The Big Necessity (42 page)

Pesticides well within legal limits
Douglas Fischer, “Chemical: Mixtures More Toxic Than Their Parts,”
Oakland Tribune
, January 24, 2006.

“I can't answer it's not safe” CBS News
, “Sewage Fertilizer.”

Lead is down; mercury is up
A small-scale study carried out by the
Oakland Bay Tribune
found that an average family contained hundreds of chemicals in their bodies including “plasticizers (phthalates), combustion products (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon metabolites and dioxins/furans), chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides (DDT, hexachlorobenzene, lindane, chlordane, heptachlor epoxide), PCBs, organophosphorus insecticide metabolites, other pesticides (various herbicides, including atrazine, 2,4-D/2,4,5-T and pentachlorophenol), tobacco smoke indicators (cotinine) and phytoestrogens.” The family's two-year-old son had 838 parts per billion of PBDEs—the flame retardants that Dr. Rob Hale is examining in sludge—in his blood, although the world average is 38. Douglas Fischer, “What's in You?”
Oakland Bay Tribune
, August 3, 2005; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals,” 2005.

Is the risk acceptable?
Ellen Z. Harrison, Murray B. McBride, and David R. Bouldin, “The Case for Caution,” Cornell Waste Management Institute Working Paper, February 1999, p. 3.

Sanjour wrote another memo
Collected papers of William Sanjour,
http://pwp.lincs.net/sanjour/Default.htm
.

Didn't think [the rule] passed scientific muster
C. Snyder, “The Dirty Work of Promoting ‘Recycling' of America's Sewage Sludge,”
International Journal of Occupational Environmental Health
11 (2005): 417.

The immuno-compromised
“Because data are sparse on what constitutes an infective dose, it is prudent public health practice to minimize workers' contact with Class B biosolids and soil or dusts containing Class B biosolids during production and application, and at land application sites during the period when public access is restricted.” National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, “Guidance for Controlling Potential Risks to Workers Exposed to Class B Biosolids,” July 2002, p. 2.

Lubricants used in dental devices
David L. Lewis and Max Arens, “Resistance of Microorganisms to Disinfection in Dental and Medical Devices,”
Nature Medicine
1 (1995): 956–58.

Scientific rules pushed through
David L. Lewis, “EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics,”
Nature
381 (June 27, 1996).

Unreliable and fraudulent data McElmurray v. United States Department of Agriculture
, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Southern Division, Case 1:05-cv-00159-AAA-WLB, judgment by Judge Anthony Alaimo, filed February 2, 2008, p. 39.

Simply not a good idea
Jessica Leeder, “Human Fertilizer Poses Cancer Risk: Study,”
National Post
, July 31, 2002;
McElmurray v. USDA
, p. 41.

Questioned his credibility
Josh Harkinson, “Wretched Excess,”
Houston Press
, March 31, 2005.

EPA's Science and Technology Achievement Award
Personal communication with Maggie Breville of the EPA, March 2008.

EPA's handling of Lewis
Caroline Snyder, “EPA Wants Scientist Out for Publishing Papers Critical of Sludge Rule,”
National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 280 Newsletter
18/5 (July 2002).

The safest science-based alternative
Letter from Albert Gray, Water Environment Foundation, to the
Washington Post
, August 7, 2001, available at
http://www.biosolids.org/news.asp?id=1219
.

I should think myself a madman
Not all Barking residents proved to be good witnesses for the vicar's cause. Mr. Frederick Powell, lighterman, when asked if his fellow residents often complained of the smell of sewage in the creek, said, “I never heard persons who were sitting in The Ship say, ‘How beastly the London sewage smells! Let us drink up and go.'” Robert Rawlinson,
Report upon Inquiry as to the truth or otherwise of certain allegations contained in a memorial from the vicar and other inhabitants of Barking, in the County of Essex, calling attention to the pollution of the River Thames by the Discharge of Sewage through the Northern Main Outfall Sewer of the Metropolitan Board of Works
(London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode for Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1870), pp. 4, 99.

Entirely imaginary and contrary to fact
Rawllinson,
Report
, p. 42.

