Since 1992, a movement to put forward Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí as a candidate for Roman Catholic sainthood has been underway, led by The Association for the Beatification of Antoni Gaudí, a lay organization based in Barcelona, Spain.

Founded by architect José Manuel Almuzara, the Association has sought to gather evidence of Gaudí's saintliness throughout his lifetime, as well as the testimonies of believers who claim to have had prayers answered upon seeking intercession from the architect. The case has been moving slowly through the labyrinthine stages of the Vatican's beatification process as the Association have sought to maintain publicity for their cause, raise funds, and promote private devotion to the architect through the distribution of prayer cards, books, and newsletters.

Though a key part of Barcelona's cosmopolitan Modernisme movement in his early years—and not particularly noted for his piety—Antoni Gaudí gradually become more religious throughout his life, particularly when he took over the role of architect of the Sagrada Família in 1883.<ref>Gaudí was considered a controversial choice as architect for the Sagrada, as he was not an active Catholic at the time. However, one biographer, Josep Maria Tarragona, claims that during the construction of the Joyful Nativity Façade at the church, Gaudí “saw the person of Jesus”, and thereafter grew in piety. See: Fr Matthew Pittam, “[https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2015/10/29/five-controversial-saints-in-the-making/ Five controversial saints in the making]”, ''The Catholic Herald'', October 29, 2015, retrieved April 14, 2022. Other biographers have emphasized Gaudí's role in the forward-looking ''Modernisme'' movement, Josep Pla painting a picture of the architect as a young man, "dressed as a dandy, a lover of fine cuisine and beaming in the Liceu [Barcelona's opera house]". See: Josep Playà Maset, “[http://www.gaudiclub.com/ingles/i_links/i_beat4.asp The Vatican initiates the beatification process for Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí]”, ''La Vanguardia'', March 12, 2000, retrieved April 14, 2022.</ref> Gaudí ultimately became known for his ascetic and frugal lifestyle as the Sagrada project consumed him from 1909 onward; he had a reputation for radical Lenten fasting (to the point of almost starving himself to death), was known to be celibate his entire life, showed selfless concern for his workers and their families, and famously died in a hospital for the poor after being run over by a street tram.<ref>Thomas V. Mirus, “[https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-catholic-cultur-29747195/episode/episode-32-antoni-gaudi-patron-30714968/ Antoni Gaudí, Patron Saint of Architects?]”, interview with Gabriela Gonzalez-Cremona, ''The Catholic Culture'' podcast, March 19, 2019, retrieved April 14, 2022.</ref><ref>Jo Fidgen and William Kremer, “[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32665526 Will Gaudi be made a saint?]”, ''BBC World Service'', May 11, 2015, retrieved April 14, 2022.</ref>

The architect's channelling of his own faith in the design and construction of the Sagrada Família, in particular, led to him posthumously being labeled "God's Architect"—a designation that has stuck, and been much foregrounded by those campaigning for his beatification.<ref>The designation originated in a book published in 1926, the year of Gaudí's death: "Antoni Gaudí. His life. His work. His Death", which featured articles by 17 authors, including one, "God's Architect", by Mossén Manuel Trens, that pressed the notion of the architect directly channeling his faith in the construction of the Sagrada Familia. See: Juan Manuel González-Cremona, ed., “Towards the Beatification of Antoni Gaudí”, Association pro Beatification of Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona, 2012, 9. Available as an online download [http://www.gaudibeatificatio.com/files/docs/GAUDI-BOOK.pdf here].</ref>

==The path toward Sainthood==

Founder of the Association for the Beatification of Antoni Gaudí, José Manuel Almuzara, has credited the initial idea of putting Gaudí forward for sainthood to priest Father Ignasi Segarra Bañeres. Together with three other associates, they incorporated in 1992, with Almuzara assuming the role of president.<ref>Juan Manuel González-Cremona, ed., “Towards the Beatification of Antoni Gaudí”, 38. The current Board of Directors of the Association is made up of: José Manuel Almuzara , architect, President; Javier Fransitorra Luque , architect, Secretary; Etsuro Sotoo , Bachelor of Fine Arts, sculptor of the Sagrada Familia, Treasurer; Josep Ma Tarragona, engineer, writer-biographer of Gaudí, Member; José Luís Lázaro , retired businessman, Member. See: “[http://www.gaudibeatificatio.com About the Association for the Beatification of Antonio Gaudí]”, ''gaudibeatificatio.com'', retrieved April 14, 2022.</ref>

The project initially proceeded slowly. While the Association printed prayer cards and created a donation box to raise funds that they installed by Gaudí's tomb in the crypt of the Sagrada, Catalonia's religious leaders remained skeptical, concerned that making Gaudí a saint might narrow the appeal of his buildings to non-Catholics.<ref>Jo Fidgen and William Kremer, “Will Gaudi be made a saint?”.</ref>

It is unusual for lay organizations to initiate a beatification process, as ultimately the proposal must be submitted to the Vatican by the archbishop of the diocese in which the postulated saint died.<ref>“[https://www.romereports.com/en/2019/07/06/documentary-investigates-possible-beatification-of-architect-antonio-gaudi/ Documentary investigates possible beatification of architect Antonio Gaudí]”, ''Rome Reports'' (video), Jul 6, 2019, retrieved April 14, 2022.</ref><ref>Jo Fidgen and William Kremer, “Will Gaudi be made a saint?”.</ref> But in 1998, thanks to the intervention of a Jesuit priest, Father Enric Puig, the cardinal archbishop of Barcelona appointed Monsignor Luís Bonet i Armengol (brother of the then-head architect on the Sagrada) to lead the case, and the Vatican issued their "nihil obstat" (no objection), allowing the establishment of an investigatory court at the local diocese level.(9)(10)

As the court gathered evidence of Gaudí's sanctity, studying his life, writings, and interviews with surviving people who knew him, news of the movement supposedly reached Pope John Paul II in 2000, who took an interest, giving a boost to the effort.(11)

The diocesan process was completed in Barcelona in May 2003, and a portfolio on the cause submitted to the Vatican; it received an immediate expression of interest, with Gaudi officially named a "Servant of God", the first step on the path towards beatification.(12)

As the case moves its way through the Vatican, and the Association continues to gather and submit evidence for the 'Posito' (the “positio super vita, virtutibus et fama sanctitatis", a book compiling information on the life, virtues and reputation for holiness of the postulated), Pope Benedict XVI visited Barcelona in 2010 to consecrate the Sagrada Família, conferring on it the status of basilica.(13)

Next steps in the process involve the cardinals and theologians of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican voting on a decree regarding Gaudí’s worth, which will then be put before the Pope. If the Pope agrees with their positive verdict, the architect will be deemed "venerable", the last step prior to beatification.(14) In 2015 Pope Francis met with members of the Association in Rome, lending his support to the project.(15)

Upon being declared "venerable", the subsequent stage, beatification, requires evidence of a miracle directly attributable to the postulated. Full sainthood (canonization) requires evidence of two miracles. (16)

==God's Architect==

Much of the demonstration of Gaudí's holiness and his candidacy for sainthood rests on considering the architecture of the Sagrada Família as an expression of profound spirituality.(17) This case was laid out in an August 23, 1998 letter by Cardinal Monsignor Ricard M Carles published in a number of media outlets at the time.(18) It specifically makes the claim that, considering the work of the Sagrada, it is impossible to imagine that a motive other than the spiritual was driving the architect:

"About Gaudí’s spirituality – If you know his amazing works at all, it is impossible to consider that their grandiosity, and the profound details, could be elaborated only by a cold thought that seeks a spectacular work or that has focused only on what could cause admiration for his work. These were neither the criteria nor the aspirations of Gaudí. Without a profound and continuous contemplation of the mysteries of faith, the façade of neither the Nativity nor any other could have been conceived as he wanted them to be, in such a moving way."(19)

A number of conversions to Catholicism have been attributed to encounters with the architecture of the Sagrada, including that of construction workers working on the building.(20) The Association have foregrounded the case of Jun Young Joo, a businessman from Busan, South Korea, who wrote about his experience after visiting Barcelona in 1998:

“I was in the Temple of the Sagrada Família, as part of my route seeing the work of Gaudí around Barcelona. It is impossible to describe the impression left on my heart. I couldn’t help but bow my head before the solemnity, the sanctity and the greatness of the building. A deep feeling overpowered my heart. Through the works of Gaudí and the divine touch that they have, I was convinced of the existence of God. Although I have previously been a devoted Buddhist, I converted to Catholicism on returning to Busan, because of the deep impression caused by the works of Gaudí."(21)

