Across Britain, under the streets of our cities, something sinister is lurking...
..an epidemic of monster blockages plaguing our sewers...
BLEEP!
..known as "fatbergs".
These huge masses of congealed fat and human waste
are a product of what we flush down our toilets and sinks.
Let's go for a fatberg hunt.
RICK CHOKES It's horrible.
The battle against them
is now costing tens of millions of pounds a year.
HE RETCHES Fucking 'ell.
But why are we suddenly seeing more and more of them?
For the first time ever...
We're going in.
..we're performing a fatberg autopsy.
Wow.
There's a lot of it.
I'm TV presenter and science enthusiast Rick Edwards.
It's ripe is what it is.
I'll be joining a team of experts to forensically dissect
a five-ton mass of fatberg...
taken from the biggest blockage ever found in the UK.
It reminds me of a dog poo that's been around for a while
and lost a lot of its colour.
We want to find out exactly what it's made of...
It's become a major problem. ..what it reveals about us...
Is that blood at the end of that syringe?
Anything we put in our bodies is going to end up here.
..and discover just how big a danger fatbergs really are.
Bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics could cause us problems.
They could kill you.
CAR HORN IN BACKGROUND
Midnight in one of London's most popular tourist spots,
the Southbank.
But our destination is not on the usual sightseeing tours.
A specialist team from Thames Water
is tackling the latest fatberg to strike the sewers.
Presumably that is what I'm looking for.
Looks like a murder scene.
Evening, fellas.
Is Andy around? Yes, I am. Rick.
How are you doing? I've come down...
You're dealing with a fatberg tonight, right? Yes. Yes, I am.
I've come down to get stuck in. Right, cool.
Andy's eight-strong team, known as "flushers",
normally break up fatbergs, flushing them through the sewer.
How are you doing? Rick. Not bad, mate. This is Phil.
Tonight they're going to dig out five tonnes of fatberg
and hand it over for the autopsy.
And so do we know what we've got down there? Yeah.
Yeah? A large platform of fat. OK. Build-up of fat.
Probably been in there a fair few years. It's very, very solid.
And have you been working on this particular fatberg
for a while, then? We've been working on this one now
for about five weeks.
And how big is it, then? Have you got any idea?
This part's blocked. The next section is a 200-metre stretch.
That's blocked... Wow. ..and then from there it just carries on.
Fatbergs hit the headlines last year with the discovery
of a blockage that became known as "the Whitechapel monster".
It was 250 metres long.
The new fatberg, only a few miles away on the South Bank
of the Thames, is estimated to be at least three times longer.
TENSE MUSIC AND HUMMING
We're looking at a minimum of 750 metres.
That is an absolute monster, Andy. Just goes on and on and on.
Before work can begin on the extraction, a gas safety check.
Check your gas levels every minute or so.
Your life depends on it.
OK? One of Andy's main concerns is hydrogen sulphide,
produced by rotting sewage and lethal in high doses.
What we do is a dangerous business.
If we could find another way of having to do this
without putting the guys' lives in danger, we would.
H2S... zero.
CO, zero.
Right, OK. So, we good to go? Yeah.
It's only safe for trained flushers to enter this sewer.
Andy's chosen 21-year-old Adam, nicknamed "Manhole",
to go down first.
How long have you been doing this? I've been doing it...
about a year-and-a-half, almost. Yeah?
Erm, still not sure how I got into it, but here I am.
Why's he called "Manhole"?
Cos he couldn't lift the manholes.
THEY LAUGH
Right, you're online. So down...
Manhole's heading down with a camera so the team can assess the fatberg.
Check every step on the way down, please.
OK.
CLANKING SOUNDS
Yeah, he's landed. Release yourself, please.
Offline.
All right, nice one. Thank you.
Carry on with your entry.
To survey the extent of the fatberg,
Phil is monitoring the live camera feed from the sewer.
He's an experienced flusher
who's been helping to keep London's waste network flowing
for the last 12 years.
