Today, we sit down with Dr. Michael Gormley, the director of the Institute for Sustainable Building Design and the director of the Water Academy at Heriot-Watt University, in Scotland. In this episode, we discuss Dr. Gormley's paper published in Lancet Global Health titled "COVID-19: Mitigating Transmission via Wastewater Plumbing Systems".

Thanks for joining us for this wonderful opportunity to learn from one of the leading researchers on the COVID pandemic. Enjoy!

Talking Points:

• About this podcast and our mission (0:00)
• The link between defects in wastewater plumbing systems and transmission pathways of disease (1:45)
• Why protections against transmissions are important- especially for highly populated facilities (4:04)
• The current state of wastewater systems on a design level (5:54)
• How exactly do diseases like COVID and SARS transmit VIA wastewater plumbing? (7:09)
• The reality of transmission during a pandemic 7:54
• Recommendations to combat the transmission of pathogens (9:02)
• A message to health care workers (10:41)
• The factors that determine the level of risk (11:37)
• Defects in wastewater plumbing during SARS (12:12)

Resources: "COVID-19: Mitigating Transmission via Wastewater Plumbing Systems" Lancet Global Health. 2020 May 8. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32213325/