What do you think happens now and for most of human history? BTW Prions are in brain tissue(if raw sewage in your area contains a large amount of human brains :eek:) Hep and HIV can’t survive being out in a field, and cancer is not contagious(if you’re talking about HPV no way is it gonna survive in a field).
I’m almost certain you’re confusing sludge (sewage as it goes into a treatment plant) with the solids left behind at the end of the treatment cycle. After going through the treatment process, the biosolids at the end resemble human feces about as much as human feces resemble food. The various biological and chemical treatments they go through ensure that any pathogens in the source material are eliminated. When I toured our local STP in high school the guide made it a point to have all of us scoop up a handful of what was left at the end of the process. It felt and smelled essentially like dirt.
Regardless, none of the diseases you mention could plausibly be transmitted or caused by fertilizing food even with raw human sewage, much less processed biosolids.
Where do e coli outbreaks from vegetables come from, then?
Milwaukee sewage sludge has been used for fertilizer since 1926. Milorganite is very popular on golf greens because of its richness and it doesn’t burn the grass.
I’ve been buying a bag for my yard every spring since 1997. My local Farmer’s Co-Op Sells it. It really won’t burn grass. I’ve had minor spills on my yard and I just level out the pile with my shoe. It’s never killed a blade of grass yet. I also use it in my flowerbeds.
Like any good fertilizer there’s a Urea smell. Which is a sign of quality. That’s the high nitrogen levels. No poop or urine smell at all.
I wouldn’t use it in a home garden. That’s just my personal preference. They claim Milorganite is pure but I’m not eating vegetables grown in it.
That last part of my post was more of a nitpick than a general comment on the safety of using feces as fertilizer. None of the specific diseases vicjperry mentioned in his post (prion disease, hepatitis, HIV, or cancer) could be spread or caused by manure. Obviously E. coli (and a host of others) could be.
However, that doesn’t change my main point, which was that using processed biosolids from a treatment plant is NOT akin to using raw sewage. See Aceplace’s post mentioning Milorganite, for example.
A few years ago people were recommending using horse poop as briquettes on fires. You put the poop into a briquette maker, and leave it to dry for 3 to 4 weeks, it doesn’t smell and burns reasonably well. Apparently if you use wood based bedding (shavings or sawdust) it burns better.
However a report by some scientist claims that burning horse poo gives off chemicals that are extremely dangerous to pregnant women and young girls (can’t cite, as it was a post on another board with no links to anything)
Apparently the chemicals are from wormers and feed additives like mineral licks and supplements.
A never ending supply of free fuel causes medical problems huh? Seems legit.
Those residual solids you’re describing here are the sludge. The input to a treatment plant is generally called wastewater; the outputs are treated water and sludge. “Biosolids” is a PR term because nobody’s going to put “sludge” on their tomatoes.
Fresh Cow Manure, however, really does not smell good. I’ve lived around dairy farms a lot, and I know that smell. So does my wife, who grew up equidistant from a major dairy farm and the plant that makes orange flavoring for Jello.
To this day she can’t stand orange Jello, she says, because in her memory the smell is conmingled with that of cow poop.
Regarding the usefulness of cow manure, have a look at anthropologist Marvin Harris’ books. In several of them he points out that the Sacredness of cattle in India derives in part from the extreme usefulness of the animal in a great many ways. Among these is the use of Manure, which is not only fertilizer, but buiolding compound (it is used in making floors sand walls) and as fuel. evemn in tyhe availability of wood, dried cow manure provides a slow-burning fuel that can be used for long-burning fires to slow-cook foods unattended in a “crock-pot” while the mother is working outside, he claims.
Yeah, I don’t know what people are smoking here. Opinion, I know, but fresh cow and horse dung doesn’t smell all that good. Thankfully, it loses that smell quickly, and takes on more of that “earthy” smell that many people seem to like (or, at least, not mind).
That said, the times I’ve been on a farm, I discovered that while cow dung doesn’t smell that great, cow urine is as vile a stench as one can imagine. Shudder.
