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Articles on Plumbing

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Heat-damaged plastic pipes can continue to leach chemicals into water over time. Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

Plastic pipes are polluting drinking water systems after wildfires – it’s a risk in urban fires, too

A new study shows how toxic chemicals like benzene are leaching into water systems after nearby fires. The pipes don’t have to burn – they just have to heat up.
Schools in Ohio and Pennsylvania have already found Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, in their water systems. Andrew Whelton/Purdue University

Dangerous bacteria is showing up in school water systems, reminding all buildings closed for COVID-19 to check the pipes

When water stagnates in pipes, harmful metals and bacteria can accumulate and make people sick. Buildings that were shut down for weeks during the pandemic may be at risk.
Discolored water can be caused by heavy metals, such as iron or copper. Iron can also act as a nutrient for organisms to grow in the pipes. Kyungyeon Ra/Purdue University

The coronavirus pandemic might make buildings sick, too

Office buildings have been left mostly empty for weeks amid the coronavirus pandemic, leaving standing water in pipes where harmful organisms can grow. What happens when those buildings reopen?
‘Clean up the U-bend and bish, bash, bosh.’ Rido

Is medicine really no different to plumbing?

After a top Scottish medic recently claimed that medicine was too highly rated among the professions, here’s the case for the status quo.
Run, don’t walk. County Clean

We must change our ways to fight fatbergs

It was a ball of grease so enormous, so destructive and so repugnant that not just London, but the whole world, recoiled in horror. The city’s biggest-ever fatberg lurked under Kingston-upon-Thames for…

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