Human Waste Safe for Growing Vegetables, Researchers Say (yahoo.com) 83
As farmers in Europe and across the world grapple with increases in the cost of fertilizers, researchers suggest a solution may be closer to home in what people flush down the toilet. From a report: A peer-reviewed paper by scientists in Europe published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science found that fertilizer made from human feces and urine is safe to use, and that only extremely tiny quantities of chemicals from medicines or drugs, for example, would get into the food. Governments worldwide are struggling to keep fertilizer costs manageable and increase self-sufficiency after Russia's invasion of Ukraine drove up prices of natural gas, a key feedstock for crop nutrients. European Union authorities are considering ways to speed up development of manure-based fertilizers after the surge in costs spurred anger among the bloc's farmers.
In terms of safety, the researchers screened human waste for 310 chemicals, from pharmaceuticals to insect repellents, and found that only 6.5% of these were above the limit for detection and at low concentrations. "In general, the risk for human health of pharmaceutical compounds entering the food system by means of fecal compost use, seems low," the authors concluded. While they detected two pharmaceutical products in edible parts of cabbages, the painkiller ibuprofen and the anticonvulsant drug carbamazepine, the concentrations were markedly low. This means that more than half a million cabbage heads would need to be eaten to accumulate a dose equivalent to one carbamazepine pill, they said.
In terms of safety, the researchers screened human waste for 310 chemicals, from pharmaceuticals to insect repellents, and found that only 6.5% of these were above the limit for detection and at low concentrations. "In general, the risk for human health of pharmaceutical compounds entering the food system by means of fecal compost use, seems low," the authors concluded. While they detected two pharmaceutical products in edible parts of cabbages, the painkiller ibuprofen and the anticonvulsant drug carbamazepine, the concentrations were markedly low. This means that more than half a million cabbage heads would need to be eaten to accumulate a dose equivalent to one carbamazepine pill, they said.
Eat da poo poo (Score:1, Troll)
I've watched videos about this happening in Africa. Wise eldersare very concerned about getting poop in to the mouth. They are very much against eating the poo poo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I've watched videos about this happening in Africa. Wise eldersare very concerned about getting poop in to the mouth. They are very much against eating the poo poo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
No one likes a poopoo platter.
I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Thinking of roundworms, tapeworms, flukes, and what not.
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What about salads and fruits and tomatoes?
Re: I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:2)
In terms of food safety you really should cook that lettuce to an internal temperature of 165F
Re: I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:2)
To be fair, we have tiny teeth useless for eating meat and week jaws useless for grinding vegetation. We can naturally eat fruit, fish, and insects. And insects have a lot of parasites if they are eaten raw. We can also eat the vegetables that we cultivated over thousands of years to be larger and less bitter. Maize (but still need to process it in woodash to eat), kale/broccoli/cabbage/mustard, tomatoes (but those are fruits and yet were almost inedible in the wild form)
Re: I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:5, Informative)
You would compost the waste first - exactly as is currently done with animal manures, and for the same reasons.
The study's focus is on the chemical makeup of human feces - whether or not the level of pharmaceuticals found in human feces would be problematic for food production, for instance.
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Australia has been using sewage for fertiliser for years. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-07/sydney-waste-turned-biosolids-fertiliser-helps-nsw-drought-soil/9931664 [abc.net.au]. Yes, they compost it.
But Australia wasn't the first. Using human poo as fertiliser goes back centuries. https://daily.jstor.org/a-history-of-human-waste-as-fertilizer/ [jstor.org]. My guess is the main limitation was collecting enough of it to make it worthwhile. That would have required cities and sewage systems. I doubt they bothered with comp
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I expect you're right, if you're using smaller amounts like you said.
If you set aside concerns about pathogens (which probably wouldn't survive exposure to sunlight for very long at all), you still might want to be careful about using fresh feces around plants. Perhaps counterintuitively, the application of cow manure can (temporarily) decrease the available nitrogen in the soil at first as the microorganisms in the soil get started breaking down the waste. On the other side of things, poultry manure can ge
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One solution to pathogens is to use the poop on crops that are cooked and/or don't contact the soil.
So corn and soybeans, but not lettuce or carrots.
Another solution is to use poo on crops used for animal feed or non-food use like cotton.
In America, human poop is used to fertilize corn used for ethanol.
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Using human poo as fertiliser goes back centuries.
Centuries? More like thousands of years, since the dawn of agriculture.
And it remains widespread today in much of the world. There are many countries where you should never, ever order a salad. The locals think eating raw vegetables is disgusting, for good reason. They know how they are grown!
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I wonder if this gives users of illegal drugs plausible deniability, like when you test positive for heroin and claim it was caused by eating a poppy seed bagel. "Methamphetamine? No, it must have been those carrots I had last night."
