Sewage

Professor of Analytical Chemistry Nikos Thomaidis discussed the sewage that overflowed onto the coastal Poseidonos Avenue after heavy rainfall and whether it poses a public health risk.

On Christmas night, a section of Poseidonos Avenue near Alimos in southern Athens flooded with rainwater and sewage, forcing traffic to a standstill.

Officials blame illegal connections diverting rooftop and yard runoff into the sewer system, causing manhole covers to burst under pressure during heavy rain.

According to a 2020 report by the Kosovo Democratic Institute, KDI, 90 per cent of wastewater in Kosovo is directly or indirectly discharged into rivers without proper filtration. In the three years up to June 2020, 32 million euros were earmarked for sewage filtration, but only 2.2 million euros was actually spent.

In Western Europe, about 200 people lost their lives, entire villages and even cities were flooded. The damage is huge, and the Germans are now threatened by toxic sludge. What worried us in Serbia was the large amount of precipitation that fell on our country, but also the Danube, which "collects" all that water from Europe.

While Turkey launched its "largest and most comprehensive sea cleaning mobilization" ever to save the Marmara Sea from a plague of excessive algae, the discharge of toxic wastewater from a fertilizer factory into the sea without treatment has caused public outrage.

The viral load found in the urban wastewater of Athens shows that there may be 80,000 to 90,000 symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19 in the region, said Nikos Thomaidis, professor of analytical chemistry at Athens University.

Chemists studying the spread of the coronavirus through analysis of human waste from the public sewage system have come to an unanticipated conclusion: About half a million Athenians left the area of the Greek capital over the holidays, with a lockdown in effect.

Shortly before a surge in infections prompted Greece to impose a second coronavirus lockdown in early November, chemists at a wastewater treatment plant had already concluded that tougher restrictions would likely be necessary.

The Thessaloniki Water & Sewerage Company (EYATH) has urged people not to flush disposable plastic gloves, masks and wet wipes down the toilet as they could cause extensive damage to the city's sewage network.

The possible health impacts from the chemical that mixed in the sewage system and hospitalized hundreds of locals on Dec. 25 in Istanbul’s industrial Tuzla district on the Anatolian side has stirred controversy regarding the cause and the penalty for this hazard.