Vomited copiously
“There can be no doubt,” wrote the London
Times
in one of many editorials about the disaster, “that at the period when the collision occurred, the Metropolitan sewers—that for the north side at Barking and that for the south side at Belvedere—were pouring forth their daily contribution of millions of gallons of water loaded with all the
filth of a great city.” One survivor told a subsequent inquiry that death may have been “due in many cases to the poisonous state of the water”; another said that “both for taste and smell it was something he could hardly describe.” Three inquiries blamed first the dredger, then the
Princess Alice
, then both ships. Among the 631 victims, most of whom could not swim or were hampered by being children or wearing copious petticoats, were “four children of Mr. and Mrs. Davies, 281, Burdett-Road, Limehouse, [and] Arthur Kiddell, a little boy, who was visiting them.”
Times
, September 18 and 19, 1878. A detailed account of the disaster has been posted by the Thames Police Museum at
http://www.thamespolicemuseum.org
.

A natural contaminant
Devra Davis,
The Secret History of the War on Cancer
(New York: Basic Books, 2007), pp. 78–79.

Judiciaries in Kentucky, California, and Oregon Penland v. Redwood Sanitary Sewer District 1998
,
http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/A90247.htm
; Jamie Manfuso and Scott Carroll, “Sludge Ban Starts Fight Across Nation,”
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
, July 14, 2002.

120 times that allowed in drinking water
Nonetheless, after the Boyce Dairy informed the EPA that it found thallium and other heavy metals in its milk, the dairy was still allowed to sell the milk for human consumption. John Heilprin and Kevin S. Vineys, “Sewage-Based Fertilizer Safety Doubted,” Associated Press, March 6, 2008.

Unreliable, incomplete and in some cases fudged McElmurray v. USDA
, p. 15.

National Farmers' Union policy
Policy of the National Farmers' Union, enacted by delegates to the 104th anniversary convention, Denver, Colorado, March 3–6, 2006, p. 69.

Switzerland banned the practice
“La fin des boues d'épuration dans l'agriculture,” Office Fédéral de l'Environnement news release, May 13, 2002.

8. OPEN DEFECATION–FREE INDIA

Every day, 200,000 tons of human feces
United Nations Sustainable Development Division, “Nirmal Gram Puraskar: Fiscal Rewards to Zero Open Defecation in Rural Villages in India,” case study 2003–2005, available at
http://webapps01.un.org/dsd/caseStudy//files/20/85/31/f208531/public/Welcome.do
.

155,000 truckloads
Darryl D'Monte, “A Bottom-Up Approach to Sanitation,”
InfochangeIndia.org
, October 2006,
http://www.infochangeindia.org/features389.jsp
.

Sitting on their haunches
S. P. Singh,
Sulabh Sanitation Movement: Vision-2000 Plus
(New Delhi, India: Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, 2005), p. 5.

They do it beside train tracks
“Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the riverbanks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover.” V. S. Naipaul,
Area of Darkness
(London: Picador, 1964, repr. 2002), p. 70.

Scores of bare bottoms
Chander Suta Dogra, “Whole Lota Love,”
Outlook
, July 24, 2006.

Blocking natural body functions
UNICEF, “Meeting the MDG Water and Sanitation Target: A Mid-term Assessment of Progress,”
http://www.unicef.org/wes/mdgreport/
.

One billion people are carrying hookworm
Because hookworm is generally tolerated and usually doesn't kill, exact figures about its prevalence are difficult to calculate. Nilanthi R. de Silva, in a 2003 review of the existing literature and figures, put hookworm prevalence at 700–800 million and ascariasis at 1.2 billion, with 50 percent of infections occurring in China. Nilanthi R. de Silva et al., “Soil-Transmitted Helminth Infections: Updating the Global Picture,”
Trends in Parasitology
19/12 (December 2003): 547.

The number of infections that feces can transmit
Richard G. Feachem, David J. Bradley, Hemda Garelick, D. Duncan Mara,
Sanitation and Disease: Health Aspects of Excreta and Wastewater Management
(Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley & Sons for The World Bank, 1983), p. 3.

Typhoid, scabies, and botulism
Ibid., pp. 9–12. World Health Organization water and sanitation diseases fact sheets are available at
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/diseasefact/en/index.html
.

