To: glorgau
A tenth of the worlds irrigated crops - everything from lettuce and tomatoes to mangoes and coconuts - are watered by sewage. And much of that sewage is raw and untreated, gushing direct from sewer pipes into fields at the fringes of the developing worlds great megacities, reveals the first global survey of the hidden practice of waste-water irrigation.
Chris Scott of the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute estimates that 20 million hectares of the worlds farms are irrigated with sewage. A quarter of Pakistans vegetables, including salad crops, are grown in sewage effluent, the study found.
13 posted on
01/26/2006 8:49:43 AM PST by
hedgetrimmer
("I'm a millionaire thanks to the WTO and "free trade" system--Hu Jintao top 10 worst dictators)
To: hedgetrimmer
"A tenth of the worlds irrigated crops - everything from lettuce and tomatoes to mangoes and coconuts - are watered by sewage."
Just a note, pathogenic bacteria do not travel up the plants vascular system to the edible portions. The odds of contamination of mangoes and coconuts from contaminated irrigation water is nearly non-existent, assuming the contaminated water were not directly applied to the fruit, and even then, given the nature of a coconut highly doubtfully.
Lettuce is another matter, it is routinely "sprinkled" with ditch water on the way to market to keep it from wilting.
32 posted on
01/29/2006 9:48:04 AM PST by
ndt
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