Nomads seldom remained in any one place long, but that changed when permanent settlements were established.
These inevitably led to contamination of nearby water supplies. Human and animal feces, even if deposited on land, eventually leach into surface water and shallow wells. There, they infect people drinking the water — sometimes folk just washing in it.
This column deals with diseases spread by drinking tainted water, including various forms of diarrhea — and cholera — as well as polio, typhoid, hepatitis A, etc.
The trigger was a recent story about the Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Addiction reporting people should consume no more than two alcoholic drinks per week. Even that modest consumption could be linked to “seven types of cancer, as well as heart and liver disease, dementia and lower respiratory infections.”
People have been drinking wine for 6,000 years in the Caucasus and the Middle East’s “fertile crescent.” China lays claim to the first wine, dating back 9,000 years.
Beer’s story is similarly ancient. Since then, human life spans more than doubled.
It sounds foolish to suggest alcohol was, somehow, beneficial to health, but let’s consider that thought.
Permanent settlements led to the “invention” of alcohol. It’s hard to call it an invention, because if you leave grape juice for a few days it becomes wine.
Settled folk had clay pots — hard for nomads to carry. These were vital for wine and beer production. Beer started with a gruel or porridge. Cooking the grain released its sugars and starches. This “mash” was left to ferment like wine.
Some early beer recipes also contained grape juice, which contained Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the yeast responsible for converting sugar into alcohol, to speed fermentation. Reusing the fermentation vessel also did this — no need for grape juice.
It became clear that diarrhea was less likely if you consumed wine or beer than if you drank water. The alcohol content of wine — about 12 per cent — was high enough to kill most pathogenic bacteria.
Although beer had less alcohol — three to six per cent — because the mash had been boiled, it was sterile.
In medieval times, even children were given “small beer” to drink instead of water. Made from the third washing of the mash, it contained little alcohol, but was free of pathogenic microbes. Unfortunately, not everybody could afford these beverages.
One solution was well water. Water from even a shallow well is filtered through soil. Britain’s London was peppered with such wells. Their naturally filtered water was normally clean. Inadvertently, a 19th-century idea undermined the quality of rivers, and sometimes urban wells.
In medieval times, human waste was deposited in chamber pots. Horrible though this sounds, these were often emptied by tossing the contents out a window into the street.
More elegantly, the material could be poured into a cesspit, a simple containment pit, if the house had one. Its liquid contents gradually leaked into the surrounding soil. But cesspits eventually filled with solid material.
That’s when “night soil men” would be called to bail it out. They would cart it beyond the city limits, selling the stuff to farmers as fertilizer.
As cities grew, the night soil men had to travel farther to sell their loads, so they could make fewer trips per night.
Of course, they raised their fees. Some people could not afford to pay, and their cesspits eventually overflowed.
Medieval streets were never sweet smelling. Feces of various animals — horses, dogs, cattle, sheep, rats, etc. — were joined by chamber pot contents, not to mention dead animals. The odour was offensive enough to convince many this “miasma” caused disease.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines miasma as a “noxious vapour.”
Eminent people were so certain miasma caused disease, they named malaria “mala aria” — or “bad air” — due to its association with smelly swamps.
In an attempt to clear the air and diseases supposedly caused by it, city governments built sewers. But these simply connected cesspits to a river, where the woeful mess was discharged. In London, this was the Thames River, the drinking water source for many citizens.
The work of Dr. John Snow (1813-58) showed cholera was caused by sewage-tainted water. For a few people, the tainted water came from a city well that had become contaminated by a nearby leaky cesspit. Snow is famous for removing the handle of the Broad Street pump. He also showed residents whose piped water came from parts of the Thames tainted by sewage discharge were also victims of the cholera epidemic.
By 1865, Joseph Bazalgette’s London sewer project was completed. This directed London’s sewage far down the Thames River, below drinking water intakes.
By 1878, Paris had built 600 kilometres of sewers. All these were eclipsed by projects like Rome’s cloaca maxima, circa 600 BC, an ancient sewer taking part of Rome’s sewage to the sea.
These early systems were built to carry sewage away from urban areas. Then it was simply dumped, usually into the sea. There, the mantra “dilution is the solution to pollution” seemed to apply. Physical and chemical treatment of sewage followed.
Today’s sewage treatment plants are highly sophisticated installations whose output is clear, odourless, and often safe to drink.
Unfortunately, they work so well and so unobtrusively, we tend to forget the vital role they play in our society. Don’t underestimate the importance of sewage treatment and its “partner,” the water treatment plant.
These sanitation devices are responsible for much of the tripling of human life spans in the developed world — a larger effect than all of modern surgery and medicine.
On Jan. 30, 2023, The Economist magazine reported on a problem plaguing British sewers and sewage treatment facilities — so-called “flushable wipes.” These are responsible for the bulk of sewer blockages, and the most common reason sewage treatment plants must close parts of their facilities for cleaning.
'Flushable' wipes are nine times more likely to block sewers than toilet paper is. Although some are labelled “biodegradable,” their rate of decomposition is slow. They do not remove themselves.
What are described as “floating, rock-like masses formed of fat, grease and trash like wet wipes and diapers” have been found in Toronto Harbour (Feb. 7, 2023).
I toured Barrie’s sewage plant on Feb. 22. Greg Jorden, manager of wastewater operations, told me they also have a problem with “flushables.” Parts of his facility have been shut down for cleaning out these materials. Although the plant is operating well within design specifications, it now lacks spare capacity. As a starting point for collecting other materials, these 'flushables' are a central problem.
Barrie residents should understand our sewage treatment plant is a complex machine that performs better than originally expected. Its anaerobic digester generates methane gas, which spins generators, producing much of the electricity powering the facility. Waste heat from its engines warms sewage during processing. This speeds digestion, reducing the (prime waterfront) space the plant occupies.
Please, help our sewage treatment plant do its vital work. Never dispose of flushable wipes, disposable diapers, or even dental floss — a surprising hazard for sewage pumps — into our drains. Don’t pour cooking fats down our drains, either, as this is the “glue” binding the other materials together.
The sewage plant belongs to us all. Let’s work to protect it.
Let’s keep maintenance costs as low as possible.
Peter Bursztyn is a self-proclaimed “recovering scientist” who has a passion for all things based in science and the environment. The now-retired former university academic has taught and carried out research at universities in Africa, Britain and Canada. As a member of BarrieToday’s community advisory board, he also writes a semi-regular column. If you have a question Peter might be able to answer or something you’re curious about, email us at [email protected].
