Savvy,
http://www.deq.state.la.us/assistance/recycling/home/hhw_consumer_savvy.htm
Keep Nebraska Beautiful – Household Hazardous Waste,
http://www.knb.org/house_hazard.html
NASD: Disposal of Hazardous Household Waste,
http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001201-d001300/d001236/d001236.html
Clean Water…It Starts with You – Onsite Sewage Systems,
http://wlapwww.gov.bc.ca/wat/wq/brochures/sewage.html
Water,
http://perc.ca/waste-line/rrr/home/water.html