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Fertiliser made from human faeces and urine is 'safe' to use on food crops, say scientists
SKY News ^ | January 19, 2023

Posted on 01/19/2023 5:01:31 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer

Fertiliser made from human faeces and urine is safe to use in agriculture and has "huge potential" to replace 25% of current synthetic products in some countries, according to research.

The findings come as farmers continue to struggle with rising fertiliser costs due to a combination of climate change and the war in Ukraine.

Researchers screened human waste for 310 chemicals - including rubber additives, insect repellents and pharmaceuticals - and only found them in 6.5% of the samples examined, but still at low concentrations.

Scientists said low levels of the painkiller ibuprofen and mood-stabilising drug carbamazepine were found - but added that someone would have to eat more than 500,000 cabbage heads to accumulate a dose equal to one pill.

Author Franziska Hafner, a student at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, said products made from human urine and faeces "are viable and safe nitrogen fertilisers" and "did not show any risk regarding transmission of pathogens or pharmaceuticals".

The peer-reviewed research has been published in the journal Frontiers In Environmental Science and comes amid record-breaking food inflation, with many shoppers struggling with supermarket bills.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: excrement; faeces; feces; poop; urine
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Tree growers have used biosolids as fertilizer for a long time. They also know not to use it in food production.

I have believed, right or wrong, that reclaimed water, biosolids and other improperly composted biomass materials are the culprits causing eColi, salmonella and other pathogens getting into the food supply on plant materials never affected in years past.

I would not knowingly consume food grown using human waste.


21 posted on 01/19/2023 5:36:52 AM PST by bigfootbob (Arm Up and Carry On!)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

My college risk assessment thesis 23 or more years ago agrees with their conclusions. In fact, most Americans have no idea we already use sewage (biosolids) on crops for fertilizer.

There are safety limits that need to be met and soil types to consider, but we been using it for decades.


22 posted on 01/19/2023 5:37:03 AM PST by EBH
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Only thing worse than feces is faeces!


23 posted on 01/19/2023 5:38:33 AM PST by PghBaldy (12/14/12 - 930am -rampage begins... 12/15/12 - 1030am - Obama team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: PghBaldy

” climate change and the war in Ukraine.” -— So the reason is due to globalists and leftists. They will use these excuses for anything they can!


24 posted on 01/19/2023 5:40:09 AM PST by PghBaldy (12/14/12 - 930am -rampage begins... 12/15/12 - 1030am - Obama team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

And yet it’s a royal pain..and expensive putting in a compost toilet in your home?


25 posted on 01/19/2023 5:40:18 AM PST by Leep (Hillary will NEVER be president! 😁)
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To: Openurmind

I think I would try and find a better example than a tribe last seen about 1572, just sayin’.


26 posted on 01/19/2023 5:42:04 AM PST by bigfootbob (Arm Up and Carry On!)
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To: bert

There is something which stinks about your proposition, but I just can’t put my finger on it......


27 posted on 01/19/2023 5:43:14 AM PST by Lockbox (politicians, they all seemed like game show hosts to me.... Sting)
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To: All

Just returned from the future. Scientists say that using human feces was a bad idea.


28 posted on 01/19/2023 5:43:36 AM PST by newnhdad (Our new motto: USA, it was fun while it lasted.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

As a *former* physiologist, I would say it’s technically and epidemiologically sound science. But it has to be done right.


29 posted on 01/19/2023 5:47:13 AM PST by Blueflag (Res ipsa loquitur: ad ferre non, velit esse sine defensione)
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To: EBH

My brother worked at a sewage treatment facility for 40 years and one time I visited him at work. There was a building that had a slide coming out from the peak, like a barn, and there was this brown stuff (looked like dirt to me) sliding down into a dump truck. I asked and he said they treat the people poo with something (I forget), then sell it to fertilizer companies. He didn’t know what the fertilizer was used for. This was back in the late 70s.


30 posted on 01/19/2023 5:48:08 AM PST by GMThrust
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To: Lockbox

“There is something which stinks about your proposition, but I just can’t put my finger on it......”

Talk to your proctologist!


31 posted on 01/19/2023 5:49:43 AM PST by SgtHooper (If you remember the 60's, YOU WEREN'T THERE!)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

> say scientists

One of the most dangerous phrases.


32 posted on 01/19/2023 5:50:18 AM PST by ArcadeQuarters (You can't remove RINOs by voting for them!)
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To: Yo-Yo

It’s Sky News- probably the way the Brits spell it.


33 posted on 01/19/2023 5:51:07 AM PST by telescope115 (Proud member of the ANTIFAuci movement. )
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To: bigfootbob

“I think I would try and find a better example than a tribe last seen about 1572, just sayin’.”

It wasn’t because of their farming methods that they ended. They would still be there teaching everyone else agriculture if they had not been bothered.


34 posted on 01/19/2023 5:51:08 AM PST by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: ConservativeMind

It’s not just that, what about neutralizing all the prescription drugs that will be in there?


35 posted on 01/19/2023 5:56:22 AM PST by telescope115 (Proud member of the ANTIFAuci movement. )
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To: telescope115

This is where my tagline comes in...


36 posted on 01/19/2023 5:57:00 AM PST by Yo-Yo (Is the /Sarc tag really necessary? Pray for President Biden: Psalm 109:8)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

It won’t be long before the new “impossible” burgers will be made out of human feces and urine. “Beyond Impossible Burgers”. Idiots will be eating them up.


37 posted on 01/19/2023 6:01:25 AM PST by FlingWingFlyer (Spay and neuter your "migrants" and liberals.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Lutheran Family Services brought in some Vietnamese mountain refugees to town and put them up in a group of apartments. They started gardens fertilized with night soil. Neighbors complained.


38 posted on 01/19/2023 6:06:02 AM PST by AppyPappy (Biden told Al Roker "America is back". Unfortunately, he meant back to the 1970's)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

A great concern of the Truman administration when it ran Occupied Japan was the supply of ‘night soil’ according to a book written by Thomas Dewey.


39 posted on 01/19/2023 6:12:29 AM PST by Brian Griffin
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

“In New York, the reeking loads were sometimes carted off to country farms to be used as fertilizer. But more often they were hauled through the night to a designated pier and dumped into the Hudson or East Rivers (and sometimes mistakenly onto the private boats below), creating a stinking, festering shoreline. The waste would settle into the slips and city workers would periodically have to dredge the excrement so that boats could actually dock. In Washington, D.C., one of the city’s dumping grounds was a field near the White House, where a marsh of Washingtonian waste putrefied under the president’s nose.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-american-cities-were-full-of-crap


40 posted on 01/19/2023 6:19:17 AM PST by Brian Griffin
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