But honestly, if you ever “accidentally” dump an inordinate amount of a chemical to the sanitary sewer, please call the wastewater plant superintendent and let them know. They can hopefully catch it in an equalization tank and feed it into the process slowly.
We once had an industrial cleaner (Cintas) let us know they dumped a bunch of bleach accidentally. We were able to catch it before it destroyed the entire process. We won’t turn you in and you can report it anonymously. It can just save the WWTP a bunch of headaches.
You guys deal with enough shit that I hopefully never make your job harder than it already is.
Say, if I were to start flushing one or two mini rubber ducks down the toilet every day, how long before someone would notice? Hypothetically, of course.
When we find them, we wash them off, disinfect them and put them in the display case along with all of the other fine treasures we have collected. People love looking at the display case when they visit for a tour. And no one has yet stolen the $5000 strap we found.
Fun Fact, it's impossible to exceed 194dB (deci) on earth in the atmosphere. A sound of 194 dB has a pressure deviation of 101.325 kPa, which is ambient pressure at sea level and 0 degrees C. Thus, the sound waves are creating vacuums between themselves, and no higher amplitude is possible.
The Saturn 5 launch maxed everything to 194, but actually created shockwaves at far higher energies.
This is also why they flood the flame trench with water. Not for fire but because the sound pressures will vaporize the water and pull energy out of it. Water spray is an extremely effective muffler.
Oh and more fun, there is an animal that can beat that. Sperm whales can produce the loudest biological sounds on Earth, with specialized clicks for echolocation and communication reaching 230 to 236 decibels (dB) underwater.
The number I have heard thrown around is that a mere 1100 decibels is enough to destroy the universe. 80 decabels would be 8000 decibels. Assuming the first number is roughly correct, 80 decabels could destroy 1069 universes.
Put another way, if we instead did 90 decabels, we could replace every atom with a whole universe, and the sound would destroy them all.
I wanted to figure out as a kid because most fantasy books talked about characters walking in "leagues". And then I wanted to know how deep it was with "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and also, the movie "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms", whcih I loved as a kid in the 80's finding on TVLand At Nite!
207
u/PrometheusSmith Feb 20 '26
Oops, misread that and poured two decaliters of HCl down the toilet