Lourdes Cirlot, an art historian at the University of Barcelona, has noted how the lighting at the Sagrada has the tendency to promote a state close to mystical ecstasy. "It is hard to say that a building can be miraculous. But if someone goes into the Sagrada Família, and really believes that they'll be cured, it will probably happen."(22)

Pope Benedict, on his visit to the church on the occasion of its consecration as a basilica in 2010, was "visibly moved"(23), calling the Sagrada "a magnificent achievement of engineering, art and faith". Echoing the motivations of cathedral-building throughout the centuries, he declared that the basilica "stands as a visible sign of the invisible God, to whose glory these spires rise like arrows pointing towards absolute light and to the One who is Light, Height and Beauty itself."(24)

==The problem of a miracle==

While there is some current debate within the Catholic Church on expanding the definition of what counts as a miracle, the processes of beatification and canonization still prefer evidence of directly attributable medical miracles.(25)(26)

In the case of Gaudí, over 500 reports of answered prayers to the architect have been gathered by the Association from around the world. "There are letters from a man in Chile who says he was cured of cancer, a girl in Switzerland whose lost architecture school project magically reappeared, and—perhaps as a nod to the rock-carved appearance of the Sagrada Familia—testimonials from dozens of believers who passed kidney stones."(27) The fact that no workers have ever died in the construction of the Sagrada Família is often cited as a miracle in itself.(28)(29) One correspondent, Maria del Collell Plana of Girona, Spain, whose daughter was undergoing a new treatment for lumbar scoliosis, appealed to Gaudí for intercession, entreating him to become "the architect of my daughter’s spine". Sure enough, her daughter's condition improved to an extent beyond her doctors' best hopes.(30) Perhaps the strongest case is that of Montserrat Barenys, an artist and former lecturer from Gaudí's birthplace Reus whose sight was restored after praying to the architect when she was diagnosed with a perforated retina.(31)(32)

José Manuel Almuzara, who heads the Association, however, seems to acknowledge that the evidence gathered so far is unlikely to pass the Vatican's stringent review processes, admitting that “no miracle recognized as such” has yet been confirmed.(33)

Nevertheless, there is a growing movement within Catholicism to move away from the strict need for medical miracles, and acknowledge a broader and more modern definition of the miraculous, including the power of conversion.(34) The current pope, Francis, has exercised his ability to declare “equipollent canonization"—a papal prerogative that fast-tracks saints by requiring fewer proven miracles—and in three cases, has elevated saints without even one confirmed miracle.(35)

The move represents a shift in emphasis toward saints' status as role models. The church clearly benefits from the PR value of creating new saints—particularly with someone as already-celebrated as Gaudí. The aim is to balance expanding definitions of the miraculous with the more traditional glow of the metaphysical that adheres around medical miracles.(36)

As for the Association, they have distributed thousands of prayer cards in multiple languages including Catalan, Spanish, English, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, and Korean(37), and are prepared to play the waiting game: "To recognize the probable miracle, we leave in the hands of divine Providence: “only God knows the day and the hour” (Mt. 24, 36), so we will stay vigilant (Mt. 25, 13), and we will always remember that “Our client is not in a rush"."(38)(39)

==Dissenting voices==

The move to beatify Gaudí has not been without contention. Some have highlighted the architect's worldliness in his younger days, the fact that he was an active Freemason, and raised concern over the appropriation of his legacy by a conservative strain of Catalan nationalism that is close to the Catholic Church.(40)(41) The latter tensions reflect longstanding ideological battles at the heart of the movement for Catalan nationalism since its rebirth in the late 19th Century: tensions that were embodied in Gaudí himself, who was, at the same time, a member of conservative Catholic clubs, yet harbored youthful plans for the construction of progressive utopian communities; who was the victim of beatings and arrests by police for attending Catalan rallies, but whose studio was, in turn, sacked and destroyed by leftist mobs at the time of the Spanish Civil War.(42)(43)

====Catholic Freemason====

In "Park Güell: Gaudí's Utopia", Josep M. Carandell has proposed that the architect, his patron, Eusebi Güell, and their close circle were Freemasons, incorporated a number of Masonic symbols into the construction of Park Güell, and that the park's housing was intended to include homes for members of their lodge. The symbols include anagrams for Masonic terminology, crosses that "have nothing to do with Christian crosses", but bear a greater resemblance to Masonic symbols, and female figures and iconography referring to the figure of the Masonic Sister.(44)

Traditionally, Masonry and Catholicism have always been two very incompatible doctrines, so, the author asks, where do these findings fit with Gaudi's supposed piety and candidacy for Beatification? The paradox, Carandell suggests, proves that the architect's life and character were much more complex than the image of his pious old age would lead us to believe:

"The group that is driving for beatification, with support of the Catalonian bishops, forgets that before being old Gaudí was also young. On the other hand, in the declarations and writings of the architect, which form a total of 300 pages, it is verified that allusions to religion are minimal."(45)

Elsewhere, Carandell notes that the architect's character was not exactly saint-like to many of those who knew and worked with him: "They thought that Gaudí was egocentric, prideful and bad-tempered."(46) Rafael Puget, who knew Gaudí well in turn-of-the-century Barcelona, described the architect's "morbid, insoluble pride and vanity”, and claimed he acted “as though architecture itself had begun at the precise moment when he made his appearance on earth.”(47)

====An expiatory temple====

The Sagrada Família itself has long been at the center of tussles over which vision of Catalan nationality prevailed. Commissioned in 1881 by conservative philanthropist and bookseller Josep Maria Bocabella, the church was specifically intended to act as counter to the growing leftwing anticlericalism that had been developing in Barcelona since the late 1870s.(48)

Imagined as "a great penitential church", the project took inspiration from then-Pope Pius IX, who had expressed alarm at what he saw as "the evils of liberalism, democracy and individual conscience that were taking hold in Italy and Spain".(49) Pius had called for a renewed faith in papal infallibility and increased levels of devotion to the Holy Family, and Bocabella and the conservative group of laymen who initiated it, saw the Sagrada Família project as a response to this call.(50) As an expiatory temple, contributions to the construction of the Sagrada would effectively act as atonements for sins (and, to this day, visitors buying entry tickets are effectively making atonement).(51)(52)

To what extent Gaudi was aligning himself with Bocabella's agenda in coming on board the project in November 1883, is open to question.(53) During the early 20th Century as work continued on the church, the main Catalan nationalist party was the right-leaning Regionalist League of Catalonia, who supported (and gained, in 1914) recognition and a degree of autonomy for the region. Though the League had initially been opposed to Gaudí and his architecture, they saw in the Sagrada Família an opportunity to forward their conservative version of Catalonian nationalism, and became one of the main bodies involved in the promotion of the architect as "the genius of Catalonia".(54)

====Gaudí's studio sacked====

The events of Tragic Week in Barcelona in August 1909 crystalized some of these tensions. In response to the reintroduction of military conscription to protect Spanish colonial operations in Morocco, violence erupted in the city, and many churches were attacked—the Catholic Church considered part of the same establishment that was justifying conscription.(55)

The Sagrada Família survived unscathed, but, perhaps not uncoincidentally, it was in the late summer of 1909, at age 57, that Gaudí resolved to turn his full attention to the Sagrada, taking on only minor other projects from then until his death in 1926.(56)

These political positions boiled over again in the 1930s. Following Franco's military coup in July 1936, anarchist labor unions took control of Barcelona, which unleashed a wave of violence across the city in which many churches were attacked. This time the Sagrada was not spared, and Gaudi's worksop at the church was ransacked and set on fire by members of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, with the majority of his drawings and models for the project destroyed.(57)

====Without a plan====

The upheaval of the Civil War and World War II, and the loss of Gaudí's drawings and models, set back work on the Sagrada for many years. When work did resume, it led to questions over the direction of the project in the absence of the original plans. In 1965, Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia published a letter by a group of leading artists, architects and intellectuals, including Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Joan Miró, and Antoni Tàpies, claiming that the ongoing work represented a bastardization of the architect’s original vision, and calling for the project to be halted.(58)

Nevertheless, work continued, the building fund swelled by entry fees from the ever-increasing tourist trade from the 1950s onwards.(59) In 2005, the Sagrada Família was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO - but only the parts of it that were completed by Gaudí in his lifetime(60), reflecting an ongoing unease within architectural and heritage circles that the building work carried out since the architect's death veers too far from his original plans.(61) The sculptural additions of Josep Subirach and Etsuro Sotoo have been particularly called into question(62); critic Robert Hughes has labeled the post-Gaudí construction and decoration “rampant kitsch.” (63)

