rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

word

..
Toil, maybe the word you are reaching for is bioremediation where composting is but one mode.

to sense
..

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

well, not really. you mean as far as life function or personal ritual? I just mean that when people recycle kitchen waste, do something to it involving microbes, then use it to feed soil, it still feels like composting (as in my bokashi and worm bins). Sort of the way the first cars were called horseless carriage. So the word is now used to express a lifestyle choice, not just a technology.

I don't mean to say that bioremediation should be called composting. or that anaerobic digestion of human waste is composting. But what else do I call my daily ritual of saving food, adding it to a bin with other foods, and seeing it through until it is worm castings? How can I be in the club without borrowing the word?

Although right now, in a very cold half basement/half first floor with a loose door, I have a bunch of bokashi in worm bins, and it's cooking enough to keep the worms nice and toasty. But in the summer I keep the heat down.

rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

..

I don't know about personal rituals. I have no idea what you mean by life function. Lifestyle issues haven't occurred to me so much as a change in thinking has. I think more and more in terms of must I trash this thing or that thing or can I get something out of it instead. I certainly haven't changed my lifestyle and don't recommend it. If folks must change their lifestyles much, I don't think any of this bioremediation stuff is going to stick.

I seem to be adapting as circumstances change. Maybe one of these days I'll be fermenting stuff in the garage instead of filling up bins and adding water. Maybe in addition to filling up bins.

Personally I don't want to be limited by the word composting or compost. I think of myself diverting stuff from the waste stream and remediating that material into something useful. Further, I remediate the soil by adding organic matter whether through the composting process or by mulching with whatever I have that is mulchable.

No big deal. Just my funny sense of diction.

to sense

..

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

good points rot.


just let it sit though. etymology + process similarity + similar function in life = a "stolen" word.

can I interest you in some acid fermentation?

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Perhaps lactic acid digestion?

Your stomach is already doing it... :wink:

HG

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

lol I should've stuck to endocrinology...

:wink:

rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

..

I think I need some to time to digest it all. Maybe turn it over in my mind a few times. Spread it around a bit and see what grows. Air it out some. I need to be careful, I can get a bit dry for some. I'm sure if I keep reducing something will come of it all.

..

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

I don't know about dry rot ( :lol: )

You do however occasionally stretch an analogy to the point of breaking...

:lol:

HG

Clea Walford
Newly Registered
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:06 pm
Location: California

I would think that e.coli would be quite a problem as well. In China, one does not eat raw vegetables for this reason.

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

I think that was california spinach you were thinking of, not chinese veggies...

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

E.coli is an issue of dead depleted soils that have no other biologies than the hard core facultative anaerobes. E. coli is one of those.

In healthy organic soils with a plethora of biodiversity, bacteria, and bacterial predators that eat and compete with these organisms, they never rise to levels of toxicity. We each walk around with a gutfull of that particular organism, so why are we not all constantly sick? Because it never achieves dominance of that ecosystem... us.

Don't blame the bug, blame the ones that made it bad... us.

HG

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

word HG.

I wonder how much other facultative anaerobes compete with this helpful but misunderstood microbe?

it is important to remember that we eat this stuff all the time. but we don't eat massive doses of it, like HG points out.

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

The most common bacteria on that list is Lactobacillus. The other white facultative anaerobe. :lol:

Any other species that occupies your particular niche is competition. Perhaps the presence of Lactobacillus in our gut is what keeps E. coli in check? Perhaps it's dominant presence in Nature does the same?

We have fallen into a trust of the man made over nature. Factory farmed food gets a clean bill of health for the plastic wrap, but an aquaintances mom just asked her if the eggs her own daughter had given her from her own chickens would keep long enough to color as Easter eggs. When she asked her Mom why she wasn't eating them already, Mom said, "The yolks are too yellow."

As Leah said...

