Don’t Flush the Floss!
Be careful how you toss the floss. More people are getting the message that flossing is important. Brushing your teeth just removes the food from the front and the back of the teeth and the only way to clean between them is by using the floss. As dentists we ask our patients to floss specially at night before they go to bed. After floss is used a lot of people just flush it down the toilet.
Floss, specially the non shreded kind binds with the other waste material and creates large clumps. They gum up impellers, which are part of the pumps in the city’s sanitary pumping stations.
Strands of floss wrap around the motors of the impellers - rotating devices that move the waste. When the motors don’t have enough power to overcome the jam, they shut down. Recently the Toronto water distric had to deal with this situation. According to the official this is a recurring issue every fall.