Barcelona–based contemporary architect Beth Galí has concurred: "We have tried for years to stop it. We have appealed to UNESCO, to the city government, we have staged demonstrations - but nothing works. Those who support the project are people who come from that dark period of our country's past, the Franco dictatorship. As for the beatification," she adds, "words fail me. It's ludicrous."(64)

==References==
{{Refs3}}

Gaudí Beatification

2022-04-15T20:10:13Z

ThisTenement:

Gaudí Beatification

2022-04-15T20:09:19Z

ThisTenement:

Gaudí Beatification

2022-04-15T02:22:53Z

ThisTenement:

2022-02-28T18:43:40Z

ThisTenement: /* Critical explorations */

Monster Fatberg

2022-02-28T18:42:12Z

ThisTenement: /* Cultural and media life */

[[File:Whitechapel-monster-626.jpg|420px|thumb|right|The Whitechapel Fatberg. Photo: Thames Water.]]In September 2017 a massive 'fatberg'<ref>The word is credited to London sewer workers, coined when they first began to encounter the build-ups around 2008. See: Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]", ''The New Yorker'', Feb 9, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022. By August 2015, 'fatberg' was added to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary in its quarterly update, see: "[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/hangry-bants-fatberg-new-words-in-oxforddictionaries From bants to manspreading: what's new in the oxforddictionaries.com]", ''The Guardian'', Aug 27, 2015, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>—an agglomeration of congealed fat, discarded sanitary products, and other waste materials—was discovered in a sewer beneath the streets of East London. At 250 meters in length, and an estimated 130 metric tonnes in weight, the mass was the largest such blockage discovered to date, and was quickly dubbed 'monster fatberg' in media coverage.<ref>Matthew Taylor, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/12/total-monster-concrete-fatberg-blocks-london-sewage-system ’Total monster': fatberg blocks London sewage system]", ''The Guardian'', Sept 12, 2017, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

A team of eight workers from Thames Water, the private utility company that maintains the London sewerage system, worked for weeks on removing the blockage using a combination of power hoses and hand tools including pick axes and shovels.<ref>Jessica Taylor, "[https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/theplasticfreeproject/fatbergs-and-single-use-plastics-a4034686.html What is a fatberg, how is it formed and why are single-use plastics the main culprit?]", ''London Evening Standard'', Jan 17, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> The fatberg was found to be completely blocking the Victorian-era sewer that runs beneath the Whitechapel Road in London's East End, an area with many restaurants and take-away food outlets.<ref>"[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/09/the-guardian-view-on-the-whitechapel-fatberg-the-shock-of-the-poo The Guardian view on the Whitechapel fatberg: the shock of the poo]", ''The Guardian'', Feb 9, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Workers removed 20 to 30 tonnes on each shift, some of which was recycled as biodiesel fuel.<ref>Jessica Taylor, "[https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/theplasticfreeproject/fatbergs-and-single-use-plastics-a4034686.html What is a fatberg...]". Though possible to recycle fatbergs into biodiesel, it is an expensive and inefficient method of converting waste into energy, see: Vyki Sparkes, "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/exhibiting-fatberg-monster-whitechapel Fatberg! Exhibiting the 'Monster of Whitechapel']", ''museumoflondon.org.uk'', Feb 6, 2016, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

In 2019, a specially designed manhole cover was installed at the corner of Court Street and Whitechapel Road, as a monument to the 'defeat' of the Whitechapel Fatberg.<ref>"[https://londonist.com/london/secret/the-whitechapel-fatberg-has-its-own-memorial-manhole The Whitechapel Fatberg Has Its Own Hidden Memorial]", ''londonist.com'', Sept 19, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

==Causes and science==

Fatbergs form when fats, oils, and greases (FOGs) are discarded down drains as commercial and domestic cooking waste, and merge with improperly discarded sanitary products. FOGs undergo a process of hydrolysis on contact with water, separating into free fatty acids that, in turn, react to the calcium-rich (alkali) environment of the sewerage system to form hardened masses: a process known as saponification, the same mechanism by which soaps are produced.<ref>Hita Patel, "[https://2019.igem.org/wiki/images/8/8c/T--Warwick--2019-Hita-Report.pdf The Synthetic Biology and Chemistry of 'Fatbergs']", ''iGEM 2019'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

The problem has worsened in recent decades due to the increased consumer use of wet wipes, a product that mostly fails to break down in sewers, despite manufacturers labeling them as 'flushable'. Wet wipes and other discarded sanitary products, including tampons, condoms, and diapers, become bound up in the fatbergs as they form, creating a reinforced cement-like hardened mass.<ref>Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg from London sewer]", ''The Guardian'', Feb 19, 2021, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Many brands of wet wipes include plastic strengtheners such as thermoplastic polymer polypropylene making them impossible to break down in normal sewage conditions.<ref>Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]", ''Social Studies of Science'', Vol. 50(3), May 1, 2020, 377–397, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Fatbergs typically start to form at bends or junctions in the sewerage system, or around protruding objects such as tree roots that provide a surface to cling to. FOGs will initially accumulate around any uneven surface, which will in turn attract objects such as wipes, creating a matrix around which further FOGs will gather, to the point where the problem becomes self-compounding.<ref>Hita Patel, "[https://2019.igem.org/wiki/images/8/8c/T--Warwick--2019-Hita-Report.pdf The Synthetic Biology and Chemistry of 'Fatbergs']".</ref>

The built-up masses can emit sudden belches of gases including hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide, and methane, and the use of breathing apparatus is usually necessary during their removal.<ref>Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]".</ref> Utilities company workers have described the smell of fatbergs as akin to composting festival toilets and rotten meat.<ref>Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg...]".</ref>

Infectious bacteria including listeria, campylobacter and E coli have been found in fatbergs, which cause a risk to the utilities workers cleaning the system, but also to the public, as blockages may cause backups in drains and overflows.<ref>Justin Pachebat and Jo Hamilton, "[https://microbiologysociety.org/blog/sewage-science-are-bacteria-just-the-tip-of-the-fatberg.html Sewage Science: Are Bacteria Just The Tip Of The Fatberg?]", ''Microbiology Society'', May 18, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref><ref>Nadia Khomami, "[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/24/fatberg-autopsy-reveals-growing-health-threat-londoners Fatberg 'autopsy' reveals growing health threat to Londoners]", ''The Guardian'', April 23, 2018, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref> Many fatbergs go undetected until the blockages they cause result in discharges from overflow sewers: often into city river systems.<ref>Carrie Wells, "[https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-fatberg-20170925-story.html 'Fatberg' of congealed fat, wet wipes and waste discovered under Baltimore's streets, causing sewer overflows]", ''The Baltimore Sun'', Sept 26, 2017, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Though several of the largest fatbergs discovered have been in London and the UK, the phenomenon is an issue in almost every large city worldwide,<ref>Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]".</ref> with examples found from Baltimore, MD,<ref>Carrie Wells, "[https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-fatberg-20170925-story.html 'Fatberg' of congealed fat, wet wipes and waste discovered under Baltimore's streets]".</ref> to Melbourne, Australia.<ref>Chanel Zagon, "[https://www.9news.com.au/national/giant-fatberg-discovered-melbourne-sewer-by-yarra-valley-water/870aadd6-ccd8-41ae-b1af-464c37726d01 Giant fatberg heavier than petrol tanker discovered in Melbourne sewer]", ''9news.com.au'', Apr 14, 2020, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

==Municipal responses==

The damage caused to sewerage systems, and the huge expense of having to remove the 'bergs<ref>Thames Water reported spending £18m a year clearing blockages from sewers in London and the Thames Valley. See: Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg from London sewer]".</ref> has led to widespread "bin it, don't flush it" public information campaigns to educate consumers on what can and cannot be flushed down their toilets and disposed down drains.<ref>"[https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/whats-new/trash-it-dont-flush-it.page Trash it. Don’t Flush it.]", ''nyc.gov'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref><ref>"[https://publicworks.macombgov.org/PublicWorks-fatberg DON'T FEED THE FATBERG!]", ''Macomb County Public Works Office'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> British environmental organization City to Sea produced an animated film in which actor Andy Serkis voiced a talking anus, encouraging the public to be a "good asshole" and not flush wet wipes.<ref>”[https://www.citytosea.org.uk/campaign/be-a-good-ahole/ BE A GOOD A**HOLE]”, ''citytosea.org.uk'', retrieved Feb 28, 2022.</ref> A film produced by Jacksonville, Florida, utilities company JEA played on the public revulsion at fatbergs with a horror-themed trailer film,<ref>"[https://www.fatberginvasion.com Invasion of the Fatbergs]", ''JEA Utility'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> an approach that has become a widespread trope in the representation of the issue.<ref>See: Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]".</ref>