Is that all loose fat at the top there?
That's often how the fatberg starts,
with a little bit on top like that... Ah-ha.
..and then more and more builds up
and then it just solidifies and grows and grows and grows.
Manhole has to wade through a thick sludge of fat
and sewage to reach the fatberg.
Yeah, still going.
I mean, obvious point, but it is rank down there, isn't it?
Been down worse!
PHIL LAUGHS
Fat, fat and lots of that.
PHIL LAUGHS Yeah.
What do you reckon we'll find in there, then?
Absolutely allsorts.
Fat, oil, grease.
Sweetcorn.
There's always a bit of sweetcorn in there somewhere.
Very resilient, sweetcorn, isn't it?
It is, yeah. If it's not chewed properly then it just,
it just holds form! THEY LAUGH
HEAVY BREATHING
There it is.
The tip of the fatberg.
Ah...
Quite a bit. This is serious blockage now, isn't it? Yeah.
What would happen if you just left this?
It would build up further and further
until the line completely blocked and, well,
then it would find its easiest course to come out,
which would most probably be one of the properties that drops into here.
So you'd start getting raw sewage flowing out
in someone's kitchen or something? Could potentially, yeah.
Oh, right.
That's why it needs dealing with.
This team of flushers are not alone.
Across the UK, water companies are dealing with fatberg emergencies,
with 23 cities reporting problems.
But the crisis is at its worst in London, with a sewer network
originally designed for four million people
now being fed by eight million.
Thames Water are currently dealing with 12 fatbergs.
Quite a lot of them. There is.
How many of 'em have you worked on personally, then?
Have you worked on quite a few? I worked... Yeah, I worked on a majority of these.
If you had to pick a favourite, favourite fatberg? Ah...
LAUGHTER
A favourite job. Million-dollar question. Million-dollar...
Erm, Knightsbridge.
Ah, beautiful. It was a higher class of fat.
You get what you pay for in this world. Ah-ha. And it was good stuff.
Was it all goose fat? Yeah, it was. It was all quality gear.
RICK LAUGHS
The autopsy should help answer
why so many fatbergs are appearing across the country.
But before it can begin, we need to get the fatberg out.
So are you good? Yeah...
Phil's heading down to join Manhole
and take charge of the extraction.
Fat boy going down.
HEAVY BREATHING
Explorer One has landed.
Oh, yes.
Big fatties.
Yeah.
Right, Manhole, stand to the side.
Fucking 'ell.
The fatberg is so hard
the only way to remove it is to dig it out by hand.
We all good to go? Yeah.
Right, let's go.
PANTING AND SPLASHING
PHIL SPITS AND COUGHS
Bollocks.
PHIL STRAINS
PHIL BREATHES HEAVILY
PHIL STRAINS
Is that going to fit in the bag?
PHIL STRAINS
Ah!
Mind your head. Hold it.
Lift going up.
Oh! Oh, hello.
Oh, it's a good old lump of fatberg.
Right.
Prop her down. See that?
Yeah.
HE STRAINS
Oh, that's beautiful.
How much does that weigh, do you reckon, Andy?
Ooh, that's got to be a good 100-plus kilos.
Right, OK, so...
this is a lovely small bit.
It sort of looks like a crumbly cheese.
ANDY LAUGHS Yeah.
And there's tons and tons and tons of the stuff.
Is that a johnny?
Yeah, that's today's lucky winner.
THEY LAUGH
Ah, it's great to see a johnny, isn't it?
You break it up even further, you will find wet wipes
and allsorts in there.
One, two...
Extracting five tonnes is going to take hours.
Once out it will be transported to East London for the autopsy.
This is Abbey Mills. Known as the "Cathedral of Sewage",
it was built in Victorian times to pump effluent out of the city.
It's now been taken over by a team of experts,
led by mortician Carla Valentine,
who's spent her career carrying out human postmortems.
This is where the science is going to happen.
This is where we are going to get to the molecular level of the fatberg.
