Human Excrement

[Pea Pod]

I live in Co Durham. A town near us has had this really bad smell wafting everywhere. The Council have now said a local farmer has sprayed his fields with fertiliser manufactured from human excrement brought from Oxfordshire.I have never heard of this before. Is it safe.?

[nickmo]

Extract (from National Soil research Inst.) might help - human waste that has been treated has been used on soils in UK for a long time -

'Waste takes many forms. UK Livestock excrete 200 million tonnes per annum which is applied, largely untreated, to a third of the country's soils. This contains the equivalent of �200 million worth of fertiliser. Human wastes are now treated because of food safety concerns and nearly 50 per cent (480,000 tonnes annually) are returned to agricultural soils as organic fertiliser'.

Prior to contamination concerns, like the spread of dysentry, human waste could be spread without treatment. Some countries still have 'waste traders' that sell the collected human waste as fertiliser to go back onto the crops - waste is a valuable resource and just 'cos its' human does't make it less effective.

The earth closet was the original toilet for most folk before running water was used in WC's. The spoil was then used as a top dressing on the land. Just like animal waste........

Human waste in the UK for fertiliser is now treated to destroy pathogens that could cause disease, at minimum it is heated - like the action of a compost bin that heats the waste material and destroys part of the microbes, but encouraging other beneficial ones. Human waste apparently contains a lot of metals and these need to be removed before use as fertiliser as they would over-enrich the soil. I gather some parts of the US has upped the levels of permissable metals in fertiliser to allow the use of human waste.

Some countries use very little waste on soils - France I think is one that burns the waste rather than spreading - so up goes the CO2 level then.......well done the EC after all.

All in all, chances are you have been eating food grown with human waste for years now. No need to change habits, but it does make you think about washing your veg....?...........

[Pea Pod]

Thankyou verymuch. The smell has been truly dreadfull like old fish heads.

[nickmo]

So now you know what they eat in Oxford, then!!.............tee hee......hope the info helps.

[CT]

See a related article here tinyurl.com/z92mk

[Pea Pod]

Sorry CT couldn`t make a link with that url. I got tinyurl.com and that was it. Thanks.

[CT]

tinyurl.com/z92mk

[CT]

It won't make a link for some reason, but copy and paste it into an address bar and it still works.

[Pea Pod]

Thankyou,I don`t think I`ll be buying locally grown veg.It might inspire me to grow my own.

[andytheplumb]

sounds like u got a bum deal there lol