[HN Gopher] Leaky sewers are likely responsible for large amount...
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Leaky sewers are likely responsible for large amounts of
medications in streams
Author : hhs
Score : 136 points
Date : 2021-08-18 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.acs.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.acs.org)
| post_break wrote:
| Shouldn't we be placing the blame on people flushing meds down
| the toilet? Or are they leeching from peoples urine and waste?
| [deleted]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It is in the urine. Drug companies have long resisted any
| investigation of the impact of their drugs once they have
| exited the first patient. The necessary implication would be
| that waste from patients on certain drugs should be treated as
| hazardous, or even radioactive. That's Pandora's box.
|
| A parallel question is whether the body of a deceased patient
| should be treated as hazardous. We do tend to bury or cremate
| them without a thought towards whether these drugs will survive
| and impact the local environment.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> The necessary implication would be that waste from
| patients on certain drugs should be treated as hazardous, or
| even radioactive. That's pandora's box.
|
| So here's the bit that I don't get. When my friend had to get
| her cat a medical scan, the cat had to have radiactive
| contrast ingested/injected. She was then told to carefully,
| without touching it, collect all poop made by the cat in the
| next 7 days, put it in this special container, then bring it
| back to the vet for safe disposal.
|
| However, when humans have the same procedure done....no one
| cares? You drink radioactive contrast, then pee and poop as
| normal, it all goes down our drains. How does that make any
| sense?
| fridif wrote:
| If it's safe, then this is just a revenue scam for the
| doctor/insurance companies.
|
| If it's actually not safe, then they are irradiating humans
| for fun.
| unpolloloco wrote:
| Why not both? It's not safe, but it's better than other
| options! Why I don't get is why the cat owner can't just
| flush the irradiated poop? Maybe litter in the pipes
| isn't good?
| fridif wrote:
| Why would you flush what rightfully belongs in the
| ground?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Human waste gets heavily diluted, essentially immediately,
| and even more so once it leaves the waste treatment plant
| for the local river, lake, or ocean.
|
| Cat shit stays intact when it goes to a landfill, and thus
| would cause a potential hot spot that humans would not.
| function_seven wrote:
| That makes sense, but then why not then advise the pet
| owner to flush the cat's poop down the toilet? Seems
| simpler than having a special container and a return trip
| to the vet.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| When our cat had a similar procedure, they advised that
| it was okay to flush the cat poop (assuming you could
| separate it from the litter).
|
| I did think it seemed kind of silly though. Like the
| state is really gonna hunt down whoever threw away
| radioactive cat poop.
|
| The whole thing was more about 9/11 / terrorism than
| environmental damage.
| andai wrote:
| Wait, are you saying it's possible to construct a nuclear
| device out of cat poop?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's not just the poop, it can be the urine, too.
|
| Cat litter + indoor plumbing = not a good time.
| circularfoyers wrote:
| OP said the vet said to return the poop, not the entire
| contents of the kitty litter box.
| gambiting wrote:
| Hey, it's me - my friend specifically told me about
| collecting poop from the litter box, not the whole thing.
| But maybe she got it wrong, I'm not sure.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| It's the same reason radiology technicians leave the room
| before imaging a patient. You want to reduce exposure to
| unnecessary radiation.
| mh- wrote:
| Humans don't poop in a box and have someone else handle it?
| Or at least their caregivers assume they don't.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > Humans don't poop in a box and have someone else handle
| it?
|
| Well.. not usually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedpan
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Correct. We poop into a pipe that takes it to a
| wastewater treatment facility where government employees
| handle it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Do wastewater plants use Geiger counters/data loggers on
| waste streams?
| nick__m wrote:
| I don't think that there is a need for monitoring since
| radiotracer usually have a short halflife, they usually
| use fluoride-18 (half life 110min) to replace a -OH or a
| well placed -H in a molecule that bind to the site of
| interest (ex: glucose -> fluorodeoxyglucose, levodopa ->
| fluorodopa).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Drug companies have long resisted any investigation of the
| impact of their drugs once they have exited the first
| patient.
