Drinking Poop is Bad for Us

Jeffrey K. Griffiths, an associate professor of public health and family medicine at Tufts School of Medicine has an enlightening and nauseating OP/ED in today’s Boston Globe: Don't drink the sewage. Griffiths is a member of the US EPA's National Drinking Water Advisory Council and its Science Advisory Board. His OP/ED poses some important questions for the EPA’s proposal “that would allow sewage treatment plants to discharge inadequately treated human waste into lakes, rivers, streams, and coastal waters?”

Griffiths contends that, “IT DOESN'T TAKE a medical degree to know that drinking poop is bad for us. For centuries, we have protected ourselves from waterborne plagues by keeping human waste out of our water.” I quite agree.

The Clean Water Act generally prohibits sewage treatment plants from discharging partially treated waste into our waterways. Sewage is normally treated by settling out solid materials, and then through a biological process that kills pathogens.

MORE - http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=916

There go my plans for the wekend.

Brandon

just not poo :D

....do they want U.S. health standards comparable to Bangladesh and New Guinea?

Make poop juice...

(Max Cannon)

:beer:

the neocons they will be drinking estrogen. That will fix them. .... actually..maybe don't tell them.:spray:

Oh - no? They will just see the privatization of lake water & polar caps happen more quickly. They will like that!:banghead:

So they can make a killing. (Either way, they make a killing, sadly.)

Bake

Why, yes, it's all the little town and big county sewage plant owners.

These owner/operators of the country's sewage treatment plants are the ones trying to get EPA to let them dump shit. It'll save 'em money, ya know, money they can spend on other things.

This proposal to weaken what little safegaurds we now have, can easily be defeated by each of us going down to the city hall, and after finding the right person to speak too, tell them you don't want to drink or swim in no poop. You have that right, use it.

the EPA doesn't even enforce the laws they have now. I've met guys running plants who don't know what chlorine is. And they are totally EPA certified.

Oy vey!

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/18/dont_drink_the_sewage/

JEFFREY K. GRIFFITHS
Don't drink the sewage
By Jeffrey K. Griffiths | May 18, 2005

IT DOESN'T TAKE a medical degree to know that drinking poop is bad for us. For centuries, we have protected ourselves from waterborne plagues by keeping human waste out of our water. Why, then, would the Environmental Protection Agency propose a new policy that would allow sewage treatment plants to discharge inadequately treated human waste into lakes, rivers, streams, and coastal waters?

The Clean Water Act generally prohibits sewage treatment plants from discharging partially treated waste into our waterways. Sewage is normally treated by settling out solid materials, and then through a biological process that kills pathogens.

Both treatments are necessary to kill the full spectrum of viruses, bacteria, and parasites in sewage. Both are needed to minimize the risks to people downstream, and both are required by law.

The EPA's proposal would allow sewage to be dumped into waterways more often without biological treatment, which EPA calls ''blending" because the largely untreated sewage is mixed with treated sewage before it is discharged.

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