Glastonbury, biggest music festival of the British Isles, is going down this weekend. Analytical toxicologists had asked if they could test the festival’s waste for legal highs and illicit drugs. Festival manager Michael Eavis declined, as writes The Guardian.
If he hadn’t declined, here’s how they would have done it:
All the festival sewage gets tipped into a huge container and then fed out slowly into the local sewage works over the next few weeks. This gives the toxicologists the opportunity to sample the “wastewater” without having to tackle the problem of sampling the output of thousands of onsite portable toilets. It also ensures the process is totally anonymous.
“We can only do it if there is a central sewage system,” said Ramsey, who carried out a similar project at a festival in Antwerp. “The joy of Glastonbury is that they have their own plumbing.”
I for one would have liked to see the results.