|
| Not even drugs necessarily. The theory is out there that a
| hidden but significant influence on society is large-scale
| male consumption of estrogen via contamination from women's
| urine.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's not a theory, it's a _debunked_ hypothesis. https://ww
| w.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208125813.h...
| andai wrote:
| > Contrary to popular belief, birth control pills account
| for less than 1 percent of the estrogens found in the
| nation's drinking water supplies
|
| > Some research cited in the report suggests that animal
| manure accounts for 90 percent of estrogens in the
| environment. Other research estimates that if just 1
| percent of the estrogens in livestock waste reached
| waterways, it would comprise 15 percent of the estrogens
| in the world's water supply.
| tristor wrote:
| It appears that article say the source being urine waste
| of women taking birth control pills is debunked, it says
| nothing about the long-term health impacts of drinking
| water being contaminated with estrogen or what the
| sources of the other 99% of estrogens found in drinking
| water are. So while the causal link may be false, the
| underlying claim is still a concern.
|
| It's actually a massive problem in the West, especially
| the US, that the average person is exposed to tons of
| endocrine disruptors in the food and water supply,
| everything from estrogens in the water to plasticizers in
| your food wrappings on your take out or in the store.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The necessary implication would be that waste from patients
| on certain drugs should be treated as hazardous, or even
| radioactive.
|
| I thought that was common for patients on chemotherapy drugs?
| I remember seeing some sign in a hospital room's bathroom
| about it, but the details escape me.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Yes, but, this is sort of "priced in" so although your
| waste is measurably radioactive it enters the same stream.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Get sick. Get put on a crap ton of medications. You found out
| that most have all sorts of crazy effects on the body. Ones
| not listed as side effects, or very rare, or even common but
| doctor has never heard of. Or your fun ones where 2 conflict
| in crazy ways.
|
| Poor fish downstream don't stand a chance.
| stainforth wrote:
| What does a libertarian have to say about market players
| preventing normal functioning of the market by restricting
| knowledge like actively resisting studies on products?
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Don't like it? Move where there isn't radioactive water. /s
| flatline wrote:
| A bigger question in my mind is whether this is a real problem,
| or ever could be with higher concentrations likely to occur in
| this way. Certainly not having medications in the tap water
| seems safer than having any, but what amount of what specific
| chemicals is likely to have a downstream effect? This poses a
| much broader question about low dosage toxicity for any number
| of chemicals in fresh water, ranging from agricultural run-off
| to industrial waste and spillage. Hard to study.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Certainly not having medications in the tap water seems
| safer
|
| Except for fluoride and chlorine. Small amounts of those
| chemicals in water are a net health benefit. Society has to
| be careful about adding anything, but 100% pure water isn't
| the healthiest choice no matter what the commercials say.
|
| Also iodine in salt.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's possible water without chlorine is beneficial too.
| Doesn't Paris use ozone and/or UVC instead?
|
| I also wonder about fluoride's benefits if we use
| toothpaste and mouthwash that has it. For example, I know
| people on well water or city water without it that don't
| have teeth issues.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Paris still uses chlorine. It may also use UV but nothing
| kills bacteria as effectively and constantly as bleach.
| In a large population with lots of ancient pipes not
| using chlorine would be very dangerous.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wonder where I heard that, or if it's a different city.
|
| Also, they are generally using chloramine, not sodium
| hypochlorite.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| I don't think chlorine in water is considered a medication.
| Chlorine in water is added with the intention of
| disinfecting the water, for human health reasons, but that
| disinfection happens before the water is consumed. The
| chlorine is treating the water, not the humans who drink
| the water.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Natural flowing water (in streams, rivers) contains ions
| of calcium, magnesium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine,
| potassium and fluor, with chlorine content around 10mg/l.
