GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

28-09-2003, 06:32 PM

wrote:
He was making a general statement about how absurd it was to pass "do
not urinate
everywhere" laws. I am saying there were very good reasons to pass
these laws. I
still yell at people when I see them hark and gob onto the sidewalks.
That is how to
spread TB. As for YOUR OWN pile to pee in, if there is run off into
the sewers,
which at least in Milwaukee runs off into the lake where we get our
water from.... we
had cows urinating in the cattle yards that lead to cryptosporidia
into the water
supply making 500,000 people sick. Our water treatment is now
supposed to take care
of the crypto, but viruses can be even harder to kill. It is not a
minor thing. It
is the viruses and bacteria we dont know about that are waiting in the
wings, altho
a virus like Hanta is a pretty good indicator. It is aquired from
sweeping up mouse
droppings. Ingrid

One of the *suspected* sources of the cryptosporidia in Milwaukee's
water supply was the fecal matter, not the urine of cows upstream from
the city. Let me repeat, it was a *suspected* source that came up during
the finger-pointing part of the investigation. Given that when the
rivers were tested, and tides and currents calculated, it was ruled out
as the source of the contamination. The more likely source that was
neither proven nor ruled-out was the output of a sewage treatment plant
that is in proximity to the inlet for the one water treatment plant
where crypto was a problem, combined with some unusual currents in Lake
Michigan that winter. But it had nothing to do with urine, cow or human.

And there were not 500,000 sick people. That would have been
approximately half of the customers of the Milwaukee water system. There
also was no explanation found for why this suddenly was a problem, and
was a completely unknown issue for the previous 100 years that the water
department was around. And there were far more cows in the watershed 50
years ago, and less treatment done.

Compared to fecal matter, urine is relatively sterile. Hell, compared to
sweat or tears or mucus or even hair, urine is relatively sterile. Yet
some very popular soil amendments are composted cow, horse and chicken
fecal matter. For some strange reason we have a greater fear of urine
than we do of fecal matter, yet urine is far safer.

And lets not forget the one last thing it takes to spread disease. Not
only does the virus or bacteria need to leave the infected body, and
live in some medium outside the body, it must enter into another body in
order to infect it. There are plenty of people who work on sanitary
sewers (there's an oxymoron for you) that do not catch every illness
going around. And I can assure you that the flow in those sewers never
got hot enough to destroy anything. These sewer workers (and I was one
of them for a year) know enough not to touch their faces with their
gloves, and to make sure no open cuts are exposed. As a matter of fact,
sick leave usage among sewer workers was near the bottom of the list,
along with garbage collectors, with various classifications of office
workers leading the pack. Simple proximity to human waste is apparently
not directly related to incidents of illness.

So am I going to go collect my urine or fecal matter to put in my
compost pile? No. It's enough trouble to carry out food scraps before
they start smelling. I sure don't want to have to come up with both a
collection and transportation method to get the waste from me to the
pile. And given that I live in the suburbs, and my neighbors are in
close proximity, I won't be expelling waste at the compost pile, either.
If I looked out in my yard and saw a transient peeing on my pile, I'd be
more upset at his presence in my yard than about his peeing. And I sure
wouldn't dispose of the compost pile because some pee got into it.

Bottom line: This whole discussion is much ado about nothing. People who
are afraid of urine aren't going to be convinced even when the
inconsistency of their use of cow and horse manure is pointed out. And
people who are inclined to pee on their compost piles aren't going to be
convinced that they're evil spreaders of illness. At the end of the day,
we're all going to be doing the same thing with our pee that we were
doing with it last week.

--
Warren H.

==========
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Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
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