By applying similar forensic techniques to a human autopsy,
we hope to discover exactly what these gruesome
blockages are made of and why they're forming.
We're going to find out what exactly are Londoners' dirty secrets,
seriously dirty secrets, the secrets that they flush down the toilet?
And, you know, what makes it interesting,
you said it's a bit taboo, and it's a bit disgusting,
but it's important, because it does have an environmental impact.
It's two hours
since the flushers began extracting fatberg from the sewers.
Yeah, Manhole, go. Yeah, still going.
BEEPING
MANHOLE STRAINS
BEEPING CONTINUES
Manhole's gas alarm has detected the deadly hydrogen sulphide.
It's reaching dangerous levels.
FASTER BEEPING
The team's priority has to be getting Manhole to safety.
BEEPING CONTINUES
Can we have an update, please?
For now, the rest of the fatberg's going nowhere.
BEEPING
In east London,
a team of scientists is preparing to dissect
a five-tonne mass of congealed fat and human waste...
..to find out what's causing monstrous sewer blockages
known as fatbergs.
In central London,
toxic gas has brought the excavation to an abrupt halt.
BEEPING
Right, that'll do. Let's just bring Manhole up.
21-year-old flusher Manhole is being evacuated from the sewer.
Out you come.
That's it. Keep coming up. Sit back.
In his hurry to escape, he splashed raw sewage into his eye.
While Manhole flushes the excrement from his eye,
the gas monitor gives the all clear.
The next shift is sent down to finish the job.
Go get 'em.
OK.
There you go. More fat.
That's horrible.
4am, and the final bags of fatberg are loaded up.
Yes, Phil.
You smashed it.
Smashed a bit. How was it down there?
Beautiful. Do you want a cuddle?
Mm, no.
Five tonnes of fatberg begins its journey across London.
The destination - Abbey Mills sewage pumping station...
..where mortician Carla Valentine will oversee
installation for the autopsy.
It looks like it's going to take forever to get this down.
Although carrying out human autopsies comes as second nature to me,
with this one I'm in unfamiliar territory.
I think I thought it would be more yellowy in colour,
and it's actually just a bit more like a dog poo
that's been around for a while and lost a lot of its colour.
It reminds me of an autopsy where we've got quite a natural
sort of very slight faecal smell
that everybody tends to have after they've died.
It reminds me of that.
The amount of fatberg is very intimidating.
We have to get through it all.
It's quite sci-fi. It's quite exciting, you know.
It's very unusual.
OK. I'm going in.
Oh. Wow.
There it is, in all its hideous glory.
There's a lot of it.
The team will work their way through the five tonnes of fatberg,
starting in the trough, where the chunks will be
hacked into smaller pieces by a team of Thames Water flushers.
The bite-sized nuggets will then be sent to the dissection table,
where any foreign objects will be removed.
Next, the trays of sifted fatberg will be
analysed by the science teams.
They'll look at its composition and the living organisms
and toxic substances it contains.
Whatever they find will be the result of what
we flush down the loo or wash down the sink.
Oh, my God. Did you get a tampon applicator there?
They're not supposed to be flushed, I know that.
How you doing? Are you excited? Yeah, I am excited, actually.
Of course you are. You're like a pig in fatberg.
That's exactly what I'm like. What's the plan, then? What's the approach we're going to take?
With an autopsy, a human autopsy, you're looking for cause of death.
Here we're trying to work out how this thing is formed. Exactly, yeah.
We normally look for why a person died,
here we're looking for why this lives, in a way.
You know, why does it exist? What is it? Oh!
Oh!
What do we think that is?
I don't know, but I'm never eating a meatball again.
While the team get on with breaking up the fatberg
in the main trough...
What does it feel like when you're actually sawing it?
It's extremely tough. It's basically one big solid lump.
..things are progressing at the dissection table.
The contents of the fatberg are painstakingly combed through.
Hello, gang. How are we getting on? Good, really good. Ah.