:roll:

HG

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7419
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

I know a little about how the city sewer system works. The city has monitors down in the sewer pipes all over town. If a monitor picks up something that is not suppose to be there it sets off an alarm. With monitors all over the city they can trace the toxic material back to the source very quick and easy. You can get a copy of all the materials that go threw the sewer plant for free you just have to ask for it. Once a year it is posted in the news paper. I'm not worried about putting sewage on my garden.

But I have read human waste has bacteria that invade the brain. Over a period of 20+ years it makes people go crazy.

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7419
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

hshields wrote:.

Alzheimer's rates are soaring as Babyboomers age - there are now over 5.3 million AD victims in US shedding infectious prions in their blood, urine and feces, into public sewers. This Alzheimer's epidemic has almost 500,000 new victims each year. No sewage treatment process inactivates prions - they are practically indestructible. The wastewater treatment process reconcentrates the infectious prions in the sewage sludge.
In nature only the strong survive, the weak die out. Man kind has invented medician to keep the weak alive. The weak breed with the strong and the human race becomes weaker and weaker. Soon everyones DNA is contaminated and we starts seeing lots of sickness and wonder why.

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

It is not a bacteria, but a protein, sometimes secreted by bacteria, but found in the excreta of any creature consuming animal proteins. It becomes concentrated at up to 600 times normal background levels in sewer sludge. And as noted, it is not broken down by normal composting, even at commercial treatment levels.

There is little evidence yet on this front; the science is new, and so are the experiments. It may be years before we start to see good solid data.

But there is VERY compelling evidence that there are serious issues here, so why should we continue to use the general populace as guinea pigs? Europe and Canada have put the Precautionary Principle into law to protect their populations; we continue to labor under laws designed to help out corporations. If this stuff is so harmless, prove it.

Instead we, the unfunded and unprotected populace are forced to prove it harmful while unknown numbers of us are subjected to the terrifying prospect of losing the very core of our being, our memories. Our families are subjected to watching a wasting more insidious than any physical degeneration. There are several specific prioinic poisoning incidents that point clearly to the possibility of prionic brain plaques being a causal agent for Alzheimers, yet the damage continues until you can "prove it in a court of law."

Is this any way to run a country? Tobacco, DDT, BisA; why must we continually subject ourselves to a toxic stew at the whim of corporate powers more concerned with bottom line than customer health? Why shouldn't they have to prove their product safe instead of the other way around? :? :x

HG

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

because we don't make them.

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Can't argue with that...

HG

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

The Helpful Gardener wrote:It is not a bacteria, but a protein, sometimes secreted by bacteria, but found in the excreta of any creature consuming animal proteins.

HG
Another good reason for becoming vegetarian! :)

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

True RBG; it has crossed my mind at several points that this is a meat eaters disease visited on everyone...

HG

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

so glad you posted this on vegetarian night. We had that yam cake and some gluten tonight in a stir fry.

so does anything break down prions?

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Not as far as I can see so far. It stands to reason that as a protein it HAS to break down somewhere, but if anaerobic digestion followed by thermophilic aerobic composting isn't doing it, what are we waiting for? A volcano?

HIGH heat does it, but nothing we would hit naturally in the ecosystem. I'm bettting on some fungal process (we still haven't gotten all that figured out) or a specific bacteria we haven't identified yet. Maybe actinobacters. Otherwise nature would just bioaccumulate this stuff until it was completely toxic.

It's like water; a matter of concentrations. A sprinkle here and there is fine; enough of it it one place can drown you...

I will do some more research, but the info is still spotty; like I said, this is new stuff...

HG

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

hope I'm not contributing to hysteria

excerpted from https://www.news.wisc.edu/13918
Pedersen notes that soils are a complex mixture of organic and inorganic components that vary across the landscape and that scientists are just beginning to tease out factors in soils that may contribute to transmissibility. The new study implies, he says, "that some soils may promote the transmission of the prion agent more readily than others."