| Tap water without chlorine treatment would be devoid of
| most of those and that could be argued unhealthy.
|
| That is - assuming the natural levels are healthy for us.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even if that was true, why should we shift the blame away from
| an entity with plausible ability to solve it, and towards the
| great mass of people who are impossible to hold accountable?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "entity with plausible ability to solve it"
|
| I didn't see a mention of an overall solution in the article.
| I see they mention that leaky pipes could be the cause for
| that stream. Is there evidence to suggest that the sewage
| treatment facility actually removes these chemicals?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| A quick google search suggests that a typical basic sewage
| treatment plant doesn't do a great job of removing
| pharmaceuticals. But we already do have some plants which
| are pretty good at it. So this isn't even really an
| engineering problem at this point, it's a
| political(funding) problem.
| post_break wrote:
| So you're saying if it were coming from people throwing meds
| down the toilet, we should blame the drug makers? Is that
| what you're saying or am I misunderstanding?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > we should blame the drug makers?
|
| No, of course not.
|
| What I am saying is that our best shot at getting
| pharmaceuticals out of fresh water is better sewer & water
| treatment. We can control that. It is implausible to
| control people who are, within the privacy of their
| bathroom, chucking random things down the toilet. The only
| thing that would stop that behavior is immediate
| consequences to them personally.
|
| Edit: And this assumes it is all people chucking drugs down
| the toilet. If it's coming through their urine, then we're
| definitely back to water treatment being the only plausible
| answer.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| "You killed him."
|
| "No, I shot him. The bullets and the fall killed him."
|
| - Collateral (2004 film)
| moate wrote:
| Part of the idea of wastewater treatment plants is to address
| things like chemicals in wastewater. If the pipes on the way
| leak the tainted water, it can't be treated. Of course there
| are also "forever chemicals" that we can't neutralize, but we
| have no hope of dealing with chemically tainted water that
| never gets to the locations capable of addressing it.
| treeman79 wrote:
| So we should all pee in bottles and ship them to waste water
| plant.
|
| Perhaps we could build some sort of hyper loop to send them
| in bulk to speed up the process.
|
| Diagram of the idea, reversed https://xkcd.com/1599/
| moate wrote:
| No, we fix the leaky pipes.
|
| Where did your conclusion come from? Why would adding extra
| waste (the bottles) to the equation result in less
| contamination? What about my statement made you think "this
| man wants people to bottle their waste, rather than
| maintaining/improving existing infrastructure that
| addresses the issue"?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| No, we should pay the taxes or user fees needed to maintain
| our infrastructure in a state of good repair.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| Sadly it's not the taxpayer that decides where the money
| goes. Getting new military airplanes, putting them in
| their own pockets, and bribing the media with it seems to
| be preferable for politicians.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The federal government doesn't maintain sewer lines
| anywhere in the US except maybe on military bases and the
| like. At least in California we have special tax
| districts that are managed by a voter-elected board. The
| voters literally get to decide on infrastructure
| spending, at least in California.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Do you want to go and stage some awareness campaign to tell
| people not to flush their meds and hope they don't, or would
| you rather we be proactive about the reality we're in and do
| something about it now?
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't know anyone who flushes their meds. Is this really a
| big issue? I thought it's mostly waste based sources.
| post_break wrote:
| I have seen many news reports of free medication drops offs
| and asking people not to flush them. Does that answer your
| condescending question?
| darig wrote:
| Doesn't everything in the sewer eventually end up back in some
| body of water that feeds the streams anyways?
|
| It's all pipes, Jerry.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| If that's the case, we should be seeing correlation: higher
| amounts of medication in the waterways of older US cities, where
| sewer and stormwater systems were built to an earlier idea of
| best-practices.
|
| This should be relatively straightforward to investigate.
| moate wrote:
| Sure, assuming anyone has a desire to pump money into a large
| comparative study like this.