Definitely paints a bit of a picture, doesn't it? It does.
This is what you dirty bastards are flushing down the toilet, is it?
This, of course, a johnny. It is.
We've got a little bit of a wrapper as well there. OK. The complete set.
Oh, hang on. Is that a worm?
Yeah, we have a few worms here and there.
Hello, mate.
I think we've found something that looks like a drug bag.
Yeah, a drugs bag. A little baggie.
So obviously someone has been like, "Ah, the police, the police.
"Flush it down the toilet quickly." Obviously. Yeah, sure.
Is this all wet wipes, this...? Pile of wet wipes there. Yeah.
Oh, a needle and syringe.
That is absolutely rank. It is.
As much fun as this is,
it's also a sobering window into our lives above the sewer.
Once objects are removed, pure fatberg remains
for the science team to take a closer look at.
Chemist Dr James Barker is analysing the fatberg to see what type
of fat it's made of.
In each flask is a different ingredient that we found
in the fatberg. Right.
And they're roughly in proportion to what we've found.
First, two fats found in the smallest quantities.
These are basically present in many household health care
products such as cocoa butter, shaving foams, in shampoo.
Right, OK. And I suppose that's a tough one, because that
kind of thing is going to have to go down the drain, isn't it, really?
Cos you wash your hair, wash your face. Absolutely.
It's quite ironic, isn't it, that these are cleaning products
but they end up down the drain and blocking the drain. Yeah.
So, what about the fats which are found in the largest quantities?
This is oleic acid. Basically, olive oil.
And by far the majority of the fatberg appears to be
composed of palmitic acid.
Right, which is cooking oil? Yeah, cooking oil, yeah.
Cooking oil makes up nearly 90% of the fat in our fatberg sample.
But how does liquid oil turn into the hard fetid mass
that we're dissecting?
Dr Raffi Villa thinks she may have found the answer.
So, Raffi, I've seen the fat aspect of the fatberg and, you know,
we can take some chunks and you can feel a slight softness,
but it's not like fat. It's not yellow, it's not gooey.
What on earth is actually in this stuff?
It's not just the fat congealing or solidifying.
We've got another process happening in the sewers, saponification, it's called saponification.
Saponification means just to change into soap, doesn't it? Correct, correct.
In the sewer, the fat mixes with calcium carried in the water supply,
kicking off a chemical process that turns it into soap.
But you wouldn't want to wash with this, basically? Definitely not.
So we have a picture of what Londoners are flushing
down their drains -
from huge amounts of cooking oil that turns into soap,
to condoms and syringes.
It all becomes part of the fatberg.
I'm going in.
Next, we head back underground
in one of London's busiest restaurant districts...
The smell in here, it's ripe, is what it is.
..to inspect yet another newly forming fatberg.
That's fat.
HE COUGHS Oh, it is horrible.
In a makeshift lab in east London,
a team of scientists is on an extraordinary mission to find
out what's causing an epidemic
of monster sewer blockages called fatbergs.
So far, we've discovered that cooking oil is a key culprit.
Chinatown in central London.
Home to 79 eating establishments in the space of just two streets.
That means a lot of cooking oil going down the drains.
The Thames Water flushers regularly monitor the sewers
in London's restaurant districts
to keep an eye out for fledgling fatbergs.
Hello, fellas. Oh, hiya. How are you doing? Rick. Hello, Rick.
I'm Vince. Hello, Vince. How are you? Fine, thanks very much.
Today, veteran flusher Vince is on inspection duty.
So, what's the plan then,
are we just doing a sort of inspection today? Yes.
Check and make sure it's not getting to a stage where it's become urgent.
With no extraction planned for today, there's less chance
of disturbing pockets of dangerous gas.
Feel like a Ghostbuster! In a good way. OK.
So we'll give you a gas detector.
So it's safe for visitors to go down. Are you ready for me, Vince?
Yeah, come on down!
Oh! Just getting a little, um...