Then you retest them in a day or two. If same results, you don't hire them.
I'd be more worried about prions. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be more worried about prions than either chemicals/drugs or bacteria. Prions are a misfolded protein that causes disease and are not denatured even by high temperatures.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Variant CJD (aka human verson of Mad Cow disease). Kuru. Maybe Alzheimers.
Re: I'd be more worried about prions. (Score:2)
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Re: I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:2)
Yeah, because animals donâ(TM)t have any of these. ðY(TM)
Also, according to an acquaintance who happens to be a gastroenterologist, most people have E. coli and it doesnâ(TM)t mean shit, pun intended.
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That makes no sense. Those things are not absorbed by the plants, so why would it matter? Because of human handling the fertilizer? Use proper PPE. Doesn't matter what type of fertilizer it is, you *should* be utilizing proper PPE, which would include things like gloves and eye protection. And you wouldn't put any type of fertilizer in your mouth. So, again, why would any of that present any kind of issue? And this is all assuming there is no pre-screening process before being added as fertilizer, which in
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That makes no sense. Those things are not absorbed by the plants, so why would it matter?
Root crops often have a least a little soil on them, even in the store. Also there are other crops which aren't cooked where soil splash can be an issue (e.g. lettuce, spinach, endive).
It's why we see occasional e. coli outbreaks associated with lettuce, for instance. Typically the problem is plants coming into close proximity with uncomposted (or insufficiently composted) animal manure.
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That makes no sense. Those things are not absorbed by the plants, so why would it matter?
Root crops often have a least a little soil on them, even in the store. Also there are other crops which aren't cooked where soil splash can be an issue (e.g. lettuce, spinach, endive).
It's why we see occasional e. coli outbreaks associated with lettuce, for instance. Typically the problem is plants coming into close proximity with uncomposted (or insufficiently composted) animal manure.
Yes, but that is still decontaminable. We *could* solve those contaminations with better food safety before ingesting. And I don't necessarily mean regulated food safety, just basic level food safety the consumer should be doing and routinely doesn't. Not to mention that inherently raw foods are naturally more susceptible to the problem. You can solve most of the problem if you cook everything and never eat anything raw. It's not like raw is actually better for you. However, I'm not shaming those who prefer
Re: I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:2)
Americans generally don't wash their vegetables. You can tell by the lack of sterilizer products in American grocery stores.
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Not true. We do rinse our vegetables well - but sterilizer? Never heard of it.
We do have vegetable wash (which is just vinegar and water repackaged in a fancy bottle to con people) but no 'sterilizer'.
I imagine that in the USA, labeling something "sterilizer" better actually, you know, sterilize, or would be subject to lawsuit. To my knowledge, without radiation, heat, or harsher chemicals than you'd be willing to subject your broccoli to, there is no way of completely sterilizing a vegetable.
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I misspoke, these products are normally called sanitizers. Probably due to the connotations on America's history of sterilizing undesirable people. Rather than any truth in advertising laws that seem to be completely unenforced in modern times.
Rinsing off your veggies with cold water is not washing them. Using very dilute vinegar is not too bad. Some of the more appropriate off-the-shelf vegetable washes contain a surfactant which would be more effective at removing surface bacteria and mold spores than the
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Or field workers taking a shit in the fields while harvesting crops.
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Re: I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:2)
I'm already anonymous, and you have to sign in to use it anyways, so why bother?
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If you were just inviting everyone over to shit in your fields...maybe. But the processing into fertilizer wouldn't really allow most diseases to survive. The biggest problem would be, as described in the article, the concentrations of chemicals that plants themselves can absorb. Hell, even if I had e.coli and took a dump on your garden vegetables, you can still decontaminate the food.
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If you're worried about E. coli, the harmful strains (there are harmless ones) can be found in the waste of many animals, with potential to come in contact with food humans eat. From E. coli [who.int]:
Overview
Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a bacterium that is commonly found in the gut of humans and warm-blooded animals. Most strains of E. coli are harmless. Some strains however, such as Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), can cause severe foodborne disease. It is transmitted to humans primarily through consumption of contaminated foods, such as raw or undercooked ground meat products, raw milk, and contaminated raw vegetables and sprouts.
Sources and transmission
Most available information on STEC relates to serotype O157:H7, since it is easily differentiated biochemically from other E. coli strains. The reservoir of this pathogen appears to be mainly cattle. In addition, other ruminants such as sheep, goats, deer are considered significant reservoirs, while other mammals (such as pigs, horses, rabbits, dogs, and cats) and birds (such as chickens and turkeys) have been found infected.
