The historical public health benefit of moving human excreta away from people, and so curbing cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and other diseases caused by pathogens that live in our guts and travel in water, is unassailable. But we have swapped these enteric diseases for others with slower mechanisms of physiological dysfunction, such as Parkinson’s disease and cancer.

Today, with the most “advanced” wastewater treatment afforded by industrialized nations, all of the receiving bodies of water—lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans—are affected by nutrient and chemical pollution from sewage outfall. The “best available technology” in wastewater treatment plants has not changed much since the early 20th century, but the inputs have: hundreds of thousands of chemicals—like nanomaterials, perflouorinated compounds (PFCs), pharmaceuticals, brominated flame retardants, perchlorate, and pesticides.

http://inthesetimes.com/rural-america/entry/18238/industrial-ag-runoff-poses-threat-to-lake-erie-but-cafo-sewers-are-not-the

 

There is no global or regional shortage of food. There never has been and nor is there ever likely to be.India has a superabundance of food. South America is swamped in food. The US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are swamped in food (e.g. Billen et al 2011). In Britain, like in many wealthy countries, nearly half of all row crop food production now goes to biofuels, which at bottom are an attempt to dispose of surplus agricultural products. China isn’t quite swamped but it still exports food (see Fig 1.); and it grows 30% of the world’s cotton. No foodpocalypse there either.

From a fantastic website I just discovered today. Read the entire article HERE:, and explore a plethora of scientific reporting and analysis from an independent, expert, public interest perspective.