Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Endorses Water From Human Waste
theodp writes: GeekWire reports that Bill gates is certainly leading by example, appearing in a video in which he sips "a glass of delicious drinking water" produced from human waste processed by Janicki Bioenergy's OmniProcessor, which can take sewer sludge and turn it into clean drinking water, electricity and clean ash. So how was it? "The water tasted as good as any I've had out of a bottle," said Bill. "And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It's that safe."
Actually, the medication is typically never removed from the water at all - drink most any water supply and you'll get a healthy dose of estrogen, antibiotics, antidepressants, etc. Modern water purification plants simply aren't set up to remove such chemicals, and not even evaporation does the job - even fresh rainwater in remote high-mountain areas is loaded with pharmaceuticals. Actually pretty scary when you think about it.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I remember that story. From what I remember that water was supposedly on the clean side of the treatment process. What I don't understand is how they stopped birds crapping in it (spoiler - they didn't).
Because a shocking number of people, at least 2 billion, use latrines that aren't properly drained. Others simply defecate out in the open. The waste contaminates drinking water for millions of people, with horrific consequences: Diseases caused by poor sanitation kill some 700,000 children every year, and they prevent many more from fully developing mentally and physically.
And the ancient Romans figured this out, and solved it.
It does not require the massive infrastructure that starts with Western toilets to solve this problem. It can be done with wood and stone and gravity, assembled using nothing more than muscle power. The fact that 2 billion people (with far more muscle power at their disposal than the ancient Romans ever had) haven't speaks volumes about the 2 billion people.
Remember, that delicious tap water was once pooped in by a dinosaur.
Maybe. But dinosaurs didn't take pharmaceutical drugs.
And it doesn't seem to be hurting the astronauts on the ISS (from the year 2000)
The ECLSS Water Recycling System (WRS), developed at the MSFC, will reclaim waste waters from the Space Shuttle's fuel cells, from urine, from oral hygiene and hand washing, and by condensing humidity from the air. Without such careful recycling 40,000 pounds per year of water from Earth would be required to resupply a minimum of four crewmembers for the life of the station.
Not even research animals are excused from the program.
"Lab animals on the ISS breath and urinate, too, and we plan to reclaim their waste products along with the crew's. A full complement of 72 rats would equal about one human in terms of water reclamation," says Layne Carter, a water-processing specialist at the MSFC.
It might sound disgusting, but water leaving the space station's purification machines will be cleaner than what most of us drink on Earth.
"The water that we generate is much cleaner than anything you'll ever get out of any tap in the United States," says Carter. "We certainly do a much more aggressive treatment process (than municipal waste water treatment plants). We have practically ultra-pure water by the time our water's finished."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.