Drinking Poop is Bad for Us
18 May 2005
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.
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.
MORE & LINKS - Drinking Poop is Bad for Us
18 May 2005
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.
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.
Drinking Poop is Bad for Us
18 May 2005
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.
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.
Drinking Poop is Bad for Us
18 May 2005
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.
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.
MORE & LINKS -
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=916
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