Do not eat the snow... - Continued

Several years ago, I spent a year battling my local health department. Instead of permitting me to replace a broken septic tank, they wanted me to connect to a sanitary sewer system 320 linear feet and about 8 feet uphill from my home's foundation. As the local regulations only required connection if the foundation-to-tap distance was 200 feet or less, and $h!t only runs downhill, I won the (acknowledgement of my) right to replace my two 30 year-old, 1,000 gallon septic tanks with two new 1,500 gallon tanks. Finally, on topic, sort of, I spent about 20 hours researching whether filtering my wastewater (other than bleach and detergent, it is all stuff I either ate, drank or used for bathing) through the local earth was more environmentally friendly that condensing all the waste from my township into a point source before "treating" it and dumping it in the closest river. There were certainly good points and arguments on both sides. However, there was a scarcity of hard data, science or consensus. What little, non-anecdotal, data I found tended to support the conclusion that the downstream impacts of municipal wastewater treatment can be quite appalling. Therefore, due to an inability to determine the environmental impact of my actions, my decision was based on my 30 year cost of $3k for septic vs. $45k for sanitary sewer.

I wondered how the total mass of wild animal feces "stacks up"(1) against the total mass of domesticated animal (nb, this, of course, includes human) feces. Other than arriving at the conclusion that wild animal feces would tend to have a smaller per square foot impact over a much wider area(2) vs. the larger per square foot quantity in concentrated areas from domesticated animals, I couldn't find any logical way to even estimate total mass for comparison. Nothing concrete turned up in my research: mostly it was just a bunch of crap.

(1)Me: How tall are you?
Them: About 5' 8".
Me: I didn't know you could stack $h!t that high!

(2) Q: Does a bear $h!t in the woods?
A: Yes, but also pretty much wherever they go.

Marc said:

The weirdest part I have been reading is how often this stuff is even showing up in city water supplies, bottled water and in fish being sold.

DISCLAIMER: As far as I know there haven't been any studies that show that human consumption is a problem physiologically. And, in reality, I remember eating snow as a kid back in the 1950's my parents warned not to eat snow because of all the pollution it contained.

And I just HAD to add this: Frank Zappa - Don't Eat The Yellow Snow lyrics | LyricsFreak

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Especially, I recall the dictum: "Don't eat the YELLOW snow!"

I was reading an article earlier and now I forget where. If I can find it I'll put in a link. The summary was a study of late showing how micro-plastics and plastic related chemicals are now being shown to be accumulating especially in youths. The article did say there are no studies yet as to the effects, but some of the related chemicals have been show to be related to liver and kidney damage, and to cancer.

The future is getting weirder.

Icy Mountain said:

Finally, on topic, sort of, I spent about 20 hours researching whether filtering my wastewater (other than bleach and detergent, it is all stuff I either ate, drank or used for bathing) through the local earth was more environmentally friendly that condensing all the waste from my township into a point source before "treating" it and dumping it in the closest river.

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I reduced my septic tank load by re-routing almost all of my gray water to these: Greywater recycling and graywater disposal system kits & parts a few years ago, but I do have city water. I also have a cistern but it hasn't been functional since the city brought water lines here about 25 years ago. The closest city sewer line is about a mile down the road from me.

Just to put things in perspective:
70 years ago, I was eating lunch at my grandfather's house and got all panicky because my ear of corn had a blemish of some kind on one of the kernels. Gramps took a look and pronounced, "It's just a spot of dirt. It won't kill ya. You have to eat a peck of dirt before you can die." (I had no idea at age six what a "peck" amounted to.) I think something similar to that edict is what engendered the "five second rule."