In article , "flick" wrote:
There's a pretty easy prevention for this in places that have
clean water - Wash Your Hands before you eat, and wash the
veggies if you're going to eat 'em raw.

Pretty much. And use a scrub brush with fine bristles -- surgical
scrub doodads are great for this sort of thing. Soap isn't necessary;
in fact the reason surgeons scrub like maniacs is primarily for
mechanical removal of bacteria, as this has been found to be more
effective than chemicals.

My understanding is that the health problems occur bec. the human
waste is *not* composted but used fresh. Composting will kill
pathogens. Just the time it takes to compost kills some of them,
iirc, even if the pile doesn't get real hot.

Well, there are pathogens that can survive plenty of abuse, as they
encapsulate. But composting certainly would get rid of the ones that
don't survive long outside the body or don't tolerate temperature
changes.

Also, we need to keep in mind that in the U.S. we're blessed with
clean and safe drinking/washing water. Not so in the Third
World. No water treatment, those pathogens get into the water
and whammo, disease.

Yep.

That's what I used to do when we lived in the city. I never
measured the temp in one of those bins, but they seemed to get
pretty hot, so some of the pathogens shoulda died. The
appropriate temp is what, a week at 150 F(?) Or 180 F(?) to
kill parasites.

150 or so to kill the fragile ones. 180 for the tougher ones.
400 degrees to kill the really resistant ones that encapsulate. By
this point, one's compost pile is usually on fire.

~REZ~