“Hurricanes can be deadly. But they can unleash disgusting consequences as well. Among them? Shit. Literally. The flooding that accompanies these gigantic storms can unleash animal feces from industrial farms, and it can also trigger a release of our own crap traveling in pipes beneath our cities if the system clogs or breaks down from all the floodwater.
“What we would like to point out is that covid-19 increases the public health consequences of these sewer overflows,” Timothy Whitehouse, executive director of watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), told Earther. “It’s something that EPA’s public health services need to be monitoring, needs to be testing, and needs to be very attuned to the potential risk posed to humans—not just by the overflow of sewage but also by the potential transmissibility of the illness.””