PARASITIC WORMS

Finally, a number of parasitic worms pass their eggs in feces, including hookworms, roundworms (Ascaris), and whipworms (see Table 7.6). Various researchers have reported 59 to 80 worm eggs in sampled liters of sewage. This suggests that billions of pathogenic worm eggs may reach an average wastewater treatment plant daily. These eggs tend to be resistant to environmental conditions due to a thick outer covering,¹⁸ and they are extremely resistant to the sludge digestion process common in wastewater treatment plants. Three months exposure to anaerobic sludge digestion processes appears to have little effect on the viability of Ascaris eggs; after six months, 10% of the eggs may still be viable. Even after a year in sludge, some viable eggs may be found.¹⁹ In 1949, an epidemic of roundworm infestation in Germany was directly traced to the use of raw sewage to fertilize gardens. The sewage contained 540 Ascaris eggs per 100 ml, and over 90% of the population became infected.²⁰

If there are about 59 to 80 worm eggs in a liter sample of sewage, then we could reasonably estimate that there are 70 eggs per liter, or 280 eggs per gallon to get a rough average. That means approximately 280 pathogenic worm eggs per gallon of wastewater enter wastewater treatment plants. My local wastewater treatment plant serves a population of eight thousand people and collects about 1.5 million gallons of wastewater daily. That means there could be 420 million worm eggs entering the plant each day and settling into the sludge. In a year's time, over 153 billion parasitic eggs can pass through my local small-town wastewater facility. Let's look at the worst-case scenario: all the eggs survive in the sludge because they're resistant to the environmental conditions at the plant. During the year, 30 tractor-trailer loads of sludge are hauled out of the local facility. Each truckload of sludge could theoretically contain over 5 billion pathogenic worm eggs, en route to maybe a farmer's field, but probably a landfill.

It is interesting to note that roundworms co-evolved over millennia as parasites of the human species by taking advantage of the long-standing human habit of defecating on soil. Since roundworms live in the human intestines, but require a period in the soil for their development, their species is perpetuated by our bad habits. If we humans never allowed our excrement to come in contact with soil, and if we instead thermophilically composted it, the parasitic species known as Ascaris lumbricoides, a parasite that has plagued us for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, would soon become extinct. The human species is finally evolving to the extent that we are beginning to understand compost and its ability to destroy parasites. We need to take that a step further and entirely prevent our excrement from polluting the environment. Otherwise, we will continue to be outsmarted by the parasitic worms that rely on our ignorance and carelessness for their own survival.

Source: The Humanure Handbook. Jenkins Publishing, PO Box 607, Grove City, PA 16127. To order, phone: 1-800-639-4099.
www.jenkinspublishing.com