|
| It's an extremely reasonable hypothesis but you also have other
| factors to deal with (size of city resulting in more wear and
| tear on infrastructure, other environmental factors that could
| cause deterioration of pipes, water hard/softness, quality of
| wastewater processing facilities). Age would likely be a major
| factor but not the only factor.
| aurizon wrote:
| Most is kidney passthrough into pee. Second is combined sanitary
| AND rain runoff sewers - which bypass treatment when there is
| high rain. Third is treatment plant pass through - many drugs are
| not eliminated in sewage plants (it varies a lot with the drug)
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > _Second is combined sanitary AND rain runoff sewers - which
| bypass treatment when there is high rain._
|
| This is a very difficult problem. If the sanitary sewers aren't
| in great condition, rising ground water levels can leak into
| the sanitary sewers. Sewers that were initially well made might
| be damaged over time by people digging, the ground shifting, or
| tree roots pushing things around. One way or the other, when
| high ground waters get into a sanitary sewer, you now have a
| situation where those sewers are overflowing. And what can be
| done with that overflow? Let it pool up in the streets? Sending
| it down the storm drains is about the best you can do at that
| point.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| I think the original comment is referencing cities that built
| early sewer systems where they do not have separate sanitary
| and stormwater lines. That is by far the more pressing
| problem: street drains (and often house gutters) dump
| directly into the same lines. These systems are usually in
| big cities and were built before sewage treatment existed.
| Building enough capacity to handle stormwater surges is often
| not practical: what was relatively clean rainwater is now
| contaminated with sewage.
| kube-system wrote:
| Combined sewers that are in perfect maintenance include
| provisions to overflow by design.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| I'm not talking about combined sewers. Systems in which the
| sanitary sewer and the storm sewer are completely separate
| can _become_ combined sewers when the sanitary sewer is
| inundated with more infiltration /inflow than it can
| handle. When this happens, the sanitary sewer overflows
| into the street or people's homes. That sewage overflowing
| into the street will then make its way into the storm
| sewer.
|
| There is no easy solution to this. Building the sanitary
| sewers bigger is the obvious solution, except that costs
| more money and a lot of places don't have much money to
| spare (corruption, poverty, etc.) Furthermore, just how
| over-designed does a sanitary sewer have to be? Climate
| change makes this difficult to predict decades in advance.
|
| BTW [intentionally] combined sewers are problematic even
| when they're not overflowing. Diluting sewage with a bunch
| of water increases the cost and decreases the efficacy of
| treatment.
| saalweachter wrote:
| So if I'm reading the article correctly:
|
| 1. It doesn't say anything about whether the medications _would
| have been_ removed if they went through a wastewater treatment
| facility.
|
| 2. It's basically saying we accidentally performed a tracking
| experiment by adding compounds that don't occur (in those levels)
| naturally to wastewater, and then seeing where we could find
| those chemicals unexpectedly -- it's like dumping fluorescent dye
| down your drains to see if you can find it spotting in the yard,
| but with pharmaceuticals.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Caffeine is often used as that free "marker chemical" for
| tracing where sewage ends up.
|
| https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Determination-of-caffe...
| arsome wrote:
| Acesulfame potassium (an artificial sweetener commonly known
| as Ace-K) which passes through in urine has also been used to
| determine the concentration of urine in pool water.
| tdeck wrote:
| In case you're from the U.S. and wondering why you've never
| heard of this particular sweetener, I looked it up. It
| appears to be one of the ingredients in Equal, along with
| aspartame.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Wouldn't that depend a lot on the consumption of the pool's
| entrants?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| For a private pool with a few users, sure, one person
| could skew the results with a diet coke big-gulp, but for
| a busy public pool with thousands of users, then I'd
| think that some assumptions about average intake would
| give reasonable results.