E. coli O157:H7 is transmitted to humans primarily through consumption of contaminated foods, such as raw or undercooked ground meat products and raw milk. Faecal contamination of water and other foods, as well as cross-contamination during food preparation (with beef and other meat products, contaminated surfaces and kitchen utensils), will also lead to infection. Examples of foods implicated in outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 include undercooked hamburgers, dried cured salami, unpasteurized fresh-pressed apple cider, yogurt, and cheese made from raw milk.
As noted elsewhere in that article, cooking food thoroughly, to a center temp of at least 70 C kills E. coli and washing and proper handling can help for uncooked foods. I imagine that would hold for many other pathogens regardless of the fertilizer source used -- except for those that require higher temperatures, o
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Indeed. The fear was latent bacteria that remained on the vegetables would be worse from humans than cows, due to humans being far more susceptible to stuff from other humans than cows.
The idea of leftover Viagra in your cucumbers never crossed my mind.
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If done perfectly they should be able to avoid mass illness.
Just don't make errors - duh. Farmers have been wrong for nine thousand years and these pencil-necked geeks have proved it.
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Re: I'd be more worried about e-coli. (Score:2)
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A friend died of the long-term effects from human-fecal pathogens carried on vegetables. Completely trashed his digestive tract, spent months in hospital, never really recovered. Wheelchair and explosive diarrhea, not how you want to go.
So, yeah, not on the list of "stuff I'm going to eat".
World hunger solved... (Score:4, Funny)
Turn Washington DC into a farm. There's enough human excrement there to grow enough food to feed the world. We could even export it, but nobody wants it.....not even us.
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Scientists have proven people blowing hot air onto plants helps them, too.
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Sounds like someone just missed the joke.
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You First (Score:4, Funny)
Get back to you in about 60 years of testing, Mr. Hankey.
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97 years is more than 60, so your condition is met.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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97 years is more than 60, so your condition is met.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Being serious, there are two issues. First, the standards for how much contamination is okay for the human body is a moving target. Over the years, we have often revised these numbers, as tinier and tinier amounts of things are discovered to be very bad for you. I have little faith in the standard of the day. Secondly, there will be new poisons discovered. Things we didn't test for because we had no idea they were bad, plus all new chemicals we invent all the time.
To be safe, all of those problems must be a
I sure hope so (Score:4, Informative)
Municipalities have been selling dried sewage treatment sludge to farmers for decades.
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--
We will soon have the option to harvest our farts, so we can post & comment on stats about them.
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Indeed. Milorganite is one of them, my dad bought a bag of it many years ago when we were trying to grow a lawn and keep some saplings alive.
Was it intended that you eat your lawn and saplings?
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--
We will soon have the option to harvest our farts, so we can post & comment on stats about them.
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Since 1926 at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Toxic Sludge is Good for You!, 1995 book by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton (subtitle: "Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry"). Chapter Eight is all about repurposing sewage.
"The proposal to create a 'Name Change Task Force' originated with Peter Machno, manager of Seattle's sludge program, after protesters mobilized against his plan to spread sludge on local tree farms. ...
"In June of 1991, the Name Change Task Force finally settled on 'biosolids', which it defined as the 'nutrient-rich, or
already in use (Score:5, Informative)
Milorganite (Score:2)
"These are great carrots" (Score:2)
European farmer: "No shit."
American tourist: "Even better!"
Sorry.
Good to know (Score:2)
The UK is glad to hear that, since they pump raw sewage into rivers, lakes and oceans over 1000 times per day and people use that water to irrigate vegetables.
Soylent green (Score:1)
Wash Your Vegetables! (Score:1)
I thought the problem was (Score:3, Insightful)
spreading disease.
so human centipede then? (Score:2)
Nah. (Score:1)
Enjoy your Broccoli (Score:2)
It was grown in my poo.
next step (Score:2)
Slippery slope.
1. Human Pootilizer.
2. Solent Green.
Old news in the US (Score:5, Informative)
Milwaukee Wisconsin in the U.S. has been making safe fertilizer out of human waste for almost 100 years. And right now can't make enough of it to meet demand. It's some good s***. Truly odd that Europeans would be so behind the times.
https://www.milorganite.com/ab... [milorganite.com]
I'll admit I'm a bit of a geek about the stuff, and have toured the facility more than once. I proudly wear the shirt I got when I did the first tour. https://www.milorganite.com/to... [milorganite.com]
Please don't blast this as advertising, it is a municipal wastewater treatment function, and a hoot to think people pay good money for this crap.
This is good news... (Score:2)
...for the potato crop on Mars!
haha (Score:2)
Haha. If you believe it's safe, why not just eliminate the middle man.
Mark Watney Vindicated! (Score:2)
"The Martian" (Score:2)
So that movie got it right after all?
I remember hearing how the US Army posts in Japan were hugely surprised when they tried to hire someone to take care of the human waste from their soldiers. The local farmers were willing to _pay_ for the stuff!
Nothing new (Score:1)