In contrast to Chris Peot who is paid to promote biosolids and can afford GAP clothes, I live on a retirement income and have no conflict of interest when commenting and researching the use of sewage sludge.

I have a Harvard Ph.D. designed, administered, and taught environmental science courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and chaired the Department of Science, Technology, and Society, before retiring. For the last 12 years I have worked full-time and gratis with top scientists, attorneys, activists, and sludge victims, researching the risks of land application.

Peot's comment contains a number of unsubstantiated statements and a lot of misleading information. Let me just point out a few of them.

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A final nod to history, and a look to the future: Let us not forget that the most worshiped and praised of all ancient sewers was Rome's Cloaca Maxima, whose spirit resided within the shrine of the goddess Cloacina, where warriors came to purge themselves after battle and young couples purified themselves before marriage. The lovely Cloacina was an emanation of Venus, and her statue overlooked the imperial city's sewer pipes as they transported 100,000 of ancient excrementum a day. Built in the sixth century B.C. by the two Tarquins, hailed as one of the three marvels of Rome, the Cloaca became one of the ancient city's great tourist traps. Agrippa rode a boat through it. Nero washed his hands in it. "Thus may the greatness of Rome be inferred," declared Cassiodorus. "What other city can compare with her in her heights, when her depths are so incomparable?"

Our back and forth over the last few days has been a refreshing antidote to the general repression of shit-related topics in the mainstream media. Despite our disagreements, at least we have discussed that which must not be discussed. Indeed, if we as a culture and a world do not pay our proper respects to Cloacina, we may find ourselves knee-deep in excrementum. Which spells the end of civilization as we know it faster than any other apocalypse I can think of . . .

Thanks for the opportunity to weigh in on this subject. First off, I have to commend Rose for her keen eye. I do, in fact, buy clothes at The Gap. They have clothes shopping for men figured out - brown pants, black belt, black/white shirt. That's all I really need on 350 days of the year. As a matter of background, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm the Biosolids Manager at the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant in Washington, DC. I'm an engineer by training and am a public servant, working for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DCWASA). I'm a left leaning, tree hugging liberal who believes the earth is in peril and that we (the humans) need to make major changes in order to right the ship. I also believe that given the current state of science and understanding of the risks, recycling biosolids to the land is the best solution for our organization. I am in charge of a program that recycles 1200 tons per day of biosolids, and I do not believe that properly stabilized biosolids, land applied within the regulations, will make individuals ill. Is it a perfect solution? No. Can it be improved upon? Yes. My colleagues in this profession work hard every day to examine issues, conduct research, and improve techniques to ensure we are producing a quality product for the end users.

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As a followup to LB's earlier comment, I think that, at least in the developed world, lack of public awareness about wastewater sanitation, rather than repulsion to the topic, is primarily what keeps the subject off the agenda. The generations who eagerly witnessed the installation of indoor plumbing are all but gone. Today, we just flush and it's whisked away, too busy in our daily routines to consider its fate. Many who live near sewage treatment plants aren't even quite sure what goes on behind that fence. These days, beach closings are few, and the old "No Swimming/Polluted Water" signs that I grew up with have almost disappeared. In the U.S., significant Federal and state investments in wastewater conveyance and treatment in the 70s and 80s seeming made sewage a problem of days gone by.

Unfortunately, infrastructure doesn't last forever. Like bridges and the electrical grid, our sewers, pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants need a continual flow of funding to be sustained. Federal money for wastewater-treatment projects dried up almost 20 years ago, dumping the burden on cash-strapped municipalities. Growth in population in many areas is already stressing systems, with some locales halting additional sanitary sewer connections. The propagation of pavement has increased storm runoff into aging collections systems; coupled with increasing rainfall rates, wet-weather overflows are on the rise.

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What do toilets have to do with healthy food??? EVERYTHING!

Agri-business became huge after it launched the "green revolution". But it was a fantastic misnomer ... it was in reality entirely a chemical revolution that replaced animal manure with chemical fertilizer. So what? What's the big difference? The difference is huge and will impact our health for a long time to come!

