Urinating in Sumps

Also spitting tobacco and any spitting as well as throwing in food and floor sweepings.

I know. Some of you can’t believe anyone would ever do it. Some of you didn’t know it was wrong. And some of you know better but have employees who don’t.

I just got out of a coolant management discussion. During part of it we discussed things found in sumps such as tobacco juice, floor sweepings, human vomit and dog urine. Yes, human urine is sterile but only until it is exposed to air.

It has been a while since this topic came up and it is very important for health reasons so I thought it was worth mentioning again.

Part of what this training made clear was that you end up breathing anything that goes into a sump.

Tom

That's freaking disgusting, anybody that pees in my sump would be outa here so fast their head would be spinning.....

Ditto. I find it hard to believe anyone could not know better than to do any of those things.

That reminds me of a story from an Asian Engineer that I worked with on a large cereal manufacturing plant job. He was telling how he'd built a facility in China in the year 2000, he had to hire security guards to keep the workers from pissing and shitting in the rooms they were working in, instead of using the portable bathroom 25 feet farther away !!

I have to ask...just how did you identify dog urine in the sump?

GregSY said:

I have to ask...just how did you identify dog urine in the sump?

Click to expand...

Yes please do tell.....

I slung a 15" crescent at a guy who casually spit in my chip pan. Barely missed too. Who know what I would have sent his way had he peed in it. Live fire maybe.

There are d.n.a test's available, have used these to check the rain (storm) sewers
for "mammallian" or not waste, in looking for cross connections to the sanitary.

If your coolant sump is a large (1000 gallons) central system, do a d.n.a. test,
and print out the results as to who would be the probable suspect
(brown hair, blue eyes, male, cauacasian...)

And post the results on the bulletin board.

The way we got it was that a big company had a pair of dogs they let lose inside the shop at night. They had a lot of problems with bacteria and coolant condition in just one sump. None of the standard remedies (filtering, oxygenation, etc.) seemed to solve the problem. Finally somebody realized that dogs pee to mark their territory. They did a test for canine urea and found it and identified that the male dog was peeing in the sump every night.

My source for this is Steve Tucker who is regional manager for Hangsterfer’s coolants. Cell is 316 640-2462. Email is [email protected]

I have a friend who uses Hangsterfers in his shop and really likes it so I had them come by here to talk to me.

I don’t think you could easily run a test that would say that it was canine urine because there are way too many possibilities. However it is possible you can run a test confirming it is canine urine. The same thing happens with bacteria. You can easily test for the presence of bacteria. However identifying which particular bacteria out of the many thousands is very hard. Testing to see if a particular strain is there is pretty easy.

I just did a Google search for “detecting canine urea” and it bought up an awful lot of studies so the chemistry of canine urine is well known.

Again the big secret to the test was the fact that they were confirming a hunch.

I suppose they could also run a DNA test to identify the individual in the case of human urine. Apparently the test for tobacco is based on the presence of nicotine which is very easy.

I have never seen anyone urinate in a sump but I did catch a guy urinating down an elevator shaft once so I believe it could happen. I have seen people spit in sumps although not in my shop. I have done coolant analyses and found brooms straws clogging a pump.

Tom

It's entirely possible that someone was carrying a bag of frozen dog urine on their body and accidentally dropped it into the sump, whereupon it ruptured and allowed the urine to escape into the coolant. I don't see how it is fair to balme the dogs just yet.

I had a friend, who shall remain nameless, who worked in a shop that shall remain nameless. Nobody liked the guy who ran the OD grinder (he was an abrasive sort). They would urinate in the sump
of the grinder for payback. After it started to stink horribly the story came out.

Bassed on how oftern you get odd cuts - shead dead skin - hairs i would be real concerned if human DNA was not in the coolant sump!

I mean i know i have heard the boss talk about trained monkeys but????

Why can't people treat their work place with the same respect as they do at their own home? I wentto get a drink from the water fountain the other day, and some SOB unloaded his chewing tobacco in it. People can be more discusting then most animals.

Where I served my apprenticeship the capstan operators where on piecework, they used to piss in the sump so they didn't have to waste time going to the toilet which was about 250 yards away. Time was money to them.

I commercial fished in alaska while in college - a quick way to get beat about the head and shoulders was to get caught pissing in the bilge under the main engines.

Our bunks were in the focsle and I slept within 6 feet of a 6-71. Some of the crew would go out drinking and then stumble down the ladder and fall into their bunks - then wake up several hours later and rather than climb the ladder to the head, they would stumble over to the main and piss in the bilge below it. 12 hours later when everything was hot - the stink would permeate the entire engine room and sleeping quarters.

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "golden shower"

human nature (and fluids)

Tom

you would think Coco Chanel, as in Chanel No 5 parfum, $50,000 wedding dresses, presidential wives wardrobes, etc would not have a problem such as you describe. Well, it appears they do. Here is a photo of a sign in the private potty, second floor, no public traffic, corporate headquarters, Paris, France.

2008-11-12 - Jackson Holland's Albums - Powered by Phanfare

jh

I guess we could do a google on "pissing street paris", like this:

They Are Pissing All Over Paris - The Awl

Pissing in a header

I used to work at a place that made headers for 4WD Jeeps and such. One welder was a real A-hole so one day during lunch break a guy went over to his booth and pissed in a header he was working on. When the A-hole came back from lunch and went back to welding on the header it stunk like hell. Really nasty kind of prank but it was funny at the time.
My boss at a different place caught a co-worker pissing in the drain sump in a boiler house one day and fired him on the spot.

I have a friend 'Joe' who is a UPS driver. They all start on the muli-level conveyor belt package sorting system for a year or so before they can drive. Joe got another friend, 'Bill', a job. Bill liked to drink late nights, and one day Joe was watching Bill from across the building and noticed Bill was hung over and having rough time sorting packages. Then, he noticed Bill was apparently too tired to go to the bathroom, so he just peed on the conveyor on the next lower level. The conveyors are at waist level, so no one Bill was working next to could see he had taken out his pee-pee. But the packages below all got a dose.