| after_care wrote:
| It's assuming the average pool goer consumes an average
| amount of artificial sweetener. Even further it's making
| assumptions about the average person that pees in a pool.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| If you're only interested in measuring increase over
| time, then the only assumption you need to make is that
| average consumption of Ace-K remains constant over time.
| And, I suppose that people that consume Ace-K pee in
| pools at the same rate as other people. As someone who
| doesn't pee in pools (but has peed in the ocean), I don't
| know how valid that is.
| dyeje wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if placing all this important infrastructure
| under ground was a big mistake. Seems like issues like this and
| the Flint water crisis would be alot easier to remediate if the
| pipes were easily accessible.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Not apples-to-apples, but having living in places with above-
| ground and below-ground power supply, I know which one I've
| found more reliable.
|
| Yes, maintenance gets more expensive, but that maintenance
| should be far less frequent. And hopefully more predictable
| (true maintenance vs emergency repair).
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I'm not sure above-ground pipes makes a lot of sense. Now every
| building has to maintain a pump to get sewage high enough off
| the ground that vehicles can pass under the pipes. And if those
| pumps fail (e.g. power outage), all of a sudden everyone is
| dealing with sewage backflow.
|
| Something I'd like to see more of is utility tunnels where all
| utilities are undergrounded in a single tunnel with with easy
| access. Yes it's expensive, but could work out in the long run.
| Just look at how much utility relocation can drive up the cost
| for simple projects like BRT.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| You don't necessarily even have to tunnel, like one would do
| with a borer. I think that would be cost-prohibitive.
|
| Trench and cover, probably with streets.
|
| But it would create a lot of extra void to maintain that
| would need its own drainage, maintenance to keep it free of
| debris and pests, inspections to make sure they don't
| collapse, and security to keep people out. Feasibility is
| probably commensurate with urban density.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There's also the issue of where you would put all the
| spoils from tunneling. Historically that was in the ocean
| and rivers to make more land, but this is frowned upon for
| a variety of reasons now, the least being that not all
| types of soil work well as landfill.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Let's not forget that the standard place to put water and
| sewage pipes is "below the frost line".
| athenot wrote:
| > Something I'd like to see more of is utility tunnels where
| all utilities are undergrounded in a single tunnel with with
| easy access.
|
| You've just described the Paris sewer system, where the
| sewage tunels also house fresh water, power, comms...
|
| https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/wRHK1kkKpNBXt4WWuCQW.
| ..
| xwdv wrote:
| How do pipes work when terrain isn't leveled but rather very
| sloped?
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Sewage pumps in the pipes and
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebeanlage (sorry do not know
| the english word for that) Synthetic fibres in tissues are
| a huge issues for these pumps..
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| Lift station or pump station, I believe.
|
| https://htt.io/resources/lift-station-basics/
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| > And if those pumps fail (e.g. power outage), all of a
| sudden everyone is dealing with sewage backflow.
|
| While disgusting...this would have the side effect of those
| being repaired _very quickly_ I imagine.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I suppose it depends on the state. If you're in Texas or
| California good luck.
| satellite2 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Doesn't the Michigan area get cold during the winters? There
| are many reasons why pipes are underground, even in hotter
| climates freak weather incidents do happen.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Pros and cons.
|
| I'd imagine a lot more problems would occur if pipes were
| exposed to the elements, for example.
|
| And of course, the issue of where to put the pipes when they're
| above ground.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> if the pipes were easily accessible.
|
| Also more accessible to damage from vandals and car crashes.
| And they would freeze in winter. And they would expand/contract
| with temperature changes, leading to increased cracking etc.
| The only places that use above ground water/sewer pipes are
| those with unsupportive soils such as permafrost or deep sand
| that would cause breaks.
| erwolf wrote:
| I've looked at countless sewer inspection videos--those pipes can
| be up to 80 years old and are often in pretty bad shape. Sewage
| leaking into the groundwater is a major problem but is very hard
| to detect and locate unfortunately.
