Using sewage sludge to fertilize crops

Jeeves said:
People are willing.... Like they had a choice about what necessities cost! Jeebus! What fantasy island are you living on?


No, you get the exact same amount of credit for 1000 hours [about four months] of sweating and going deaf at a machine that may take your arm off if you get tired and lean over too far as your boss gets for 1 hour of sipping Glenlivet and smoking a Havana with his feet on a 17th century rosewood desk in a corner office 17 floors above.
It's what you were willing to trade for.
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Can we get back to sewage and sludge . From how deep does your city pumps the city water both of you ?
 
timojin said:
Can we get back to sewage and sludge . From how deep does your city pumps the city water both of you ?
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We get most of our water from the Colorado River and a desalination plant. We also use a lot of recycled water from sewage for irrigation.
 
Plazma Inferno! said:
A new study suggests sewage sludge could serve as a sustainable and effective plant fertilizer.
Phosphorous is essential to the diets of both plants and animals. In commercial agriculture, fertilizer ensures crops get enough of the vital nutrient.
The production of commercial fertilizers requires a lot of energy. Thermally treated sewage could serve as a sustainable substitute, researchers say.
When scientists fertilized ryegrass plots with thermally treated sewage and commercial triple superphosphate fertilizer, they measured comparable soil and plant benefits. Thermally treated sewage encouraged improved shoot growth and suggested the potential for greater root development.
Though commercial fertilizer allowed for more uptake of phosphorous, the diversity of nutrients in the sewage sludge encouraged microbial activity that immobilized phosphorous. Thus, phosphorous that wasn't immediately absorbed by plant roots remained in the soil for later use.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/201...izing-crops-with-sewage-sludge/6821471288449/

Study: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnut.2016.00019/full
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This used to work when dealing with natural waste products. But todays sludge is so full with antibacterial substances that instead of replenishing the soil, is in fact poisoning it. Artificial cleaning substances are not easily broken down by natural organisms.

An experiement in Japan showed that natural harvesting by crop rotation and using rotation fallowing is financially just as efficient over the long run as continual depleting the soil. The wanton disregard of any knowledge of soil chemistry may well be responsible for our increasing incidence of new diseases.
 
timojin said:
Can we get back to sewage and sludge . From how deep does your city pumps the city water both of you ?
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Public water supplies are subject to filtration an regular inspections for harmful substances. I live in a small town which has a single community well. Every so often we get a notice of the results of tests by an EPA licensed inspector.
 
Write4U said:
Public water supplies are subject to filtration an regular inspections for harmful substances. I live in a small town which has a single community well. Every so often we get a notice of the results of tests by an EPA licensed inspector.
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Define harmful substances .
 
timojin said:
It depends on concentration . Water is a harmful substance . you can drown in it
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Even sharks (water dwellers) must keep moving to avoid drowning.

OTOH, without intake of water humans would die within days.

Only Tardigrades seem able to survive long durations of draught. They do in fact shrivel up but do not die. Add a little water and the Tardigrade swells back to its original size and goes merrily on its way.
Tardigrades are notable for being the most resilient animal: they can survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms. They can withstand temperature ranges from 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) (close to absolute zero) to about 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C),[7] pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space.[8] They can go without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

and another interesting article on tardigrades (water-bears)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/science/the-tardigrade-water-bear.html?_r=0_
 
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