Chemical fertilizer only contains the three principal building blocks for organic matter: N,P,K or nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. The animal manure, however, also contains a large number of nutrients needed in smaller quantities to make food plants nutritious and good tasting. By not replacing those micro-nutrients, we gradually and sometimes quickly, impoverish the soils so they only produce bulk of grain, fruits and vegetable that look good, tastes like nothing and almost totally lack nutritional value. The same is sadly true for animals that graze on grass that is chemically fertilized if you wonder why beef also has lost it's taste. Now huge corporations, like Monsanto, have almost made food production and agriculture a completely chemical affair with pesticides, herbicides, genetically changing seeds to make crops able to stand more herbicides, and only chemical fertilizers ... and still very few people put their foot down because media serves those who pay best for getting the misinformation out and those who can buy advertising space.

Something wrong with this picture?

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Sorry to ruffle Caroline's feathers with my reference to Milorganite, which keeps the deer away from my shrubs. Perhaps the deer have been reading her posts. But I am glad we're finally getting into some big numbers, like $200 million. As everyone knows, there's big bucks in human fecal matter. I spent a fair bit of time in Houston with the CEO of Synagro, Robert Boucher, who may qualify for the greatest shit capitalist in America. Too bad Synagro, US specialists in the human residuals market, has run up against the law in Detroit . . .

Fred touts the sludge compost, Milorganite as "the best deer repelling fertilizer on the market." I have heard the same statement from Al Rubin, EPA's former sludge czar, who usually does not support his views with any published peer reviewed data. We have found no scientific evidence of this claim. In fact, sludge spread in forests initially attracts deer to nitrogen rich vegetation. Ingesting this vegetation can be risky for ruminants, especially if the sludge contained molybdenum.

Last summer the Milwaukee wastewater treatment plant that makes Milorganite experienced a nasty 200 million dollar surprise. Workers at the plant discovered some smelly, tar-like oily substance in sewage pipes they were cleaning. The substance contained very high levels of of cancer-causing PCBs. The contaminated sludge had already been spread on thirty playgrounds and parks, turning these areas into super fund sites. PCB levels in the spread sludge were so high, that most of the material had to be scraped off the sites and trucked out of state to a specially designated toxic waste landfill. At the tune of $200 million dollars. Not to count the loss in producing and marketing Milorgonite. The incident was not made public until after a month of its discovery. Officials claim that no PCB ended up in Milorgonite. But who knows. One wonders what would have happened if the workers had not reported finding that oily, smelly substance.

As an expert on the risks associated with the land application of America's sewage sludge, I was impressed with Rose's Biosolids chapter. I wish the chapter had been longer and had emphasized how federal and state regulatory agencies work with those corporations that profit from sludge spreading to deceive legislators, the media, farmers, and the public on the short- and long-term risks of this practice. See www.sludgefacts.org. Since the publication of my 2005 paper disturbing new data about the environmental and health risks of spreading sludge on farmland is reported almost every month. US EPA officials continue to ignore and deride complaints by sludge-exposed rural residents who ask for help. Many of them live in low-income and/or minority neighborhoods that have neither the political or legal clout to restrict land application. EPA ignores or covers up incidents of ground water pollution, soil degradation, cattle deaths and fly infestations, all linked to sludge spreading. Occasionally EPA send someone to a problem area to investigate. But their response is always that all is well, because no rules were broken. Of course. The US rules governing sludge spreading are the most lenient of any industrialized nation, which means that almost any hazardous material can legally be used as a soil amendment.

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Good afternoon. Thanks to Carl and Fred for their posts. I agree with both of you. Fred's right that my intro telescoped human attitudes to their shit (I'll address the issue of why I don't like to say "waste" shortly) into the last two centuries or so. I should have been more specific. The rise of the unmentionability of excrement is, in the general sweep of history, recent. Three hundred years ago, it was still commonplace for the highest noblemen and women in Paris and London to use the corridors of palaces as their toilet, quite openly. On the one hand people had little choice but to be at close quarters with excrement, because it was everywhere, in overflowing cesspools; on the street; in the rivers. That meant that there was much more pragmatism about our bodily functions and products: The Wellcome Institute, a medical library in London, has a lovely engraving of a maidservant being handed a stool sample in a bedpan by a visiting doctor, and asking whether he'd like a fork. Doctors and medical men were much more at ease with examining stools, and also, like Paracelsus, in endeavouring to make use of it in medicine, either by recommending it be ingested or applied to the skin in one form or another. I don't know the medical grounds for that, but I was fascinated to learn that fecal transfusions are now used to treat severe cases of MRSA, a "superbug." A relative's feces can supply healthy bacteria that somehow defeats MRSA when conventional treatment didn't.

