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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Using Human Waste

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Using Human Waste
  • Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:18:51 +0100


We sometimes let ourselves become paranoid by reports of people getting terribly sick due to some pathogens, but deep down I always know there is no problem because I grew up on a small farm more than 50 years ago. There was an outdoor toilet which was basically just a hole in the ground. My grandfather would empty out that hole and pour the contents, which was a disgusting soup of pure feces with nothing else, on the dung heap on top of all the bedding from the cow shed and the pigsty. There was a terrible stench for a day or two, but after that it returned to normal. After the war, my grandfather was too poor to buy fertilizers and all fertility came from that dung heap. Except for salt, pepper and fish, the family produced everything it ate. I don’t remember that any member of our extended family ever needed a doctor in those days. That only came after the farm was abandoned and people moved to more sanitary conditions in the city.

My favorite spot as a small kid was a bench in the narrow space between the cow shed and the dung heap. When the afternoon sun burnt down on the heap, the air would vibrate in the heat and buzz with the sound of innumerable insects. I would breathe in the odorous air and be happy.

Dieter Brand
Portugal

One more small detail in connection with our gut flora perhaps. It is at present thought that on average we have a kilo or two of bacteria inside us of some 170 different species. But there are at least 350 species that can be found in human guts looked at globally. The exact species mix differs from place to place and from community to community.

This should make it obvious that taking just lactic acid bacilli after a course of anti biotics leaves something short? "Probiotics" may possibly be useful but they never consist of 170 different species. So what is up? How do we get recolonised after we killed all the useful stuff inside us?

I have thought about this long and came to the conclusion that we must be reinfecting ourselves from the people around us. Not everybody washes all the microbes of their hands every time they go to the toilet. (Shockingly disgusting I know) They touch things that we touch and crudely said, we are eating shit all the time and exchange our bugs in the process too. The best we can hope for is to have healthy neighbors not on any medication and with a good patrimony of useful bugs.
That is as it should be but with the world at large on a great variety of human made chemicals (typically not stereo- specific as is always the case in nature) it is not unexpected that diseases break out.

Anyway, I think that as long as this is completely overlooked there is little point to be afraid of "pathogens" in our own waste. If it came out of us it must be already in us. No point in being stupidly dirty but we can easily go too far and do more bad than good.
Often fear is what we should fear the most.
john









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