Com-Til

This is right off their brochure:

"The product is made from residual bio-solids from the City of Columbus wastewater treatment plants, yard waste and wood chips."

Eww. To me this is human poo that consumers are purchasing for use in our gardens. Unless someone can educate me I for one would not be comfortable using this product. Has this product been discussed before? I can't find anything on it in the search feature.

I didn't research it but my nursery said it was good for my garden , so it's in there.

We have discussed it, but briefly. The studies that were referenced support your feelings: good for flowers; not so good for veggies.

I dont think I would use it, BUT I have read about people using their hmm solids that have been composted with leaves, wood chip and such for well over a year. Then using. That said I think I will stick to the animal stuff lol

Once it's gone through the sewage treatment works , masserated & oxygentated then filter bedded , aireated skimmed and settled it's quite different to the solids we produce . It is also very much diluted but it will have trace elements of medication , hormones , drugs etc that have been flushed down the pan that you might not like in your own food .

Here in the UK the slurry waste is shipped liquid form by rail from the big cities , pumped into massive agricultural tankers at a rail head. Then it's taken to the the deep peat beds of East Anglia & deliverd into the beds via long flexi pipes attached to a three foot deep plough arm being pulled by a gert big tractor that goes up & down the fields in rows every 20 feet or so .

Apparently the onions and carrots it produces are excellent , so is the grain crop , potatoes & leeks .
I wonder what the various supermarket customers would say if they knew the real score????

It is also sent to power stations & is burnt in the furnaces to help make electricity .
I think sometimes it was or is used in making animal feeds products presenting a source of phosphorous in the feed stuffs especially pelleted chicken feed by way of being used as the ash from the power stations.

Yeah, humanure is not going to be used or made by me ever. I think the term for that is sewage sludge when it's from a municipal source. From what I understand, cows, chickens, pigs, llamas, rabbits, guinea pigs, etc are good for use because they are all vegetable eaters.

Unfortunately, even though humanure can be just as good as any other fertilizer(if it's composted of coarse), it's also mixed with all those chemicals people pour down their drains.

Not sure I know how I feel about this. I know Mexico uses human waste compost on their food exports and I see Bells and cukes and toms in the grocery store from Mexico all the time.

To make a decision I would really have to research more I think. I go back and forth between eww gross and thinking at least we are using it. LOL

One of the biggest problems with humanure is that it includes the pharmaceuticals that people use and also flush down the toilet for disposal.

I see occasional PSA adds pleading folks not to dispose of old pills down the toilet because the chemicals are beginning to show up in some city's water supplies.

Down here in SC, about a yr ago, folks started getting sick from e-coli. Come to find out, the farmer was spraying the liquid 'fertilizer' from the county on greens in his field. He thought it was sterlized, and that folks would cook the greens first, but folks used in salads. Didn't take long to stop it.

They had cantalopes this last yr. across this country with e-coli too, I never heard where it came from.

Probably if a real hot composting was done, all would be gone except for the drugs and hormones.

Back when I was landscaping we had certain customers who insisted on us using Milorganite for a natural fertilizer. Never used it on veggies, majority of the time we applied it to flower beds and lawns.

http://www.milorganite.com/home/

Just putting it out there.

Unmutual wrote:Yeah, humanure is not going to be used or made by me ever. I think the term for that is sewage sludge when it's from a municipal source. From what I understand, cows, chickens, pigs, llamas, rabbits, guinea pigs, etc are good for use because they are all vegetable eaters.

Unfortunately, even though humanure can be just as good as any other fertilizer(if it's composted of coarse), it's also mixed with all those chemicals people pour down their drains.

Never say Never

I would love for this issue to be deeply analyzed and researched.

We have concerns about the trace pharmaceutical elements which may, or may not, be filtered out of human manure. However, should we not give the same consideration to the antibiotics and growth hormones which bovine, equines, and poultry may be passing in their manure? When we purchase bags of that type of compost, I would think we may be subjecting our growing medium to many of the unknowns which concern us about the human by-product.

These factors should provide us with even more incentive to make our own compost!

ok heres my perspective from 3 differant angles 1 on the small farm my 2 ex's parents owned this is how it went:: cows pooped said poop was loaded into slurry wagon dumped on fields of alfalfa witch was cut bailed an fed to said cows SICK and healthy cows alike,cows pooped some more poop got put in slurry wagon and dumped on said fields of alfalfa again. see where this is going ??? 2 we had a small campground near where i lived when i was a kid during the summer myself and one of the owners kids would pump out the toilets take it over to one of the corn fields on the other side of the lake and dump it. the owner swore that were the human stuff got dumped grew the tallest. 3 in the town i lived in before i moved to michigan the city sent out notices saying that there was ABBYNORMAL concentrations of hccp<( not sure if thats the right abb.) in the citys water suppy what's this you ask ?? for that anwer all ya goota do is drive out to the city resivor where the city waste water treatment plant is located. and look at all the giant piles of canadian goose poop. another 2 cents worth

boog

forgot to add this one where i live now we have well water last january we bought a water filtation systom iron filter/water softner/ r-o unit and we have it tested and the water company says its still only 96-97% clean. so pretty much what ever we do chanses are we'll never be completly free of any contamenates in our water or soil or air we breath or food we eat. an ta think i used to chew on my lead painted crib

boog

for all you fellow sfg'ers that have chickens that use them for eggs, and you dont have a rooster,a side note if you give them feed from the feed mill it has a hormone in it that makes the chickens lay eggs. witch i'm sure most of you knew that allready but a hormone none the less. that being said, i'm sure theres been plenty of testing done to ensure that its safe to use for human consuption.

boog

How does having a rooster or not have any relevance to a hormone being added to the feed? Also, not all feed mill feeds contain hormones.

Other concerns aside, I have to wonder if the other stuff we flush down the toilet gets into the humanure. Like drain cleaner. Or bleach. Or paint (yes, people do that).