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It starts with what we replace plant nutrients with in agriculture! Instead of using chemical fertilizers that only effectively replaces the main building blocks of organic matter -- N,P and K -- human and animal fertilizer replaces the whole spectrum of nutrients including the micro-nutrients that give plants taste, good nutrition and resistance to disease. By doing so we would also cut in half the pollution caused by agricultural run-off and the now flushed out nutrients from sewage systems. It may seem to be an impossible change to make but the first step is simple. We can immediately apply a technology for dealing with toilet waste that catches the whole nutrient base from human excretion, without spreading disease from human pathogens.

By switching over to odor-free, hygienic toilet systems that catches the plant nutrients without mixing them up with technical waste, we would get these nutrients back in a directly usable form. This full spectrum fertilizer strengthens the plants and we will not, as now, need to kill everything that we consider a threat to the crop as they get better at defending themselves. The food we produce will taste better, be more nutritious and attract better prices in the markets. Small natural blemishes is then, not a sign of bad agriculture but a sign that these fruits and veggies are organically produced and will be good for us and the environment.

So amazingly, healthy food starts with how we incorporate our and other animals bodily secretions in the cycle of our food production.

First of all, I'd like to say what an honor it is to be included among this august group. I have worked hard all my life to be considered an expert on human waste, so consider my participation in this TPM Cafe a culmination of sorts . . .

Second of all, loved Rose's intro a lot, but she's downplaying the passions human waste engenders today, and over the whole of human history. Perhaps as we go along we should keep in mind that none other than the great Paracelsus, father of modern pharmacology, kept a store of (what he called) zibethum in the cabinet, from which he hoped to conjure nothing less than the philosopher's stone.

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Hello and happy new year. It's now no longer the International Year of Sanitation - or indeed the International Year of the Potato - so I'm pleased that TPM Book Café still sees fit to keep talking, and to examine the unmentionables, as Time magazine headlined a piece about Alexander Kira, author of the wonderful and peerless The Bathroom, back in 1966. That title was partly behind my subtitle (the US one at least; the UK one is "Adventures in the World of Human Waste", which was thought a bit too Boy's Own for Americans, though I think it's truthful), but it wasn't actually accurate, in the sense that after two years of research, I don't think the topic is unmentionable.

I'm not referring to myself, because it has obviously been in my interest to mention it, constantly. But in the sense that even when I wasn't talking to people in the business, the unsung heroes who flush the sewers, install latrines, pick hospital aprons out of wastewater treatment plant grills, I found my conversation partners to be astonishingly willing to talk about it. There was usually a pause, after I'd told them what I was writing about, and then invariably some anecdote or other would come pouring out. Sometimes I was the one to change the subject. The same thing has happened since the book has been published: I expected to get some mockery, and some attention because of the potential gross-out nature of the topic, but there's been none of that. Instead, genuine, respectful curiosity and a real interest.

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Author Rose George is joining us this week at TPMCafe for a book club a bit off the normally beaten Cafe path. We'll be discussing her latest book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World Of Human Waste And Why It Matters. Her excellent book takes a tour of the world's sewage system while addressing the sometimes uncomfortable-- and often controversial-- subject of the global politics of waste.

We've lined up a slew of experts and journalists to discuss along with Rose. Frederick Kaufman, journalist and author of the in-depth sewage study "Wasteland" (Harper's, Feb. 2008); Caroline Snyder, activist and biosolids specialist with the Sierra Club; Vincent Sapienza, assistant commissioner for wastewater operations at New York City's Department of Environmental Protection; Carl Lindstrom, engineer and designer of greywater and composting toilet systems; and Chris Peot, the Biosolids Division Manager with the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.

Rose's first post will be up shortly. As she concludes in the introduction to The Big Necessity,

Once I start noticing, I can't stop. And once I start meeting people who work in this world-- who flush its sewers and build its pitlatrines, who invent and engineer around our essential essence, in silence and disregard-- I don't want to. I'd rather follow Sigmund Freud, who wrote that humanity's "wiser course would undoubtedly have been to admit [shit's] existence and dignify it as much as nature will allow." So here goes.

Here goes.