"anton" wrote in message
...

Alan Holmes wrote in message ...

"anton" wrote in message
...

During the floods of last week, Thames water sewage plants couldn't
cope...and the backlog of untreated sewage filled the pipes, until it
burst
up and out of the drains... right into our back garden.

snip

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

Why not, would you refuse to eat any of those things
following an application of horse manure?

I have no problem eating the things that I and others have
grown in ground to which horse manure is applied- (though
when I've used this then it isn't fresh).

But we (or most of us) are human, and a possible infection
route for many human diseases & parasites is via sewage.
I appreciate that the micro-organisms/ spores etc disappear
with time, but I don't know how much time. Eating things
which you eat raw from ground which has been freshly
flooded with a sample of everyone's faeces from miles
around sounds to me like a dopey idea. I hope that we
can agree on that. So the question then is- what length of
time would you leave before cropping such ground with
a crop that you eat raw? I'd choose a couple of years-
you choose what you like.

And the spores of which organisms will still be viable?

The manager at the sewage works in Isleworth used to to demonstrate
how clean the effluent was when it left the works by drinking the water
as it left the works!

Alan
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