Why that's the case is unknown, Pedersen explains, but the Wisconsin team is exploring several hypotheses: that the soil particles might somehow protect the prion from degradation in the digestive system, that prions bound to clay might change the route or degree of uptake of the agent, or that the mineral somehow alters the size of prion aggregates, which have been shown to be more infectious than prions alone.

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Aha, "prionic aggregates are more infectious than prions alone".

So concentrating them with soil particles MIGHT be a bad idea?

It seems very possible to me that this might be the biological control on many species; you build up too much of your feces in an area and it limits your population, whether we are talking about CWD in deer or Alzheimer's in humans. But it does seem like we shouldn't make it worse by spreading prions around willy nilly.

And WHAT does these things in? It HAS to be something natural... seems our bodies systems take care of much of this usually in the ubiquitinproteasome system (UPS), that disposes of damaged or mutated cells, but...
Mutations in different UPS components have been found to be associated with disorders linked to amyloid-like protein aggregation, such as Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases.


So somehow either the specific prions, or another causal agent is ruining our ability to deal with these...

Aha, seems [url=https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es060943h]soil organisms DO deal with this issue[/url], but below the infected area and not so much above it. So surface applications with high prionic content seem a bad idea...

[url=https://www.vetres.org/index.php?option=article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/vetres/pdf/2006/05/v6041.pdf]This study[/url] shows that BSE doesn't survive cow's stomachs, but this obviously doesn't apply to the deer in CWD. More stomachs? Different biology in those stomachs?

[url=https://www.thaiscience.info/Article%20for%20ThaiScience/Article/2/Ts-2%20enzymatic%20degradation%20of%20prion-like%20protein,%20sup35nm-his6.pdf]These guys[/url]have figured out a safe testing method using a created prion, because they think there are enzyme actions that might work, but we are still early in the testing of these prions, so who knows?

More questions than answers, for sure...

HG

rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

..

The first two studies suggest an anaerobic digestive process is the path forward.

So for prions then, a septic tank with a leech field?

..

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

And perhaps certain biological amendments to mitigate them. Certain organisms seem particualry suited and I am sure there are others...

But the current means are scary and untested...

HG

rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

..

Curiously enough, from The SF Chronicle business section and it's an AP story.

Organic activists protest San Francisco compost

https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/03/05/financial/f001153S33.DTL

..

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Rot thanks, I hadn't heard about that Georgia ruling; I think it is a seminal ruling on the matter and I hope to see it followed up...

HG

rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

..

Yes, I found the Georgia ruling telling as well. Cows died and the link was made.

I wonder exactly what the mechanism was that killed the cows.

..

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Good question, I'll dig around...

The judges comment was most clear...
U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Alaimo concluded that "the EPA cannot assure the public that current land application practices are protective of human health and the environment."
Nuff said.


HG

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Yikes!

[url=https://www.earthsave.org/news/sewagefertilizer.htm]Found it.[/url]

Hard to pick when the mess is this bad, but it looks like thallium leads the charge; that's rat poison!
The sludge contained levels of arsenic, toxic heavy metals and PCBs two to 2,500 times federal health standards.
Funny, I just finished rereading Silent Spring; it seems [url=https://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3854/is_200201/ai_n9036182/?tag=content;col1]Ms. Carson commented on poisoned Georgia cows[/url], but fity years later, here we are...

And here's [url=https://www.examiner.com/a-1345612~A_sludge_nightmare_along_the_Susquehanna.html]a lady who got sick in Pennsylvania[/url]...

Annd here's [url=https://www.organicconsumers.org/Toxic/toxicpoison.cfm]more people in Washington and Florida[/url]...

And here is a [url=https://www.ejnet.org/sludge/aeoh2007.pdf]specific health test showing increased incidence of a number of health issues[/url](most telling, giardia is a known fecal biotoxin)...