Political and legal responses have included moves to pressurize manufacturers to label wet wipes and other sanitary products as non-flushable. In New York, a City Council bill was introduced to prohibit advertising certain wet wipes as flushable<ref>Matt Flegenheimer, "[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/nyregion/the-wet-wipes-box-says-flush-but-the-new-york-city-sewer-system-says-dont.html Wet Wipes Box Says Flush. New York’s Sewer System Says Don’t]", ''The New York Times'', March 13, 2015, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>, and in Charleston, South Carolina, the city's water management agency filed a lawsuit against major manufacturers and retailers, accusing them of false labeling.<ref>Gerald Porter Jr., "[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-26/pandemic-wipes-create-sewer-clogging-fatbergs America’s Obsession With Wipes Is Tearing Up Sewer Systems]", ''bloomberg.com'', March 26, 2021, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Despite these educational and legal responses, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a renewed increase in fatbergs as a critical problem for water utilities companies around the world. The surge in use of sanitizing surface wipes, and the temporary scarcity of flushable toilet paper in the early months of the pandemic, saw a 75% rise in sales of wipes, and an attendant increase in the discarding of non-flushable materials down drains.<ref>Ibid.</ref>

==Cultural and media life==

[[File:Fatberg at Museum of London.jpg|thumb|right | Fatberg on display at Museum of London exhibition, 2018.]]The phenomenon of fatbergs seems to have touched a raw nerve with the public, and ensured an ongoing media life since they were first reported as a problem.<ref>Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane have highlighted the ways in which fatbergs play on fears that the sewerage system (only the top-most level of which we are usually conscious of, the part that enters our own homes) suddenly backs up and overflows into our domestic space. "Now having emerged into existence, the fatberg’s continuous formation has the capacity to grow in reverse order back up through the linear system of the sewers that has supported its generation to invade the spaces from which its material being is drawn." See: Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane, "[https://strelkamag.com/en/article/fatberg-material-ecologies-and-the-complexities-of-waste Fatberg: Material Ecologies and the Complexities of Waste]", ''strelkamag.com'', Oct 28, 2020, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

The Museum of London put a section of the Whitechapel fatberg on display in a glass case as the central exhibit of its exhibition, "Fatberg!", which opened in February 2018 and ran for 6 months.<ref>Vyki Sparkes, "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/exhibiting-fatberg-monster-whitechapel Fatberg! Exhibiting the 'Monster of Whitechapel']".</ref> Exhibition curator Vyki Sparkes spoke of the compelling nature of the exhibition's subject matter: "This is a really potent object. People are fascinated by it [...] As a society, we’ve created this unseen growing monster that lives in the sewers, a place that we depend on but never see." She compared the phenomenon to the painting in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray: "it shows our disgusting side. Just as in Oscar Wilde’s novel, it is hidden away, getting worse and worse as we pile the accumulated sins of the city into it: cooking fat, condoms, needles, wet wipes, and of course human waste."<ref>Ibid.</ref>

The exhibition proved a conservation challenge: the museum's sample had to be dried out for a time before being put on display, and hatched flies and became covered in a layer of mould.<ref>Ibid.</ref> The museum, acknowledging this mutability in their object, installed a 'fatcam' to live-stream the changes it was undergoing while part of the museum’s collection. The object was hastily removed, however, when it started to grow the toxic mould aspergillus.<ref>"Whilst on display the fatberg hatched flies, sweated and changed colour. Since going off display, fatberg has started to grow an unusual and toxic mould, in the form of visible yellow pustules. Our collections care team has identified this as aspergillus. Conservators believe that fatberg started to grow the spores whilst on display and now a month later, these spores have become more visible. Any changes to the samples will now be able to be viewed live." See: "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/fatcam-watch-fatberg-live FatCam! Watch fatberg in real time]", ''museumoflondon.org.uk'', Aug 14, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Nevertheless, "Fatberg!" was a success for the Museum of London, with boosted visitor numbers and media coverage over the course of its run.<ref>Anna Schaverien, "[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/world/europe/sidmouth-fatberg.html Scientists Solve a Puzzle: What’s Really in a Fatberg]", ''The New York Times'', Oct. 4, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

UK television's Channel 4 broadcast "Fatberg Autopsy" in April 2018, a documentary featuring a team of scientists from the University of Exeter performing an 'autopsy' on a large sample of a fatberg discovered in London's South Bank.<ref>Fiona Sturges, "[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/21/fatberg-autopsy-getting-to-the-bottom-of-londons-dirty-secrets Fatberg Autopsy - getting to the bottom of London’s dirty secrets]", ''The Guardian'', April 21, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> The 'berg was composed of almost 90% cooking fats, embedded within which were found nappies, condoms, syringes, tampon applicators, drug bags and thousands of wet wipes. The team analyzed the sample chemically and found numerous stimulants and narcotics, both legal and illegal, including caffeine, cocaine, ketamine, MDMA, and morphine.<ref>Ibid.</ref> Over half of the drugs detected turned out to be hordenine and ostarine, chemicals used in performance-enhancing gym supplements.<ref>Nadia Khomami, "[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/24/fatberg-autopsy-reveals-growing-health-threat-londoners Fatberg 'autopsy' reveals growing health threat to Londoners]", ''The Guardian'', April 23, 2018, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

==Critical explorations==

In an essay in Strelka Mag,<ref>The magazine is a publishing offshoot of the [https://www.strelka.com/en Strelka Institute], an architecture and urban design non-profit based in Moscow.</ref> Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane set out to explore fatbergs as "a complex landscape ecology of the Anthropocene", adopting a series of 9 hypothetical zoomed views of a fatberg in the sewerage system of Melbourne, Australia. From abstracted systems of technological control and surveillance to the fatberg as landscape and host for microbial life, the authors set out to demonstrate "the entangled nature of the fatberg as a complex ecosystem that operates at both the scale of the city and at the micro level of the microorganism."<ref>Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane, "[https://strelkamag.com/en/article/fatberg-material-ecologies-and-the-complexities-of-waste Fatberg: Material Ecologies and the Complexities of Waste]". In foregrounding the phenomenon of fatbergs as one we can approach in a multiplicity of ways, the authors push for an understanding of the complex ways infrastructure, consumerism, and the natural world are interlinked—and that a proper understanding of our relationship to our environment must accommodate this complexity.</ref>

Netherlands–based artist/designers Mike Thompson and Arne Hendricks' Fatberg Project set out to grow a fatberg in laboratory conditions, initially housed at the MU art space in Eindhoven. Launched in December 2014 as part of Dutch Design Week, their 'berg was created by dripping a combination of rendered beef and pork fats into a vat of saline solution. They invited participants to become shareholders in the Fatberg by rendering their own fats at home and bringing them to MU to be added to the growing mass. The project was accompanied by a website exploring the history of our complex relationship to fat as a substance, from uses of fat as a fuel, to our current sublimation of its material properties in abstractions such as the Body Mass Index.<ref>Mike Thompson and Arne Hendricks, "[http://fatberg.nl/#intro Fatberg]" ''fatberg.nl'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022. The artists' overall aim with the project seemed to be to focus on fat as energy-store and source of potential. "Fat is one of THE iconic materials of our time. It relates to health. It relates to energy. It relates to beauty, ecology and consumption. Yet, the culture surrounding fat is poorly developed. We choose to look away, while fat wants to be seen: it’s in our bodies, our blocked sewers, in our food. Never before has there been so much fat. This raises critical questions: Why is there so much fat? What does it want? To begin answering this and more, and to give fat the podium it so desperately desires, we are building an island of fat: an autonomous space where fat can express itself, and we as a society redefine our relationship with this vital substance."</ref>

In his essay 'London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring', published in Social Studies of Science,<ref>Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]".</ref> Mike Michael makes a semiotic analysis of media representations of London fatbergs and the apprehensions of the phenomenon created in the public imagination. He notes a dualism in the public enactment of fatbergs: on the one hand, disgust at their material composition, shame over the flushing of wet wipes, and anxiety over the biological threat of backed-up sewage; and on the other, a pride in the 'London-ness' of the 'bergs<ref>Ibid. The author has noted how media representations of the phenomenon have used informal, particularly British, means of gauging fatbergs' scales, such as "the size of six double-decker buses", "more than twice the length of two Wembley football pitches", or "the weight of a small bungalow".</ref> and the bravery of the flushers who break down and remove them. His essay ultimately sounds a critical note, pointing out how the apprehension of fatbergs as a London-wide phenomenon tends to gloss social distinctions between different areas of the city, and how media portrayals of the sewerage system as a temporally-naturalized Victorian relic mitigates the responsibilities of the private utility company that maintains it.