|
| Shameless plug: We're a startup building AI to detect leakages in
| sewers and tell cities when to fix their underground pipes. If
| you want to help us solve this problem and make cities more
| sustainable, let me know at ew@hades.ai :)
| Thorentis wrote:
| On the surface, this looks like just another "We're using AI to
| detect X" cash grab. Are you just using image recognition for a
| novel application or what?
| tdeck wrote:
| That's kind of a harsh way to express curiously, but I was
| also interested. If you go to https://www.hades.ai/, you can
| see that they use image recognition on videos. I can imagine
| why that might be an improvement over manually watching hours
| of sewer videos looking for cracks.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > Shouldn't we be placing the blame on people flushing meds down
| the toilet?
|
| Obviously, people shouldn't do that. But some antibiotics go
| through the body almost unchanged. When penicillin was first
| developed they used to recycle the antibiotic from the patient's
| urine over and over because they had so little of it.
| idealstingray wrote:
| > Obviously, people shouldn't do that.
|
| I'm not sure this is obvious or even particularly well-
| publicized.
|
| The "official recommendation" in the U.S. for many meds is that
| they be flushed down the toilet, especially
| scheduled/controlled substances. The FDA maintains a "flush
| list" [1] of medications that you are specifically instructed
| to dispose of by flushing. However, even for medications not on
| the official flush list, it's common to be informed by
| reasonable authorities that you should dispose of them by
| flushing -- e.g. I had to sign paperwork at my doctor's office
| affirming that I'd responsibly dispose of my unused ADHD meds
| by flushing them down the toilet before my dr would write the
| prescription. This was seconded by the drug/alcohol training I
| was given as a condition of attending college, which stated
| that you should flush _all_ unused medication.
|
| [1]: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/disposal-unused-medicines-what-
| you...
| gumby wrote:
| Typically > 90% of any drug taken orally is immediately
| discharged through the first pass metabolism (urine primarily,
| and breath and feces).* The body is good at disposing of
| substances it isn't looking for, especially when ingested.
| There are a lot of scare stories about the result (male fish in
| the Great Lakes with ovaries; therapeutic levels of
| antidepressants in the Edinburgh water supply, etc) but this is
| the first article _I 've_ seen that talks about the path.
|
| Because of this so-called "first path" effect you end up taking
| enough that hopefully _some_ (and enough) "gets to the
| required location" and not too much gets where it's not wanted
| (most of what counts as "side effects"). The approval process
| focuses on this and ignores anything excreted, which shouldn't
| be surprising: with few exceptions the process is #1 safety and
| #2 minimal clinically effective dosing.
|
| * former pharmaceutical scientist; have designed protocols
| approved by the FDA.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Uhhh, isn't first pass metabolism a metabolic pathway, not an
| excretion one? In other words, it's the liver taking a first
| crack at breaking things down enzymatically at anything
| absorbed before it gets distributed around to post-liver
| bloodstream?
| gumby wrote:
| gut -> liver yes, but the relevant comment I was responding
| to was about how much dosage does not provide therapy and
| how it ends up in the water.
| [deleted]
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And if you didn't pee it out, it wouldn't get to the right spot
| to treat a urinary tract or kidney infection.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| If you didn't pee it out it would remain in your system
| longer, limiting treatment options if it is in any way toxic.
| Or, if you don't pee it out it might over time break down
| into more toxic substances.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Or break down into less toxic substances, or things that
| are more likely to get excreted.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > if it is in any way toxic
|
| That's its whole purpose. Just look at the name
| "antibiotic"...
| dgoldstein0 wrote:
| Toxic to bacteria is different than toxic to humans cells
| moralestapia wrote:
| There's only one way out*, so you always pee it out
| somehow.
|
| * Ignoring minute traces of minerals that are lost through
| transpiration
| 988747 wrote:
| Medications in streams are good right? At least fish will be
| healthy. /s
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(page generated 2021-08-18 23:01 UTC)