Now supposedly EPA is supposed to stop any program in early stages that shows clear signs of public health concerns. Despite the clear dangers outlined here, despite concerns that go even deeper and are clearly in need of research, there has been a complete breakdown of government oversight on an emerging industry that is creating 7 million tons of product a year, spreading it on food producing land and public spaces, and obviously not getting it right. We must act from the bottom as the top has failed...

HG

rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

..

"There are no records that anyone became ill because of milk tainted with heavy metals or other contaminants that could have come from sludge."

Small consolation.

Digesting. I'm going be very busy with other things I fear.

Thanks for the very valuable info. Thanks for providing the unusual value of information that is relevant and telling.

To sense

..

User avatar
tomf
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 3233
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 8:15 am
Location: Oregon

I just read through this topic and I knew some of the problems with sludge. I think it may be safer to use it to grow bio-fuel crops than food considering how hard it is to kill prions. We are dumping the waste and also sending treated wastewater into our rivers, estuaries and oceans helping to creating dead zones in the oceans; fertilizer run off is a big contributor. In the estuaries an algae has taken off due to the large amount of nutrients dumped in to them, it changes state to feed on what ever is available to eat and in one of its states releases a neurotoxin that can cause brain damage even from the water vapor. There are a number of algae that grow in the sea such as the Red Tide ECT. Here is just one page on this issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom

The real issue is as spices we live in large groups and nature cannot deal with the amount of waste we produce. Now we can never go back to a hunter-gatherer society but we cannot continue exponential growth of our population. If one looks at the charts of population growth of the human animal we see most of it is in the last 100 years and keeps growing at a high rate. Population control is a hard and messy subject most often over looked buy people touting environmental issues but it is the one factor that will over whelm the environment and make all our efforts to save the Earth a stop gap measure. Not that we should not try every thing we can to help the environment.
I know I may get some negative feed back for telling the truth but lets face it we can not continue like this for very much longer with out paying a price on the environment and depleting resources.
I was reluctant to post this reply, as it is not a happy topic.
It is a hard truth that few people are willing to talk about but silence will not change any thing.

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Tom, I am happy to hear any reasonable voices on this topic, especially from those who have obviously done the homework. This topic is of international concern, and needs good answers soon.

I think the work Paul Stamets is doing with mycology offers our best possible angle as he has already found viable cures for terrestrial petroleum pollution, H1N1, smallpox, termites and ants, and a number of other world threatening issues, among the fungi he loves so much.

This kingdom offers us a number of world changing technologies if we can recognize the importance of maintaining it's ecosytems as well as our own. Chemical culture damages the fungal net first and foremost, this kingdom that increases soil fertility and structure and breaks down carbon in manners not replicable by our best technologies. We need recognize the values of natural systems above and beyond what we think they may provide, as it seems likely they are our best bets to save this planet and our race from an ugly end...

HG
Last edited by The Helpful Gardener on Sun May 02, 2010 11:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Dixana
Greener Thumb
Posts: 729
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2010 11:58 pm
Location: zone 4

No need to hide in a corner and be afraid to voice your opinion Tom. And actually, I agree with you. People are not only living longer, but reproducing longer too. Some sort of population control needs to happen somehow. I'm all for big families of that's what someone really wants, but don't people ever wonder where the kids of their 5, 6, 7 kids are going to live? How they're going to eat?
I'm a firm believer in people only having 2 children, so unless I have twins this next time around our next one will be our last.

rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

..
I don't blame tomf for lying low. No easy thing telling someone they can't procreate. I'm certainly not wise enough to determine who can have kids and who can't. I can't believe the state is either.

So far, there has been nothing to show that population doesn't outstrip the food supply or any other resource. I can't imagine any fungus among us is going to rescue us from the fate biology has provided us.