==References==

{{Refs2}}

Monster Fatberg

2022-02-28T18:31:03Z

ThisTenement:

[[File:Whitechapel-monster-626.jpg|420px|thumb|right|The Whitechapel Fatberg. Photo: Thames Water.]]In September 2017 a massive 'fatberg'<ref>The word is credited to London sewer workers, coined when they first began to encounter the build-ups around 2008. See: Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]", ''The New Yorker'', Feb 9, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022. By August 2015, 'fatberg' was added to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary in its quarterly update, see: "[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/hangry-bants-fatberg-new-words-in-oxforddictionaries From bants to manspreading: what's new in the oxforddictionaries.com]", ''The Guardian'', Aug 27, 2015, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>—an agglomeration of congealed fat, discarded sanitary products, and other waste materials—was discovered in a sewer beneath the streets of East London. At 250 meters in length, and an estimated 130 metric tonnes in weight, the mass was the largest such blockage discovered to date, and was quickly dubbed 'monster fatberg' in media coverage.<ref>Matthew Taylor, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/12/total-monster-concrete-fatberg-blocks-london-sewage-system ’Total monster': fatberg blocks London sewage system]", ''The Guardian'', Sept 12, 2017, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

A team of eight workers from Thames Water, the private utility company that maintains the London sewerage system, worked for weeks on removing the blockage using a combination of power hoses and hand tools including pick axes and shovels.<ref>Jessica Taylor, "[https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/theplasticfreeproject/fatbergs-and-single-use-plastics-a4034686.html What is a fatberg, how is it formed and why are single-use plastics the main culprit?]", ''London Evening Standard'', Jan 17, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> The fatberg was found to be completely blocking the Victorian-era sewer that runs beneath the Whitechapel Road in London's East End, an area with many restaurants and take-away food outlets.<ref>"[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/09/the-guardian-view-on-the-whitechapel-fatberg-the-shock-of-the-poo The Guardian view on the Whitechapel fatberg: the shock of the poo]", ''The Guardian'', Feb 9, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Workers removed 20 to 30 tonnes on each shift, some of which was recycled as biodiesel fuel.<ref>Jessica Taylor, "[https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/theplasticfreeproject/fatbergs-and-single-use-plastics-a4034686.html What is a fatberg...]". Though possible to recycle fatbergs into biodiesel, it is an expensive and inefficient method of converting waste into energy, see: Vyki Sparkes, "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/exhibiting-fatberg-monster-whitechapel Fatberg! Exhibiting the 'Monster of Whitechapel']", ''museumoflondon.org.uk'', Feb 6, 2016, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

In 2019, a specially designed manhole cover was installed at the corner of Court Street and Whitechapel Road, as a monument to the 'defeat' of the Whitechapel Fatberg.<ref>"[https://londonist.com/london/secret/the-whitechapel-fatberg-has-its-own-memorial-manhole The Whitechapel Fatberg Has Its Own Hidden Memorial]", ''londonist.com'', Sept 19, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

==Causes and science==

Fatbergs form when fats, oils, and greases (FOGs) are discarded down drains as commercial and domestic cooking waste, and merge with improperly discarded sanitary products. FOGs undergo a process of hydrolysis on contact with water, separating into free fatty acids that, in turn, react to the calcium-rich (alkali) environment of the sewerage system to form hardened masses: a process known as saponification, the same mechanism by which soaps are produced.<ref>Hita Patel, "[https://2019.igem.org/wiki/images/8/8c/T--Warwick--2019-Hita-Report.pdf The Synthetic Biology and Chemistry of 'Fatbergs']", ''iGEM 2019'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

The problem has worsened in recent decades due to the increased consumer use of wet wipes, a product that mostly fails to break down in sewers, despite manufacturers labeling them as 'flushable'. Wet wipes and other discarded sanitary products, including tampons, condoms, and diapers, become bound up in the fatbergs as they form, creating a reinforced cement-like hardened mass.<ref>Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg from London sewer]", ''The Guardian'', Feb 19, 2021, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Many brands of wet wipes include plastic strengtheners such as thermoplastic polymer polypropylene making them impossible to break down in normal sewage conditions.<ref>Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]", ''Social Studies of Science'', Vol. 50(3), May 1, 2020, 377–397, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Fatbergs typically start to form at bends or junctions in the sewerage system, or around protruding objects such as tree roots that provide a surface to cling to. FOGs will initially accumulate around any uneven surface, which will in turn attract objects such as wipes, creating a matrix around which further FOGs will gather, to the point where the problem becomes self-compounding.<ref>Hita Patel, "[https://2019.igem.org/wiki/images/8/8c/T--Warwick--2019-Hita-Report.pdf The Synthetic Biology and Chemistry of 'Fatbergs']".</ref>

The built-up masses can emit sudden belches of gases including hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide, and methane, and the use of breathing apparatus is usually necessary during their removal.<ref>Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]".</ref> Utilities company workers have described the smell of fatbergs as akin to composting festival toilets and rotten meat.<ref>Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg...]".</ref>

Infectious bacteria including listeria, campylobacter and E coli have been found in fatbergs, which cause a risk to the utilities workers cleaning the system, but also to the public, as blockages may cause backups in drains and overflows.<ref>Justin Pachebat and Jo Hamilton, "[https://microbiologysociety.org/blog/sewage-science-are-bacteria-just-the-tip-of-the-fatberg.html Sewage Science: Are Bacteria Just The Tip Of The Fatberg?]", ''Microbiology Society'', May 18, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref><ref>Nadia Khomami, "[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/24/fatberg-autopsy-reveals-growing-health-threat-londoners Fatberg 'autopsy' reveals growing health threat to Londoners]", ''The Guardian'', April 23, 2018, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref> Many fatbergs go undetected until the blockages they cause result in discharges from overflow sewers: often into city river systems.<ref>Carrie Wells, "[https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-fatberg-20170925-story.html 'Fatberg' of congealed fat, wet wipes and waste discovered under Baltimore's streets, causing sewer overflows]", ''The Baltimore Sun'', Sept 26, 2017, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Though several of the largest fatbergs discovered have been in London and the UK, the phenomenon is an issue in almost every large city worldwide,<ref>Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]".</ref> with examples found from Baltimore, MD,<ref>Carrie Wells, "[https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-fatberg-20170925-story.html 'Fatberg' of congealed fat, wet wipes and waste discovered under Baltimore's streets]".</ref> to Melbourne, Australia.<ref>Chanel Zagon, "[https://www.9news.com.au/national/giant-fatberg-discovered-melbourne-sewer-by-yarra-valley-water/870aadd6-ccd8-41ae-b1af-464c37726d01 Giant fatberg heavier than petrol tanker discovered in Melbourne sewer]", ''9news.com.au'', Apr 14, 2020, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

==Municipal responses==

The damage caused to sewerage systems, and the huge expense of having to remove the 'bergs<ref>Thames Water reported spending £18m a year clearing blockages from sewers in London and the Thames Valley. See: Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg from London sewer]".</ref> has led to widespread "bin it, don't flush it" public information campaigns to educate consumers on what can and cannot be flushed down their toilets and disposed down drains.<ref>"[https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/whats-new/trash-it-dont-flush-it.page Trash it. Don’t Flush it.]", ''nyc.gov'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref><ref>"[https://publicworks.macombgov.org/PublicWorks-fatberg DON'T FEED THE FATBERG!]", ''Macomb County Public Works Office'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> British environmental organization City to Sea produced an animated film in which actor Andy Serkis voiced a talking anus, encouraging the public to be a "good asshole" and not flush wet wipes.<ref>”[https://www.citytosea.org.uk/campaign/be-a-good-ahole/ BE A GOOD A**HOLE]”, ''citytosea.org.uk'', retrieved Feb 28, 2022.</ref> A film produced by Jacksonville, Florida, utilities company JEA played on the public revulsion at fatbergs with a horror-themed trailer film,<ref>"[https://www.fatberginvasion.com Invasion of the Fatbergs]", ''JEA Utility'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> an approach that has become a widespread trope in the representation of the issue.<ref>See: Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]".</ref>