..a little bit of a whiff.
Oh, it's quite lively, actually.
The smell...
It's ripe, is what it is. I'm going in.
Well, what's the worst that can happen?
Actually, don't think about that. Oh!
Just lean over and have a look for yourself. Yeah, yeah.
Ah!
So it's not moving, is it? No.
Sewers should be free-flowing but this one is completely solid.
Ah, look at that. That's a crust. Look at that - that's a crust.
So I'm standing on fat and you can smell what I've disturbed. Yeah.
Get an extra whiff on that side? I can, I can.
Do you know, I feel sick.
Am I going to be sick?
No, I'm all right. I'm all right.
VINCE LAUGHS, RICK COUGHS
No, hang on.
RICK CONTINUES COUGHING Oh, it is horrible!
Don't squat too low, you'll put your backside in it. Yeah, OK.
The oily sludge is a sign a new fatberg is forming.
Another one to add to the ever-growing list
of fatbergs clogging up the country. It's not good.
And this is all pretty much coming from... Restaurants.
This is predominantly restaurants.
There are some sewers, when I started,
that never seemed to have fat issues but now they do.
So it's definitely a deteriorating problem.
How long will this sort of quite gooey, fresh, fat take to solidify?
Well, it could be six months.
It tends to build up at the tide line, build up and build up of the walls
and then eventually bridge the sewer and then you've got a full blockage.
Well, I think I've had enough. What about you?
Yeah, I think I've had enough now. I get the idea, Vince.
Ah, yeah!
I, um, I was very nearly, I was very nearly sick.
There's a real accumulation of fat.
Very different in appearance
and sort of feel to the fatberg that I'd seen before.
I guess just cos it's much younger, but there's a lot of fat
coming from these restaurants down into that sewer, clearly.
I think, I mean I'm not really built for it.
I do think I'm just a bit too tall for the sewers!
The findings of today's inspection are an all too familiar
story for the flushers these days.
I think we need to do something about that.
It's a lot worse than I was actually expecting to find.
And is there anything to be said for going around
to the local restaurants? Definitely.
Get the odd prosecution.
Maybe that's what will have to be the next step.
A few more prosecutions, unfortunately, to get the message across. Maybe.
Right, well, I'd shake your hand but your hands are...
Is this one all right? That's all right. I'll shake that one.
You can wash your hands again!
It's clear our love of eating out is fuelling fatbergs.
There's a lump of fat.
And it's flushers like Vince whose job is being made harder
dealing with the gunk they create in the sewer.
It's all fat.
But are fatbergs simply an inconvenience
or is there something more sinister going on?
Back at the autopsy, our team of scientists are trying to
discover exactly what nasties and living in the fatberg.
Oh, my God, Jo! I am seeing
some quite frightening images here on the screen.
What on earth are we looking at here?
OK, so what we've found in your fatberg were some tiny
little microscopic worms. Right.
And they're feeding away quite happily on fatberg.
Although they look scary, these microorganisms are harmless.
But what else is growing in the fetid mass of fat?
Dr Justin Pashebat is testing for pathogenic bacteria by smearing
small samples of our fatberg onto different coloured agar dishes.
Why are they all these different colours then?
They've got all sorts of different colours
in there for different bacteria.
So the green plate that you're streaking out at the moment,
that is going to be Listeria, which gives you diarrhoea and vomiting.
Right.
We're testing for a variety of bacteria which are known to make us ill.
These ones here, which are the really deep black ones,
they're actually for campylobacter, which you often find in raw chicken.
That causes a lot of gastroenteritis, so food poisoning.
Justin will get the results of the tests later
and find out how big a health hazard this fatberg really is.
We're looking at E. coli, campylobacter, Listeria.
Sounds absolutely terrible. Yes.
And I'm going to give you this back in the meantime, I think. OK.
Four hours since the dissection of five tonnes of fatberg began...
..and the team from Thames Water is still hard at it.