- Never heard of that. There are projects to use manure - human and animal - in a tank which ferments and produces biogas (methane ?) which is then burned instead of natural gas. This works very nice in small scale in African countries. (The improved latrine is a ventilated latrine, but that doesn’t produce gas).
There are talks about doing this large-scale in other countries, I think Cecil did a column and nixed it on the ground of cost of transport.
My city already does this: at the sewage plants, the sludge is taken out and ferments in a high tower producing biogas. This gas is then cleaned, burned to produce electricity and used to power (partly) the sewage plant. German video here http://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/Stadtverwaltung/baureferat/mse.html (halfway down the page Energie aus Klärschlamm
German PDF here http://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/rathaus/dms/Home/Stadtverwaltung/Baureferat/mse/pubblikationen/pdf/faultuerme_klw_I_pdf.pdf
- In the past, sludge from sewage plants was dumped onto fields, just as untreated manure purin is still allowed to be dumped despite the problems. The problem however was not the bacteria, but rather heavy metals and similar from the other stuff in the water that ended in the sludge. (With purin, liquid cow shit, the problem is excessive nitrite and yes, bacteria and similar).
However, organic farmers know what to do with cow manure: instead of diluting it into purin, they take the solid manure and let it compose for several months. During this time, not only does the compost heap reach high temps. of above 40 C (killing bacteria), it changes composition to actually serve as positive fertilizer.
So done with the correct treatment, it could be done, but would be not-practical idea, compared to letting cow manure compose and human shit ferment.
Using untreated manure or shit, usually.
I’ve been around people who were heating their home/apartment with a kerosene heater (due to economics). Lemme tell you, they stank.
Besides the answers already mentioned - that dried dung doesn’t smell as much as human shit - another aspect is that because dung contains so much organic stuff and moisture, it will make a smokey fire (compared to a fire from very dry wood which produces very little smoke). This is often an advantage, however, because it keeps flies and similar away. Herdsmen sometimes throw wet grass and other stuff on a fire on purpose to keep the flying pests away if it gets bad.
I only know of herbivores: cows in many parts, camels in the Sahara desert, horses in the Mongolian steppes. Part of that is economy - the same amount of land will support more herbivores than carnivores. Esp. if it’s such a sparse land that can’t support trees in the first place.
If you count indirectly by producing methane through fermentation and burning that, then yes.
Here’s a researchpaper I found in english discussing latrines in poor countries.
I believe an outbreak in…um…spinach or broccoli, don’t remember, a few years ago was attributed to wild pigs.
In interpret those lyrics differently. It seems they are complaining about the conditions on the trail and are saying they would prefer to round Cape Horn rather than cook with buffalo chips and green wood.
You cannot find a stick of wood
On all this prairie wide;
Whene’er you eat you’ve got to stand
Or sit on some old bull hide.
It’s fun to cook with buffalo chips
Or mesquite, green as corn, –
If I’d once known what I know now
I’d have gone around Cape Horn.
You can get used to anything if it means keeping warm and eating cooked food instead of raw. Animal dung is used for fires in many places, particularly in the Sahara regions of Africa, where camel dung is used. I would suspect the same holds true for other arid climates such as the Gobi, and in high altitude areas where trees don’t grow.
You’re very clearly misunderstanding me – that’s the way I interpret it as well.
It doesn’t.
Heartily agree with Ulfreida! It doesn’t. Many people who ride, groom and then clean their horses’ stalls, and I have never heard one complaint about a bad smell. I agree it might be an acquired… uh… taste, but one soon gets used to it and when you look into those big brown eyes, it doesn’t matter one bit.
Because it was me who rode him, it fell to me to curry our mule Mr. Ed, and I never minded shovelling out his stall. Don’t laugh, please, but it became a pleasant responsibility which I can only liken to changing a baby’s diaper. Only better smelling.
Q
PS: Apparently I just repeated myself. Sorry!