Political and legal responses have included moves to pressurize manufacturers to label wet wipes and other sanitary products as non-flushable. In New York, a City Council bill was introduced to prohibit advertising certain wet wipes as flushable<ref>Matt Flegenheimer, "[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/nyregion/the-wet-wipes-box-says-flush-but-the-new-york-city-sewer-system-says-dont.html Wet Wipes Box Says Flush. New York’s Sewer System Says Don’t]", ''The New York Times'', March 13, 2015, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>, and in Charleston, South Carolina, the city's water management agency filed a lawsuit against major manufacturers and retailers, accusing them of false labeling.<ref>Gerald Porter Jr., "[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-26/pandemic-wipes-create-sewer-clogging-fatbergs America’s Obsession With Wipes Is Tearing Up Sewer Systems]", ''bloomberg.com'', March 26, 2021, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Despite these educational and legal responses, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a renewed increase in fatbergs as a critical problem for water utilities companies around the world. The surge in use of sanitizing surface wipes, and the temporary scarcity of flushable toilet paper in the early months of the pandemic, saw a 75% rise in sales of wipes, and an attendant increase in the discarding of non-flushable materials down drains.<ref>Ibid.</ref>

==Cultural and media life==

The phenomenon of fatbergs seems to have touched a raw nerve with the public, and ensured an ongoing media life since they were first reported as a problem.<ref>Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane have highlighted the ways in which fatbergs play on fears that the sewerage system (only the top-most level of which we are usually conscious of, the part that enters our own homes) suddenly backs up and overflows into our domestic space. "Now having emerged into existence, the fatberg’s continuous formation has the capacity to grow in reverse order back up through the linear system of the sewers that has supported its generation to invade the spaces from which its material being is drawn." See: Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane, "[https://strelkamag.com/en/article/fatberg-material-ecologies-and-the-complexities-of-waste Fatberg: Material Ecologies and the Complexities of Waste]", ''strelkamag.com'', Oct 28, 2020, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

The Museum of London put a section of the Whitechapel fatberg on display in a glass case as the central exhibit of its exhibition, "Fatberg!", which opened in February 2018 and ran for 6 months.<ref>Vyki Sparkes, "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/exhibiting-fatberg-monster-whitechapel Fatberg! Exhibiting the 'Monster of Whitechapel']".</ref> Exhibition curator Vyki Sparkes spoke of the compelling nature of the exhibition's subject matter: "This is a really potent object. People are fascinated by it [...] As a society, we’ve created this unseen growing monster that lives in the sewers, a place that we depend on but never see." She compared the phenomenon to the painting in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray: "it shows our disgusting side. Just as in Oscar Wilde’s novel, it is hidden away, getting worse and worse as we pile the accumulated sins of the city into it: cooking fat, condoms, needles, wet wipes, and of course human waste."<ref>Ibid.</ref>

The exhibition proved a conservation challenge: the museum's sample had to be dried out for a time before being put on display, and hatched flies and became covered in a layer of mould.<ref>Ibid.</ref> The museum, acknowledging this mutability in their object, installed a 'fatcam' to live-stream the changes it was undergoing while part of the museum’s collection. The object was hastily removed, however, when it started to grow the toxic mould aspergillus.<ref>"Whilst on display the fatberg hatched flies, sweated and changed colour. Since going off display, fatberg has started to grow an unusual and toxic mould, in the form of visible yellow pustules. Our collections care team has identified this as aspergillus. Conservators believe that fatberg started to grow the spores whilst on display and now a month later, these spores have become more visible. Any changes to the samples will now be able to be viewed live." See: "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/fatcam-watch-fatberg-live FatCam! Watch fatberg in real time]", ''museumoflondon.org.uk'', Aug 14, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Nevertheless, "Fatberg!" was a success for the Museum of London, with boosted visitor numbers and media coverage over the course of its run.<ref>Anna Schaverien, "[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/world/europe/sidmouth-fatberg.html Scientists Solve a Puzzle: What’s Really in a Fatberg]", ''The New York Times'', Oct. 4, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

UK television's Channel 4 broadcast "Fatberg Autopsy" in April 2018, a documentary featuring a team of scientists from the University of Exeter performing an 'autopsy' on a large sample of a fatberg discovered in London's South Bank.<ref>Fiona Sturges, "[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/21/fatberg-autopsy-getting-to-the-bottom-of-londons-dirty-secrets Fatberg Autopsy - getting to the bottom of London’s dirty secrets]", ''The Guardian'', April 21, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> The 'berg was composed of almost 90% cooking fats, embedded within which were found nappies, condoms, syringes, tampon applicators, drug bags and thousands of wet wipes. The team analyzed the sample chemically and found numerous stimulants and narcotics, both legal and illegal, including caffeine, cocaine, ketamine, MDMA, and morphine.<ref>Ibid.</ref> Over half of the drugs detected turned out to be hordenine and ostarine, chemicals used in performance-enhancing gym supplements.<ref>Nadia Khomami, "[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/24/fatberg-autopsy-reveals-growing-health-threat-londoners Fatberg 'autopsy' reveals growing health threat to Londoners]", ''The Guardian'', April 23, 2018, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

==Critical explorations==

In an essay in Strelka Mag,<ref>The magazine is a publishing offshoot of the [https://www.strelka.com/en Strelka Institute], an architecture and urban design non-profit based in Moscow.</ref> Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane set out to explore fatbergs as "a complex landscape ecology of the Anthropocene", adopting a series of 9 hypothetical zoomed views of a fatberg in the sewerage system of Melbourne, Australia. From abstracted systems of technological control and surveillance to the fatberg as landscape and host for microbial life, the authors set out to demonstrate "the entangled nature of the fatberg as a complex ecosystem that operates at both the scale of the city and at the micro level of the microorganism."<ref>Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane, "[https://strelkamag.com/en/article/fatberg-material-ecologies-and-the-complexities-of-waste Fatberg: Material Ecologies and the Complexities of Waste]". In foregrounding the phenomenon of fatbergs as one we can approach in a multiplicity of ways, the authors push for an understanding of the complex ways infrastructure, consumerism, and the natural world are interlinked—and that a proper understanding of our relationship to our environment must accommodate this complexity.</ref>

Netherlands–based artist/designers Mike Thompson and Arne Hendricks' Fatberg Project set out to grow a fatberg in laboratory conditions, initially housed at the MU art space in Eindhoven. Launched in December 2014 as part of Dutch Design Week, their 'berg was created by dripping a combination of rendered beef and pork fats into a vat of saline solution. They invited participants to become shareholders in the Fatberg by rendering their own fats at home and bringing them to MU to be added to the growing mass. The project was accompanied by a website exploring the history of our complex relationship to fat as a substance, from uses of fat as a fuel, to our current sublimation of its material properties in abstractions such as the Body Mass Index.<ref>Mike Thompson and Arne Hendricks, "[http://fatberg.nl/#intro Fatberg]" ''fatberg.nl'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022. The artists' overall aim with the project seemed to be to focus on fat as energy-store and source of potential. "Fat is one of THE iconic materials of our time. It relates to health. It relates to energy. It relates to beauty, ecology and consumption. Yet, the culture surrounding fat is poorly developed. We choose to look away, while fat wants to be seen: it’s in our bodies, our blocked sewers, in our food. Never before has there been so much fat. This raises critical questions: Why is there so much fat? What does it want? To begin answering this and more, and to give fat the podium it so desperately desires, we are building an island of fat: an autonomous space where fat can express itself, and we as a society redefine our relationship with this vital substance."</ref>

In his essay 'London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring', published in Social Studies of Science,<ref>Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]".</ref> Mike Michael makes a semiotic analysis of media representations of London fatbergs and the apprehensions of the phenomenon created in the public imagination. He notes a dualism in the public enactment of fatbergs: on the one hand, disgust at their material composition, shame over the flushing of wet wipes, and anxiety over the biological threat of backed-up sewage; and on the other, a pride in the 'London-ness' of the 'bergs<ref>Ibid. The author has noted how media representations of the phenomenon have used informal, particularly British, means of gauging fatbergs' scales, such as "the size of six double-decker buses", "more than twice the length of two Wembley football pitches", or "the weight of a small bungalow".</ref> and the bravery of the flushers who break down and remove them. His essay ultimately sounds a critical note, pointing out how the apprehension of fatbergs as a London-wide phenomenon tends to gloss social distinctions between different areas of the city, and how media portrayals of the sewerage system as a temporally-naturalized Victorian relic mitigates the responsibilities of the private utility company that maintains it.

==References==

{{Refs2}}

File:Img-manhole-cover-2265.jpg

2022-02-28T18:25:38Z

ThisTenement:

File:Whitechapel-monster-626.jpg

2022-02-28T18:24:11Z

ThisTenement:

File:170912fatberg desk.mp4

2022-02-28T18:23:28Z

ThisTenement:

2022-02-28T15:05:59Z

ThisTenement: Created page with "In September 2017 a massive 'fatberg'<ref>The word is credited to London sewer workers, coined when they first began to encounter the build-ups around 2008. See: Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]", ''The New Yorker'', Feb 9, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022. By August 2015, 'fatberg' was added to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary in its quar..."

