Health

Human Waste as an Energy Source

- Adam Clare

Human waste is a problem for every place humans live and throughout history it has been dealt with in various ways. Instead of treating human waste as a problem that needs to be removed from our towns we may want to think about it as an energy source. That’s right: turn our poo into electricity.

Anaerobic digestion of human waste can be done to convert the waste into gas. The UN University has successfully done this in Uganda and ready to take it elsewhere.

Biogas from human waste, safely obtained under controlled circumstances using innovative technologies, is a potential fuel source great enough in theory to generate electricity for up to 138 million households – the number of households in Indonesia, Brazil, and Ethiopia combined.

A report today from UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health estimates that biogas potentially available from human waste worldwide would have a value of up to US$ 9.5 billion in natural gas equivalent.

And the residue, dried and charred, could produce 2 million tonnes of charcoal-equivalent fuel, curbing the destruction of trees.

Finally, experts say, the large energy value would prove small relative to that of the global health and environmental benefits that would accrue from the proper universal treatment of human waste.

“Rather than treating our waste as a major liability, with proper controls in place we can use it in several circumstances to build innovative and sustained financing for development while protecting health and improving our environment in the process,” according to the report, “Valuing Human Waste as an Energy Resource.”

Check out their work.

Cut Out Sugar and Improve Everything

- Adam Clare

Some new research points out by simply cutting out sugar one can improve basically all that ails them. In a recent research study children gave up sugar for nine days and found that much about their health improved. This implies that it might be more important to monitor one’s sugar intake more than one’s caloric intake for some aspects of increasing health.

“The whole goal was that they don’t lose weight when they switch over to the diet. It’s just they’re removing sugar to see what that effect will be,” explained Lin.

“They noticed everything got better.”

Blood pressure decreased, cholesterol decreased, liver function tests improved, and even fasting blood sugar and insulin levels in their bodies dropped.

“The freaky part of this study was that it was only nine days long,” Lin said.

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Be Healthy by Getting Dirty

- Adam Clare

Hygiene is harming us. The overuse of antibacterial everything and the kill-all solution of antibiotics seems to be doing harm to us. Don’t get me wrong – we need antibiotics and antibacterial solutions. The thing is that we’ve used them too much.

The good news is you don’t have to be so worried about over-cleaning everything. People, kids in particular, need to have some dirt, germs, and grime around them so their immune system develops.

Most recently, it’s been discover that exposure to certain bacteria can hold back asthma.

To check if the missing bacteria are protective, the researchers inoculated germ-free mice with the FLVR bacteria and found airway inflammation improved in adult offspring of the mice compared with those without the FLVR bacteria.

The findings support the “hygiene hypothesis” of how sterilizing everything may come with a health cost in the long term.

“Maybe we’ve actually cleaned up things too much in our quest to get rid of all these infectious diseases,” Finlay said. “I really do think we have to retool how we behave.”

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India Drastically Reduces Deaths from Tetanus

- Adam Clare

India has an amazingly large population and I can only imagine the challenges with delivering health care to that many people. India has it somewhat figure out and they keep getting better at it. Recently the country has reduced the number of deaths from tetanus to an all time low and to a level that makes it essentially a statistical blip.

India has reduced cases to less than one per 1,000 live births, which the W.H.O. considers “elimination as a public health problem.” The country succeeded through a combination of efforts.

In immunization drives, millions of mothers received tetanus shots, which also protect babies for weeks.

Mothers who insisted on giving birth at home, per local tradition, were given kits containing antibacterial soap, a clean plastic sheet, and a sterile scalpel and plastic clamp for cutting and clamping the cord.

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Using Bacteria to Make Buildings Healthier

- Adam Clare

A new field of research, that doesn’t even have a proper name yet, is looking into ways we can incorporate biology into our built environment. It turns out the bacteria and germs found in our indoor worlds are vastly different than those found in natural environments. It makes me wonder what are we inadvertently breeding in our workplaces and homes.

Bacteria can be used to cure our “sick building syndrome” issues while improving our individual health too!

As evidence continues to mount against ultrasterilization, scientists are looking for alternatives that nurture, rather than eradicate, microbial communities.

One way is through “bio-active” surfaces, permeable nanostructures with “good” bacteria stitched inside. Built into walls, chairs, carpets, and other indoor fixtures, these living surfaces would continuously secrete beneficial microbes into the indoor environment. In laboratory tests with mice and rats, these bio-active structures have been found to reduce the likelihood of allergic reactions and asthma attacks. “Instead of building new buildings per se, we could just refurbish all the existing buildings in Manhattan or downtown Chicago with bio-active walls or bio-active carpets,” Gilbert says.

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