Irresopnsible Or What - How To Put Mineral Oil In Sewers?

This was good looking out on your part, Durdle.

The chemical manufacturers of the world are among it’s most rampant polluters. In fairness, not all, but enough. Protecting the earth for our descendents is bad for their bottom line, and I accuse they tend to dismiss even basic common decency in that regard until people die or costly  litigation occurs.
I hope people understand when huge costs are incurred when upgrading our water treatment plants to meet the growing problem of water quality. 

As an avid boater, I see the effluent of man’s activities every day in the once-pristine Gulf of Mexico. It galls me to think what new evils are poured into it every week. 

Hmm what does this say about me... all my side bars are offering me are funeral plans, a John Wayne quiz and dating sites.

WD-40 contains petroleum distillates, not mineral oils. The only advice offered for recycling is that in some areas it is required to punch a hole in the can before discarding it.

https://www.wd40.com/faqs

I really like WD40 it cleans old tools and makes the nuts loosen it is also lubricates tight holes and lets the tool in.LOL

Please don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with the product - I use for its designed workshop purposes but am well aware a lot of people take its own label claims a bit far. It's not very good as lubricant or penetrating oil, and not very long-lived as a protective - it is a water-dispersant that will also help clean heavier oils and greases from surfaces. It's moderately good as a cutting fluid for working aluminium alloy, where paraffin is the usual one.

The problem is not whether you call WD-40's active ingredients and the propellant "petroleum distillates" or "mineral oils" - they are essentially the same as they are distilled from the same raw mineral - but that it should not be put down the drains. The advertisement caught my attention because of all the suggested uses, the one featured to open it was the spraying into the toilet.

Thank you Don - I take your point and of course local knowledge but I'm not sure it's entirely fair nowadays to put too much blame on the chemicals manufacturers. If it were not for them we would not be able to discuss it like this - in fact many things we now take for granted could not exist. Yes, they have caused major problems world-wide and there have been a few awful disasters or more subtle but large-scale troubles like disease and pollution, but I think nowadays better knowledge and more stringent regulations mean the greater environmental damage is coming from poor or improper use and disposal of the products, not their manufacture.

The chemical companies - including WD-40's makers -  do go to great lengths to comply with a huge raft of safety and environmental laws, and part of my work involved sifting and collating important parts of the results of their efforts into my own employer's internal health & safety documents. Even products sold for home use carry a lot of environmental safety advice and warnings on the containers, and whether at work or at home, the onus for ensuring the substances do not damage anything they shouldn't is down to the user.

Some of the materials we used at work are easily available to the public in the shops - but because we used them professionally we still had to write appropriate Risk Assessments for them, including covering proper disposal of residues!

The people who made that advertisement clearly made no effort to ensure their suggested uses for the stuff fell within the environmental and health restrictions its own manufacturer publishes; but unfortunately a good many people were likely to have read it and genuinely not realised the wrong-doing.

I do appreciate environmental laws may differ internationally and maybe in the USA, between States, and they are pretty stringent here in the UK; but it's still wrong to put petroleum-based substances down drains, whether it goes to outfalls or to sewage-treatment plants.

  

A lot of petroleum distillates are called "mineral oil". Wikipedia has a long piece on the many uses of the various varieties, and there is no concern at all about disposal. It is used for baby oil and laxative with not a thought to side effects. Nutritionists caution that mineral oil absorbs fat soluble nutrients and offers no biological effect in return.

Bottom line: no threat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil

I was quite surprised to learn a few things. I never looked up what mineral oil actually is. I just assumed it was some unique type of oil with no biological connection.