As far as Paul Stamets goes, I see a lot of wonderful talk but the details cost money. Gotta send money if you must know. I never see the Saskwatch in the cage or the Loch Ness Monster carcass. I wouldn't expect to see a real mermaid or real unicorn after paying money either. I'd like to see some peer reviewed demonstrations of true efficacy before I buy a bridge from that guy. But then I buy into the whole Joe Jenkins line of thinking. Perhaps I'm simply price driven.

As far as sewer sludge goes, there are too many unknowns that go into sewer sludge to make it reliable enough to safely dispose let alone actually use it someplace on some thing.

to sense
..

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

Population control is a difficult topic and way more complex than it seems at first. I believe it is absolutely necessary. We keep working on reducing our (per person) environmental impacts (pollution created, energy used, etc) but as long as we keep having more and more people, we don't see the benefits. And we can make agriculture more efficient, but all resources are finite. So now we are doing all these huge mountain top removal mining projects, because most of the easy to reach minerals, ores etc are already gone.

I was a member of an active population control advocacy group ZPG, zero population growth, back in the 1970's. But since most of the areas of the world with the highest birth rates and population growth rates are the poorest countries and many of those are people of color, ZPG somehow got tarred with the genocide brush, like we were just trying to keep dark skinned people from reproducing. So the whole movement just disappeared for 30 years. It never was about race. Americans use many times the resources and create many times the pollution of any one else in the world, so it is most necessary to limit our population growth.

Total world population in 1970 was 3.7 billion. Today we are rapidly closing in on double that. We hit 6 billion in 1999, now 'Latest official current world population estimate, for mid-year 2009, is estimated at 6,790,062,216." https://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm Think how much easier all the problems we talk about would be if we had been successful at stabilizing population back at 4 billion or so.

But China tried the experiment with their mandatory one child policy starting in 1979 and maintained very strictly until the 1990's and less strictly since. It was spectacularly successful in reducing birth rate and population growth and likely contributed to China's amazing economic progress since then, but it has also caused many social problems:

https://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=128&catid=4&subcatid=15

One result was in a country that reveres sons, the one child policy led to a lot of female infantacide and abortions of female fetuses. So now they have a generation of spoiled only child boy babies growing up:

If both parents are only children, that means the entire family — including the grandparents — focuses their attention on that one boy or girl, imbuing the child with a dangerous sense of power. No wonder they're called “little emperors.â€

Dixana
Greener Thumb
Posts: 729
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2010 11:58 pm
Location: zone 4

Maybe the answer to this question was in one of the links I didn't read, but what have they been doing with sewage "biomass" for the last however many years?

The Helpful Gardener
Mod
Posts: 7491
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: Colchester, CT

Despite the fact that everyone seems to think that chemical culture has misproven Malthus' theories (what a crock, as we are simply spending the natural capital of soil in an unsustainable fashion to make that population possible), they are so common sensical that they are the salient point in this discussion to this day...

Succinctly, his theory was...
"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man"
His reasoning was...
"Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist...

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,

That the superior power of population it repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."
So the more people you get, the less happy they will be (he was sort of responding to John Stuart Mills who was pretty sure we could get to a Utopian society in short order; I think history has borne out that Malthus is probably right, but Mills was daydreaming...)

Every person born to this planet increases exponentially the demands on natural capital, open space, and national treasure. The days of limitless expansion of the human race need to come to a logical and rational close until we havev more room to expand, and as my wise old grampy used to say, put your money in real estate because they ain't making any more land...

Rot, no lesser pile of money than the DOD is sponsoring a good deal of Dr. Stamet's work at this point, and many of his inventions are being picked up by industry and will see production soon... faith, bruthuh...

HG

rot
Greener Thumb
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:15 am
Location: Ventura County, CA, Sunset 23

..
I'll wait to see if anything comes from fun guy Stametz but he promises too much I think.

I expect to see real progress in the area of mycology but not necessarily from Stametz.

Meanwhile my slow bin has gone fungal and I'm real pleased now that it's a digesting machine. I keep adding and it keeps reducing.

to sense
..



Return to “Composting Forum”