Hello, fellas. All right. All right. How's it all going over here?
Slow, slow progress. I'll... I'll muck in.
Give us a little, um... give us a bit to, um...
Maybe try this tool as well, a bit of a sharper edge on the end there.
Oh, lovely. Thank you. Might help make a bit more damage on there, so.
There's not much give. I feel like, who's the Tutankhamun guy?
The Howard Carter of shit!
Cor! Actually, this one is getting the odour going, isn't it?
Ooh!
So you guys are all flushers, right? Yes.
So you work for Thames Water
and you've been breaking these up down the sewers? Yeah.
It's a continuous battle. Hmm! Who's winning? Hard to say? Yeah.
Oh, hang on. Syringe?
It's not quite a Time Team discovery, is it? LAUGHTER
Don't know, I think I might take this on Antiques Roadshow.
Eugh!
There you go. Eugh!
There we go.
Yeah. There you go.
This is dangerous, isn't it? Yes.
As you can imagine, I think the last thing you ever
want to come into contact with, in the sewer, is a used needle. Yeah.
Yeah, we'll get rid of that straightaway.
Not very nice, really.
I've already seen a syringe, but finding one for yourself...
..would turn my stomach a bit. Weirdly.
Yeah. That's horrid, isn't it?
The fatberg is proving to be a record of our hidden behaviour.
So what other secrets does it hold?
Dr John Wilkinson and a team of toxicologists are using
mass spectrometry to identify different chemicals inside it.
So, John, what kind of stuff have you found?
We found a good number of pharmaceuticals
and other what we call markers of human activity.
RICK: John's found a huge range of chemicals inside the fatberg.
From hair tonics,
spot cream and painkillers,
to magic mushrooms, tobacco smoke and horse tranquillisers.
How is this stuff ending up in the water?
Well, let's use caffeine for example. Yeah.
You wake up in the morning, you have your cup of coffee.
Not all of the caffeine in that cup of coffee you drink is going
to be broken down by your body.
In the case of caffeine, say somewhere around 60% of that
caffeine is broken down into metabolites.
The remaining 40% is excreted as caffeine.
So is that true of pretty much all of these substances I'm looking at that are things that we take,
not all of it will get broken down and therefore will appear? Exactly.
Anything that turns up in relatively large concentrations?
You can see a huge spike for paracetamol.
And also salicylic acid, which is acne cream. Exactly.
It makes sense, a lot of people using it.
And what about these other, these spikes here, this one,
Hordenine and Ostarine?
Well, yeah, these are what we would call gym supplements.
You wouldn't really expect on that level compared to only
half of what you'd see for paracetamol. Yeah.
Hordenine is found in athletic dietary supplements,
while Ostarine is a performance enhancing drug used for muscle gain.
There is no way of knowing
whether Ostarine is being consumed or flushed down the loo.
What is known, though, is it is on the world anti-doping prohibited list.
I guess, you know, people are getting very interested in getting stacked, aren't they?
We've also found some illicit drugs. What sort of things have we got?
People wouldn't want really want, or couldn't go out to the shop to buy, let's say.
So we found a peak for cocaine use. Yeah. MDMA.
The cocktail of drugs also includes Ketamine,
morphine or heroin, and amphetamines.
That's crazy! Anything we put in our bodies is going to end up here.
The fatberg is revealing a lot about our recreational life -
from eating out, to taking drugs
and a surprising obsession with body image.
But the fatberg is also hiding some even darker secrets.
So these microbes that you're finding that are resistant,
are they a problem?
They could kill you.
The fatberg's now almost completely broken up.
The guys are doing a good job there.
The finds team have been very busy.
A lot of evidence of, er, drug use, drug paraphernalia.
Found a couple of syringes.
We've also look at the...
the type of fat that they're finding in the fatberg,
so we know that now.
The science team over here are looking at the parasites
and the bacteria in there.
So slowly but surely we're building up this picture of how
the fatbergs are forming and what about our behaviour is causing 'em.