In September 2017 a massive 'fatberg'<ref>The word is credited to London sewer workers, coined when they first began to encounter the build-ups around 2008. See: Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]", ''The New Yorker'', Feb 9, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022. By August 2015, 'fatberg' was added to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary in its quarterly update, see: "[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/hangry-bants-fatberg-new-words-in-oxforddictionaries From bants to manspreading: what's new in the oxforddictionaries.com]", ''The Guardian'', Aug 27, 2015, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>—an agglomeration of congealed fat, discarded sanitary products, and other waste materials—was discovered in a sewer beneath the streets of East London. At 250 meters in length, and an estimated 130 metric tonnes in weight, the mass was the largest such blockage discovered to date, and was quickly dubbed 'monster fatberg' in media coverage.<ref>Matthew Taylor, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/12/total-monster-concrete-fatberg-blocks-london-sewage-system ’Total monster': fatberg blocks London sewage system]", ''The Guardian'', Sept 12, 2017, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

A team of eight workers from Thames Water, the private utility company that maintains the London sewerage system, worked for weeks on removing the blockage using a combination of power hoses and hand tools including pick axes and shovels.<ref>Jessica Taylor, "[https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/theplasticfreeproject/fatbergs-and-single-use-plastics-a4034686.html What is a fatberg, how is it formed and why are single-use plastics the main culprit?]'', ''London Evening Standard'', Jan 17, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> The fatberg was found to be completely blocking the Victorian-era sewer that runs beneath the Whitechapel Road in London's East End, an area with many restaurants and take-away food outlets.<ref>"[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/09/the-guardian-view-on-the-whitechapel-fatberg-the-shock-of-the-poo The Guardian view on the Whitechapel fatberg: the shock of the poo]", ''The Guardian'', Feb 9, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Workers removed 20 to 30 tonnes on each shift, some of which was recycled as biodiesel fuel.<ref>Jessica Taylor, "[https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/theplasticfreeproject/fatbergs-and-single-use-plastics-a4034686.html What is a fatberg...]''. Though possible to recycle fatbergs into biodiesel, it is an expensive and inefficient method of converting waste into energy, see: Vyki Sparkes, "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/exhibiting-fatberg-monster-whitechapel Fatberg! Exhibiting the 'Monster of Whitechapel']", ''museumoflondon.org.uk'', Feb 6, 2016, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

In 2019, a specially designed manhole cover was installed at the corner of Court Street and Whitechapel Road, as a monument to the 'defeat' of the Whitechapel Fatberg.<ref>"[https://londonist.com/london/secret/the-whitechapel-fatberg-has-its-own-memorial-manhole The Whitechapel Fatberg Has Its Own Hidden Memorial]", ''londonist.com'', Sept 19, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

==Causes and science==

Fatbergs form when fats, oils, and greases (FOGs) are discarded down drains as commercial and domestic cooking waste, and merge with improperly discarded sanitary products. FOGs undergo a process of hydrolysis on contact with water, separating into free fatty acids that, in turn, react to the calcium-rich (alkali) environment of the sewerage system to form hardened masses: a process known as saponification, the same mechanism by which soaps are produced.<ref>Hita Patel, "[https://2019.igem.org/wiki/images/8/8c/T--Warwick--2019-Hita-Report.pdf The Synthetic Biology and Chemistry of 'Fatbergs']", ''iGEM 2019'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

The problem has worsened in recent decades due to the increased consumer use of wet wipes, a product that mostly fails to break down in sewers, despite manufacturers labeling them as 'flushable'. Wet wipes and other discarded sanitary products, including tampons, condoms, and diapers, become bound up in the fatbergs as they form, creating a reinforced cement-like hardened mass.<ref>Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg from London sewer]", ''The Guardian'', Feb 19, 2021, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Many brands of wet wipes include plastic strengtheners such as thermoplastic polymer polypropylene making them impossible to break down in normal sewage conditions.<ref>Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]", ''Social Studies of Science'', Vol. 50(3), May 1, 2020, 377–397, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Fatbergs typically start to form at bends or junctions in the sewerage system, or around protruding objects such as tree roots that provide a surface to cling to. FOGs will initially accumulate around any uneven surface, which will in turn attract objects such as wipes, creating a matrix around which further FOGs will gather, to the point where the problem becomes self-compounding.<ref>Hita Patel, "[https://2019.igem.org/wiki/images/8/8c/T--Warwick--2019-Hita-Report.pdf The Synthetic Biology and Chemistry of 'Fatbergs']".</ref>

The built-up masses can emit sudden belches of gases including hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide, and methane, and the use of breathing apparatus is usually necessary during their removal.<ref>Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]'', ''The New Yorker'', Feb 9, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Utilities company workers have described the smell of fatbergs as akin to composting festival toilets and rotten meat.<ref>Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg...]".</ref>

Infectious bacteria including listeria, campylobacter and E coli have been found in fatbergs, which cause a risk to the utilities workers cleaning the system, but also to the public, as blockages may cause backups in drains and overflows.<ref>Justin Pachebat and Jo Hamilton, "[https://microbiologysociety.org/blog/sewage-science-are-bacteria-just-the-tip-of-the-fatberg.html Sewage Science: Are Bacteria Just The Tip Of The Fatberg?]", ''Microbiology Society'', May 18, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref><ref>Nadia Khomami, "[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/24/fatberg-autopsy-reveals-growing-health-threat-londoners Fatberg 'autopsy' reveals growing health threat to Londoners]", ''The Guardian'', April 23, 2018, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref> Many fatbergs go undetected until the blockages they cause result in discharges from overflow sewers: often into city river systems.<ref>Carrie Wells, "[https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-fatberg-20170925-story.html 'Fatberg' of congealed fat, wet wipes and waste discovered under Baltimore's streets, causing sewer overflows]", ''The Baltimore Sun'', Sept 26, 2017, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Though several of the largest fatbergs discovered have been in London and the UK, the phenomenon is an issue in almost every large city worldwide<ref>Sam Knight, "[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/londons-favorite-new-fatberg A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London]''.</ref>, with examples found from Baltimore, MD<ref>Carrie Wells, "[https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-fatberg-20170925-story.html 'Fatberg' of congealed fat, wet wipes and waste discovered under Baltimore's streets, causing sewer overflows]", ''The Baltimore Sun'', Sept 26, 2017, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>, to Melbourne, Australia.<ref>Chanel Zagon, "[https://www.9news.com.au/national/giant-fatberg-discovered-melbourne-sewer-by-yarra-valley-water/870aadd6-ccd8-41ae-b1af-464c37726d01 Giant fatberg heavier than petrol tanker discovered in Melbourne sewer]", ''9news.com.au'', Apr 14, 2020, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

==Municipal responses==

The damage caused to sewerage systems, and the huge expense of having to remove the 'bergs<ref>Thames Water reported spending £18m a year clearing blockages from sewers in London and the Thames Valley. See: Lucy Campbell, "[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/19/workers-clear-huge-disgusting-fatberg-from-london-sewer Workers clear 'huge, disgusting' fatberg from London sewer]", ''The Guardian'', Feb 19, 2021, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> has led to widespread "bin it, don't flush it" public information campaigns to educate consumers on what can and cannot be flushed down their toilets and disposed down drains.<ref>"[https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/whats-new/trash-it-dont-flush-it.page Trash it. Don’t Flush it.]'', ''nyc.gov'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref><ref>"[https://publicworks.macombgov.org/PublicWorks-fatberg DON'T FEED THE FATBERG!]'', ''Macomb County Public Works Office'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> British environmental organization City to Sea produced an animated film in which actor Andy Serkis voiced a talking anus, encouraging the public to be a "good asshole" and not flush wet wipes.<ref>Matthew Jenkin, "[https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/14/andy-serkis-plays-talking-anus-in-fatberg-prevention-campaign Andy Serkis plays talking anus in fatberg prevention campaign]", ''The Guardian'', Oct 14, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> A film produced by Jacksonville, Florida, utilities company JEA played on the public revulsion at fatbergs with a horror-themed trailer film<ref>"[https://www.fatberginvasion.com Invasion of the Fatbergs]'', ''JEA Utility'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>, an approach that has become a widespread trope in the representation of the issue.<ref>See: Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]", ''Social Studies of Science'', Vol. 50(3), May 1, 2020, 377–397, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Political and legal responses have included moves to pressurize manufacturers to label wet wipes and other sanitary products as non-flushable. In New York, a City Council bill was introduced to prohibit advertising certain wet wipes as flushable<ref>Matt Flegenheimer, "[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/nyregion/the-wet-wipes-box-says-flush-but-the-new-york-city-sewer-system-says-dont.html Wet Wipes Box Says Flush. New York’s Sewer System Says Don’t]", ''The New York Times'', March 13, 2015, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>, and in Charleston, South Carolina, the city's water management agency filed a lawsuit against major manufacturers and retailers, accusing them of false labeling.<ref>Gerald Porter Jr., "[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-26/pandemic-wipes-create-sewer-clogging-fatbergs America’s Obsession With Wipes Is Tearing Up Sewer Systems]", ''bloomberg.com'', March 26, 2021, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

