The big necessity
adventures in the world of human waste
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Word Count
81,500 words, Guess
Page Count
326 pages
Identifiers
- Internet Archivebignecessityadve0000geor
- ISBN-101846270693
- ISBN-139781846270697
- OCLC Control Number232714594
- Open LibraryOL32080861M
Classifications
- DDC363.72
- DDC628.3
- LCCRA567 .G46 2008
and 1 more
- LCCRA 567 .G46 2008
Description
Human waste is a major public health threat: population growth is taxing even the most advanced sewage systems, and the disease spread by waste kills more people worldwide every year than any other single cause of death. Even in America, 1.95 million people have no access to an indoor toilet. Yet the subject remains unmentionable. The Big Necessity takes aim at the taboo, revealing everything that matters about how people do--and don't--deal with their own waste. George also explores the infrastructure disasters waiting to happen and the potential saviors: from China's five million biogas digesters to the U.S. Army's personal lasers used by soldiers to zap their feces in the field.
Description
"[A] tour through the world of human waste - one of the biggest unchallenged causes of death worldwide and, for many, to their immense cost, the last remaining taboo. Produced behind closed doors, disposed of discreetly and hidden by euphemism, human waste is rarely out in the open in 'civilised' society ... With a journalist's nose for a story and campaigner's desire for change, Rose George ... takes us underground into the Victorian brick sewers of London and New York ... and overground to meet the heroes of India's sanitation movement. We examine the hi-tech Japanese revolution in toilet engineering, we go to sewage beds and sewage school; we investigate whether re-naming sewage sludge 'biosolids' might actually prove an eco-friendly alternative to petrol; we nip into public toilets the world over to see what they reveal about civilization; and we stand right in front of the biggest unsolved public health problem on the planet"--Cover.
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- The big necessity: adventures in the world of human waste
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