The autopsy has revealed the majority of the fatberg
is made from cooking oil.
But there's a partner in crime.
Mountains and mountains of wet wipes
have been extracted from the fatberg.
Andy Drinkwater from the Water Research Council
has been investigating sewer blockages for the last 30 years.
So, Andy, what role do wet wipes have in the formation of fatbergs?
Basically, the fat sticks to the side of the pipe,
then wet wipes come down and stick on the fat.
Other fat then comes down, sticks to the wet wipes...
It means the fatberg is growing and growing. That's right.
And we are using more and more wipes now, aren't we?
The number of wipes we've used has spiralled.
20, 25 years ago, the wipes problem in the sewer system
was a fraction of what it is now.
It's become a major problem.
Wet wipes are now big business.
In the UK we spend over half a billion pounds on them every year.
So who's using them? For what? And will anyone admit to flushing them?
Wet wipes.
Do you use them? Yeah.
I like these. OK, yeah. I like Andrex.
What do you use them for?
For cleaning. Sometimes I use them in the bathroom. Ah-ha.
They do make it a lot easier when you're doing the stove. Do they?
Do they? Yeah. Very much so.
Face, remove make-up. Yeah. My childrens' bottoms. Of course, yeah.
And cleaning the kitchen. Ever your own bottom?
I have tried it.
I find it a bit slimy around the anus.
Which is not a phrase I was hoping I'd say today, but there you go.
So you just get rid of them down the toilet? Obviously, yeah.
Yeah, straight down the toilet. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah? It's for urine purposes.
Yeah! I wasn't expecting to be this specific, but I love it.
Carry on, carry on.
But that would drain the bin. If it's for faeces,
er, nine times out of 10 I'd like to put it in the toilet.
I'm sorry to be specific again. I love it when you're specific.
HE LAUGHS
Have you heard of fatbergs?
No.
Fatbergs are these huge coagulations of fat blocking up the sewers.
They are colossal.
Flushing wet wipes down the toilet... is creating the problem.
So you've been flushing.
You shouldn't... I've been flushing, yeah!
You, madam, are part of the problem, I'm afraid.
It seems that many people are happily flushing wipes,
unaware of the consequences.
It's those that are designed for bottoms that are the most likely
to go down the loo, and many of these are marked as flushable.
We're testing to see
if any of these so-called flushable wipes are contributing to fatbergs.
Andy, I love the shaky, shaky machine.
What are you doing with it?
Right. This is a shaking table, basically.
It's a shaky, shaky machine... That's a shaky, shaky machine. Yeah.
And we are simulating the flows you would have in a drain
in a sewer system and we see how these different products break up.
If they're disintegrating, no problem.
If they're not breaking up, problem. Correct.
'First, good old toilet roll.'
Oh, yeah. And that, that has been on for 30 minutes.
That has broken up pretty well. Not a problem.
And it certainly wouldn't end up in the fatberg.
This one is marked as a flushable, moist toilet tissue...
'Next, a wet wipe made by Andrex that's labelled as flushable.'
It's broken up reasonably well.
If that was flushed in a sewer
and caught on a bit of rough pipe, it would soon break up.
Yeah. OK, good.
And clearly a big difference between that and this one,
which is just a fully formed wet wipe. That's correct.
This has been on for three hours
and it's still just as it was when it went in.
And if that went on for another two or three days,
it wouldn't be any different.
It's a polypropylene wipe...
You could tow a car with some of those, you really could.
'The plastic polypropylene in this wipe gives it extra strength.
'It also means it doesn't break down in the sewer,
'so it's more likely to join a growing fatberg.'
That is marked in a great big label on the front - "flushable".
And it clearly isn't, so that is a real offender. And who makes this?
It's marketed under the name of Peppa Pig. I hate that pig.
How are the manufacturer getting away with that?
That's a good question.
Are they getting away with it actually by saying
that "flushable" just means it will get down the toilet?
