In article ,
anton wrote:

Mmm. I can't say I'd fancy any salads or strawberries
off that ground for a year or two.

I assume that you eat nothing but hydroponically grown salads? Not
doing so for a month or two is rational, but a year or two isn't.

How about the flooding itself, as opposed to the sewage?
3 days sounds like probably too little to have killed off
many of the roots, but I don't know.

It could have killed some, especially if the deposited material
has obstructed draining. But that is no worse than flooding by
river water. And there is nothing that can be done about that, except
that having the clean-up squad compress the ground will make a bad
situation worse.

Toxic maybe isn' the word I'd use, but aren't there a variety of parasites &
diseases present in raw sewage?

Not usually. Where do you think they would come from? If the people
aren't infected, then there won't be such things. This is the UK in 2002,
not where I grew up (and where that concern WAS justified).

In practice, there are likely to be a fair number of borderline organisms
(e.g. salmonella), but almost all will be destroyed very quickly by oxygen
and decomposition processes. The only things that it is worth worrying
about are ones with resistant spores etc., and those are less likely in
human sewage than in domestic and wild animal excrement.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:
Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679