Despite these educational and legal responses, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a renewed increase in fatbergs as a critical problem for water utilities companies around the world. The surge in use of sanitizing surface wipes, and the temporary scarcity of flushable toilet paper in the early months of the pandemic, saw a 75% rise in sales of wipes, and an attendant increase in the discarding of non-flushable materials down drains.<ref>Ibid.</ref>

==Cultural and media life==

The phenomenon of fatbergs seems to have touched a raw nerve with the public, and ensured an ongoing media life since they were first reported as a problem.<ref>Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane have highlighted the ways in which fatbergs play on fears that the sewerage system (only the top-most level of which we are usually conscious of—the part that enters our own homes) suddenly backs up and overflows into our domestic space. "Now having emerged into existence, the fatberg’s continuous formation has the capacity to grow in reverse order back up through the linear system of the sewers that has supported its generation to invade the spaces from which its material being is drawn." See: Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane, "[https://strelkamag.com/en/article/fatberg-material-ecologies-and-the-complexities-of-waste Fatberg: Material Ecologies and the Complexities of Waste]'', ''strelkamag.com'', Oct 28, 2020, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

The Museum of London put a section of the Whitechapel fatberg on display in a glass case as the central exhibit of its exhibition, "Fatberg!", which opened in February 2018 and ran for 6 months.<ref>Vyki Sparkes, "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/exhibiting-fatberg-monster-whitechapel Fatberg! Exhibiting the 'Monster of Whitechapel']", ''museumoflondon.org.uk'', Feb 6, 2016, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref> Exhibition curator Vyki Sparkes spoke of the compelling nature of the exhibition's subject matter: "This is a really potent object. People are fascinated by it [...] As a society, we’ve created this unseen growing monster that lives in the sewers, a place that we depend on but never see." She compared the phenomenon to the painting in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray: "it shows our disgusting side. Just as in Oscar Wilde’s novel, it is hidden away, getting worse and worse as we pile the accumulated sins of the city into it: cooking fat, condoms, needles, wet wipes, and of course human waste."<ref>Ibid.</ref>

The exhibition proved a conservation challenge: the museum's sample had to be dried out for a time before being put on display, and hatched flies and became covered in a layer of mould.<ref>Ibid.</ref> The museum, acknowledging this mutability in their object, installed a 'fatcam' to live-stream the changes it was undergoing while part of the museum’s collection. The object was hastily removed, however, when it started to grow the toxic mould aspergillus.<ref>"Whilst on display the fatberg hatched flies, sweated and changed colour. Since going off display, fatberg has started to grow an unusual and toxic mould, in the form of visible yellow pustules. Our collections care team has identified this as aspergillus. Conservators believe that fatberg started to grow the spores whilst on display and now a month later, these spores have become more visible. Any changes to the samples will now be able to be viewed live." See: "[https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/fatcam-watch-fatberg-live FatCam! Watch fatberg in real time]'', ''museumoflondon.org.uk'', Aug 14, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> Nevertheless, "Fatberg!" was a success for the Museum of London, with boosted visitor numbers and media coverage over the course of its run.<ref>Anna Schaverien, "[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/world/europe/sidmouth-fatberg.html Scientists Solve a Puzzle: What’s Really in a Fatberg]'', ''The New York Times'', Oct. 4, 2019, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref>

UK television's Channel 4 broadcast "Fatberg Autopsy" in April 2018, a documentary featuring a team of scientists from the University of Exeter performing an 'autopsy' on a large sample of a fatberg discovered in London's South Bank.<ref>Fiona Sturges, "[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/21/fatberg-autopsy-getting-to-the-bottom-of-londons-dirty-secrets Fatberg Autopsy - getting to the bottom of London’s dirty secrets]'', ''The Guardian'', April 21, 2018, retrieved Feb 25, 2022.</ref> The 'berg was composed of almost 90% cooking fats, embedded within which were found nappies, condoms, syringes, tampon applicators, drug bags and thousands of wet wipes. The team analyzed the sample chemically and found numerous stimulants and narcotics, both legal and illegal, including caffeine, cocaine, ketamine, MDMA, and morphine.<ref>Ibid.</ref> Over half of the drugs detected turned out to be hordenine and ostarine, chemicals used in performance-enhancing gym supplements.<ref>Nadia Khomami, "[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/24/fatberg-autopsy-reveals-growing-health-threat-londoners Fatberg 'autopsy' reveals growing health threat to Londoners]", ''The Guardian'', April 23, 2018, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>

==Critical explorations==

In an essay in Strelka Mag<ref>The magazine is a publishing offshoot of the [https://www.strelka.com/en Strelka Institute], an architecture and urban design non-profit based in Moscow.</ref>, Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane set out to explore fatbergs as "a complex landscape ecology of the Anthropocene", adopting a series of 9 hypothetical zoomed views of a fatberg in the sewerage system of Melbourne, Australia. From abstracted systems of technological control and surveillance to the fatberg as landscape and host for microbial life, the authors set out to demonstrate "the entangled nature of the fatberg as a complex ecosystem that operates at both the scale of the city and at the micro level of the microorganism."<ref>Rosalea Monacella and Bridget Keane, "[https://strelkamag.com/en/article/fatberg-material-ecologies-and-the-complexities-of-waste Fatberg: Material Ecologies and the Complexities of Waste]''. In foregrounding the phenomenon of fatbergs as one we can approach in a multiplicity of ways, the authors push for an understanding of the complex ways infrastructure, consumerism, and the natural world are interlinked—and that a proper understanding of our relationship to our environment must accommodate this complexity.</ref>

Netherlands–based artist/designers Mike Thompson and Arne Hendricks' Fatberg Project set out to grow a fatberg in laboratory conditions, initially housed at the MU art space in Eindhoven. Launched in December 2014 as part of Dutch Design Week, their 'berg was created by dripping a combination of rendered beef and pork fats into a vat of saline solution. They invited participants to become shareholders in the Fatberg by rendering their own fats at home and bringing them to MU to be added to the growing mass. The project was accompanied by a website exploring the history of our complex relationship to fat as a substance, from uses of fat as a fuel, to our current sublimation of its material properties in abstractions such as the Body Mass Index.<ref>Mike Thompson and Arne Hendricks, "[http://fatberg.nl/#intro Fatberg]" ''fatberg.nl'', retrieved Feb 25, 2022. The artists' overall aim with the project seemed to be to focus on fat as energy-store and source of potential. "Fat is one of THE iconic materials of our time. It relates to health. It relates to energy. It relates to beauty, ecology and consumption. Yet, the culture surrounding fat is poorly developed. We choose to look away, while fat wants to be seen: it’s in our bodies, our blocked sewers, in our food. Never before has there been so much fat. This raises critical questions: Why is there so much fat? What does it want? To begin answering this and more, and to give fat the podium it so desperately desires, we are building an island of fat: an autonomous space where fat can express itself, and we as a society redefine our relationship with this vital substance."</ref>

In his essay 'London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring', published in Social Studies of Science<ref>Mike Michael, "[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312720917754 London’s fatbergs and affective infrastructuring]", ''Social Studies of Science'', Vol. 50(3), May 1, 2020, 377–397, retrieved Feb 26, 2022.</ref>, Mike Michael makes a semiotic analysis of media representations of London fatbergs and the apprehensions of the phenomenon created in the public imagination. He notes a dualism in the public enactment of fatbergs: on the one hand, disgust at their material composition, shame over the flushing of wet wipes, and anxiety over the biological threat of backed-up sewage; and on the other, a pride in the 'London-ness' of the 'bergs<ref>The author has noted how media representations of the phenomenon have used informal, particularly British, means of gauging fatbergs' scales, such as "the size of six double-decker buses", "more than twice the length of two Wembley football pitches", or "the weight of a small bungalow". See Mike Michael, Ibid.</ref> and the bravery of the flushers who break down and remove them. His essay ultimately sounds a critical note, pointing out how the apprehension of fatbergs as a London-wide phenomenon tends to gloss social distinctions between different areas of the city, and how media portrayals of the sewerage system as a temporally-naturalized Victorian relic mitigates the responsibilities of the private utility company that maintains it.

==References==

{{Refs2}}