Human waste used as slurry on agricultural land????

Question

i live in wicklow, ireland. Ive just found out that human waste is used as slurry in all but four counties in ireland and is banned in three countries in europe. wicklow imports 6000tons of it a year from all over ireland. i think it's a; disgusting and b;probably not safe as hospital waste is used too.i had been getting a smell of poo on my drive home from work and thought it was a broken sceptic tank, turns out it was human poo being spread on land used to graze cattle, its aslo used to fertilise veg...

Answer 1

Bellie,

You are absolutely correct!  I live in San Diego, California and about 8 years ago, they were seriously considering recycling sewer water as drinking water.  I listened to a radio talk show program on which two so-called engineer/scientists were singing the praises of the system that their company had devised to be constructed and used in central coastal San Diego County.  I am a groundwater scientist and a geologic engineer and I kept listening for their specifications on organism rejection...I never heard them say, once, anything about viruses.  So I called into the show and asked the question about virus rejection of their filtration system.  They were shocked that anyone would call in and ask that question and tried immediately to talk about their superior filtration system, but I kept steering them back to the question of virus rejection.  They finally admitted that their system would not kill or filter one single virus even though it had a so-called highly efficient UV treatment phase built into it.  It appears that UV doesn't affect 100% of all viruses; among the unaffected viruses is Hepatitus (all types).  

The talk show host asked me why I was so concerned, the water was perfectly fit to drink...I said, "really?"  Then i asked him if hospitals were hooked up to the same sewer system as all other facilities and in the same breath, asked him if san diego wasn't the center for biogenetic engineering in the united states.  He stammered and hung up on me and quickly went to break and those two guys were off the air...

They never put that system in.  It was never constructed.  I dont know if my phone call did it in, or if other intelligent men asked the same questions.

Food grown in human waste is not even allowed, for that very reason, in the united states.  Look forward to a tainted food supply in Ireland....grow you own produce my friend...in self defense.

Good luck.

Answer 2

no! is that why you grow good spuds over there then,  when i was a kid we always dug our poo as you call it into the ground ready for the veg to eat it up, thats what you call organic, not the muck(poo) we get today no taste,

Answer 3

Wow.  Most gardening books I've read strongly recommend AGAINST using human waste as fertilizer due to the high levels of harmful bacteria.  I can't believe that it's good for the food or the land - sounds like an E. coli or typhoid outbreak in the making.

Answer 4

as for it being unsanitary, or unsafe, it is likely sterilized before use.  And why is it any more disgusting than other manure?

Answer 5

The tomato story was repeated in antarctica, where the scientists took to growing veggies.  Apparently they got plenty of tomatoes even when they didn't plant any.

Answer 6

Is that why our food taste's s**t nowadays? I'd go organic but I can't afford too!!

Answer 7

thats DISGUSTING. first of all thts so groos, cow manure is completely different and with that said all the animals is besides human, we eat completely different things. and plus there areso many germs and nasty bacteria aswell.

Answer 8

If I'm not mistaken, the ecoli contaminated lettuce at taco bell was traced back to the use of municipal sludge as fertilizer.

Answer 9

I think you need to get your facts straight before you run around accusing farmers of poisoning you with unsafe waste. How do they spread that "medical waste" on the fields? If they amputate a hand do they sprinkle a certain number of fingers on each acre?

As far as what you are smelling, the effluent (which does stink) but which is usually chlorinated to kill bacteria is often used as grass fertilizer. If you are talking sludge it has been run through a digester or drying drum that kills the bacteria in it (and is tested before the batch is released for sale).

That is the beauty of organic farming, its ability to recycle that waste to make useful food. If you don't like the concept then picket the organic food stores.

Answer 10

Human waste, or west of any animal is nothing but just recycled food, which still has nutrients left (and added - dead cells) in it, complete with digesting bacterias (useful in farming). Therefore it is useful as fertilizers, and it is a natures way of recycling.

Of course you are right about hospital wast, containing lot many harmful bacterias, but these are killed if proper way is adapted for turning it in to compost.

Some countries do not allow human waste or sick animal wast as fertilizers; especially for organic farming; since now a days there is lot of sickness and many people take "N" number of drugs; more than 70 % of which are passed through undigested and contaminate environment.

Answer 11

i live in a rural area here in north east & about 2 years ago they started spreading it in the fields around here. the smell as really sickening & in the summer on what few hot days we get you couldn't open windows  or sit out in the garden. despite complaints from people who live around here they did the same the following year. i believe it has now been banned in this neck of the woods. we are told it is perfectly safe & people are in no danger but sometimes i wonder, we wouldn't get the truth anyway from the powers that be even if there was a health risk.

Answer 12

I am told it's very good on rhubarb.I prefer custard on mine.r

Answer 13

i will think of you next time i take a dump

lol

Answer 14

By law in the UK it has to be buried now. It's common practice in East Anglia and where it was spread loads of tomato plants grew because the seeds are indigestable. We used to pick the tomatos and make chutney from them, delicious.

Answer 15

It has been for a long time. I used to live and work in England on lorries hauling bulk containers. We used to pick up sewerage at different stages of treatment and deliver it to farmers to spread on their land/crops. It's big money business nowadays, the companies doing it have scientific data analysing the goods and breaking it down into groups of nutrients so they can tell farmers the mineral content of the sewerage. If i remember rightly though, there is a small % of the slurry unidentifiable even through rigid scientific analysis.

Answer 16

Despite what Tucksie just said, it IS still used on crops in the UK.

It's not at all dangerous and here's why:

After undergoing several days of biological digestion at the sewage works, the 'solid bits' are given a final blast of UV light to kill any existing pathogens, before being sold to farmers.

The biological process is so efficient and so closely monitored that the slurry (that is actually quite solid by now) has LESS pathogens than the soil it is being spread on!! In fact, the sewage plant manager was quite angry that the waste had to pass loads of tests whilst farmer's soil passes none! He said the UV light was a waste of time as the stuff was so harmless.

Answer 17

If it is used in a common sense way it is not a problem where the source of manure comes from. Irregardless, it needs to be either composted or allowed to spend time in green pasture to allow the microbes to work and keep the pathogens minimized. We can't be such a huge population on this planet and keep burying our excrement down by the water table, or let it run to the rivers and ocean, then we all suffer along with the rest of life on the planet. We need to allow ourselves to be an important part of the cycle and benefit, not be a closed output with no input, that is where all our problems come from. We can manage and know about disease and how it works, we can now hug our poo and share it.

Answer 18

In some countries it is used regularly with no treatment. The root vegetables have to be soaked in a chlorox solution to kill germs.

In the US, in nonindustrial areas, where theres no industrial wastes in the sewage, the solids are composted and injected into fields where grasses are grown.

In areas where there might be industrial wastes, the composted materials can only be used on flower gardens. They have found that using it on fields where sports are played can be a hazard for the players. Some areas spray it on state grasses along highways, and it does smell. It istreated or composted first though.

I would check to see if he slurry is composted at all first, that decreases bacteria. Otherwise it does need to be teated regarding pathogens.

Answer 19

think about it; its the perfect fertilizer, and the perfect recycling material.

Consider the variety of the human diet; that waste is loaded with nutrients. Perfect growing material. And furthermore, it is recycling, part of our drive to go green. Recycling isn't always the most pleasant smelling job, but few deny its usefullness.