The dictionary term of flushable,
it's nothing to do with what blocks sewers.
They could say it gets round the U-bend.
So what you really want is you want a marker that says
whether it's sewer friendly or not. That's right, yes.
New guidelines recommend that any wipes marked flushable
need to pass a series of tests to prove they break down in the sewer.
Any that don't must have a big "do not flush" logo
on the front of the pack.
But there's currently no regulation to force companies to comply.
Before we say farewell to our slice of fatberg,
there's one more result to come in.
CARLA: We've been testing the fatberg for dangerous bacteria.
The kind that can make you seriously ill.
How's the bacteria team getting on?
Oh, it's very interesting, actually. I'll be the judge of that.
CARLA LAUGHS Carry on.
So what we've found is some listeria... Ah-ha. ..campylobacter.
We've also found lots of E. coli.
These are all bacteria that give us vomiting and diarrhoea.
We're also looking for bacteria that are antibiotic resistant. Ah-ha.
'Justin's coated one of the agar dishes with antibiotics
'and spread the fatberg on top.
'Any bacteria living inside should've been killed off.'
What you find is I've got bacteria growing there.
The antibiotic is having no effect? Yes.
So these microbes that you're finding that are resistant,
are they a problem for the public?
There's a whole variety of different things it can cause.
And they could kill you.
People could potentially, erm, die on the infections. Mm-hm.
Because the antibiotics won't work.
The fatberg is full of superbugs.
They're one of the greatest threats to global health,
according to the World Health Organization.
And that's not all we've found.
They could be potentially new strains of resistant bacteria
that we don't even know about yet. They could.
And could they get out of the sewers?
I guess that's the real worry, isn't it?
That would be something that would concern the public.
Is that a danger?
Potentially, yes.
'That's why keeping sewage in the sewers
'is one of the reasons it's so important
'to fight fatberg blockages.'
This gruesome lump of fatberg
has opened a window into the way we live our lives.
We now know what it is about our eating
and cleaning habits that creates these silent beasts...
and how they morph into the rock hard matter that threatens
to bring our underground waterways to a grinding halt.
But perhaps scariest of all
are the antibiotic resistant superbugs we've uncovered.
These pose a real and immediate risk to the flushers
who battle to keep the fatbergs at bay.
HEAVY BREATHING
I'm doing it. Whoa.
It's over two months since we extracted our fatberg
from a sewer just south of the River Thames.
Why don't you, why don't you,
why don't you people mark up your kit so you know what's what?
Andy and his team of flushers are still hard at work.
Once again, you know where the nearest hospital is.
Right, OK, then. We all know what's what. Cool, let's do it.
What we've done is in the last nine weeks we've...
achieved a 300-metre hand dig.
Five tonnes a day, so it equates to about 225 tonne of solid fat.
Yeah, do you want to crack on, mate?
It's monumental. It's... I've never seen anything like this.
This fatberg in London's South Bank is the biggest ever found in the UK.
You all right down there, boys?
Yeah.
And our autopsy has shown just how hazardous it is.
We try and take every precaution we can
to protect each other from the nature of what we're doing.
We're subjected to bacteria, disease, needlestick injuries.
It's dangerous. The job you didn't leave school for.
As custodians of the sewer network,
we do our best to keep it as clean as we can.
But we can't because people need, they need...
re-educating.
Think before you flush things down the toilet.
The only things that should be travelling through this network
are pee, poo, toilet paper.
That's it.
The bill utility companies are paying and passing on to us
for clearing fatbergs in Britain is now £80 million per year and rising.
Our autopsy has show that they're a product of modern living,
but they are preventable
and it wouldn't take a huge change in our habits to stop them.
We wrote to the manufacturer of Peppa Pig
hand and body wipes, Jellyworks Healthcare Ltd,
about the role is wet wipes play in the formation of fatbergs.
They say...
They're now in the process of changing the packaging design,
removing the "flushable" label
and adding a warning not to flush down the toilet on the reverse.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media