“F-diagram”
The F-diagram of fecal-oral transmission routes was devised in 1958 by E. G. Walter and J. N. Lanoix. The World Bank, “The Handwashing Handbook,” 2005, p. 10.

Nearly 800 million Indians
Associated Press, “Oxfam: Millions in South Asia Lack Vital Services,” October 19, 2006; United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2006, “Beyond Scarcity: Power and the Global Water Crisis” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 36.

7.4 million more people
WaterAid, “Drinking Water and Sanitation Status in India” (London: WaterAid, 2005), p. 25.

Unused, misused, or ignored
A. J. Robinson, “Scaling Up Rural Sanitation in South Asia: Lessons learned from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan” (New Delhi: Water and Sanitation Program—South Asia, 2005), p. 42.

Balancing a toilet on his head
Darryl D'Monte, “Slow Progress Towards Sanitation,”
India Together
, December 2004.

Improved health never came into it
Other reasons for wanting a latrine included not feeling embarrassed by having to indicate to important visitors where they should go to defecate; ensuring themselves a good place in the afterlife by leaving a durable legacy for their descendants; and fearing supernatural illnesses caused by smelling other people's feces. Marion W. Jenkins and Val Curtis, “Achieving the ‘Good Life': Why Some People Want Latrines in Rural Benin,”
Social Science & Medicine
61 (2005): 2450–51.

Wants, not needs
Val Curtis, “Hygiene and Sanitation: Dirt, Disgust and Desire,” Public Hygiene Lecture at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, London, October 9, 2006.

Bringing in the army
Oxfam, “Guidelines for Public Health Promotion in Emergencies,” May 2001, p. 8.

361 villages
Personal communication with Joe Madiath, October 2007.

Only $11
Robinson, “Scaling Up,” p. 42.

Rural Sanitary Marts
Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC),
Listening
(Geneva: WSSCC, 2004), p. 27.

Not the GDP or Sensex
Anjali Puri, “Second Nature,”
Outlook
, July 24, 2006.

The number of India's toiletless
Robinson, “Scaling Up,” p. 85.

Ten thousand villages applied
Government of India, Department of Drinking Water Supply,
http://nirmalgrampuraskar.nic.in
.

Anyone running for local office
Nirmala Ganapathy, “No Toilet at Home? Don't Contest Panchayat Polls,”
Indian Express
, November 4, 2005.

A key factor which triggers mobilization
Kar offers other tips for trainee triggerers including, “On the transect walk, draw attention to the flies on the shit, and the chickens pecking and eating the shit. Ask how often there are flies on their, or their children's, food, and whether they like to eat this kind of local chicken.” Kamal Kar, “A Practical Guide to Triggering Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS),” Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2005, p. 6.

Where the hell does it all go?
WSSCC,
Listening
, p. 40.

Onto the flies
Ibid.

A huge online poll
At a BBC Web site,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/disgust
, visitors were invited to rate a series of twenty paired images according to how disgusting they were. Seven of the pairs deliberately placed a disease-related image next to a similar image that wouldn't cause disease. A cut hair can carry ringworm; the hair attached to someone's head is safe. Over four months, 77,000 people from 165 countries took part. The plate of yellow goo—supposed to look like
bodily fluids—rated as 61 percent more disgusting than its paired image of blue goo. A final question asked respondents to rate who they would least want to share a toothbrush with. The postman rated as most disgusting (59.4 percent); a partner as the least disgusting (1.8 percent), findings that correspond to the fact that the less familiar the person is, the more likely it is that he/she will carry possibly transmittable pathogens. Disgust denoted threat. Val Curtis, Robert Aunger, and Tamar Babie, “Evidence that Disgust Evolved to Protect from Risk of Disease,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society
, B (Suppl.) 271 (2004), pp. 131–33.

Their own babies' feces
In two studies, mothers were first asked to fill in a questionnaire about how they felt about changing their own baby's feces-soiled diaper. In a second study, they were presented with samples of their own baby's dirty diaper and diapers from other infants. Evidence showed that mothers found their own baby's diaper smell less disgusting, even when labeling made it unclear whose diaper was whose. I. Case, Betty M. Repacholi, and Richard J. Stevenson, “My Baby Doesn't Smell as Bad as Yours: The Plasticity of Disgust,”
Evolution and Human Behavior
27 (2006): 357–65.