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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."
Water's water - given the diffusion time we're probably all drinking King Tut's piss today (not to mention plenty of other peoples/animals).
While that is true, my problem with the story is this bit:
And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It's that safe.
Bill Gates studied the engineering behind it? I am so reassured...
Human waste contains heaps of harmful bacteria. If I am going to drink water recycled in this manner, I'd prefer to have the engineering studied by an independant water quality professional, say, an environmental engineer? And for the output water to be studied by health professionals and microbiologists. Some long term testing on how well the product holds up as the filters degrade would be nice too. That first glass may be clean and delicious, what about the the tenth, hundredth, or thousandth glass?
The recommendation of the former CEO of a software corporation (no matter how successful) doesn't really give me that high a level of confidence in the product.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.