Crappy Day at Work, or, Shit Storm

Yesterday a couple of Massachusetts Water Resource Authority workers at Deer Island took a shower in shit. Literally. When the two workers popped off a valve to do some routine maintenance about 100 gallons of "return sludge" coated them. So it's really mostly treated sewage, but still wicked nasty. Anyone know if Aquafina is using return sludge in their process? To put it into perspective, if you're a ten minute shower kind of person you can think of it that way – most showers pump out 5 gallons a minute, split the 100 gallons between two (we've got no idea if they were coated evenly or not) and it's like they got about a 10 minute shower of sludge, each.

The employees were decontaminated on site and them taken to the hospital. Both were treated and released by mid-afternoon yesterday. Word from the MWRA is that at least one of the guys even showed up for work this morning. Mike Rowe has only been knee deep in sludge once, and he wasn't bathing in it, the MWRA guys do it day in and day out. We're giving a point to the MWRA workers but we're taking away points from the Herald for disappointing their readers – with such obvious puns to make the headline deliciously stinky they lamed out and went with the tame "Workers swamped in sludge when pipe explodes.

Image from the MWRA on "How the Sewer System Works." If you look closely there is one left pointing arrow – likely the point of return sludge.