Hi Sharada,

You're right, pathogen composition is not included in detail. I think that would be another paper in itself! We have focussed on parameters which affect treatability in a conventional sense - e.g. most sewage works consents don't include pathogens.

Sorry not to be more help!

Alison

Thank for this great paper, Dr.Parker.

I browsed through the paper and saw a paragraph on Bacterial Composition (3.2.2) but did not see much about concentration of pathogens in feces. Was it a conscious decision not to list pathogens as part of the feces and urine characteristics? While the paper comprehensively covers other characteristics, I am curious to know the thinking behind the exclusion of pathogenic concentration.

(Please pardon me if I seem to have missed a table or section in the paper)

aokucu, all the links people have used above work for me.

The paper is open access, so the page should be available to everyone - but in case it helps, I have attached the pdf to this message. If you login to the SuSanA forum, you should be able to see it below.

the link takes me to a site that does not open

Hi Elisabeth,

Yes, Buzzfeed decided to use the mean value we calculated rather than the median value! And yes, in this case volatile and organic solids are basically the same.

Alison

Hi Alison,

That's cool about you being cited in that Buzzfeed video (not in the video itself but in the video description in Youtube, even with two links)! After all, the video has been viewed nearly half a million times so far! The 2 minute video is all about visualizing how much poo the world population excretes in a day - simple message!

And - as you pointed out to me at the WEDC conference - it might well be that they got onto your paper by seeing it mentioned on Wikipedia (thanks to Joe for including it in the article on urine: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine#Constituents and here on the page for human feces: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_feces#Averag...ical_characteristics). And also the fact that it's an open access article would have helped. So, congratulations!

Just a small thing I wonder about: in your paper you said:

Results showed that the median fecal wet mass production was 128 g/cap/day, with a median dry mass of 29 g/cap/day.

But in the buzzfeed video they rounded it up to 149 g/cap/day - how come (did they contact you about it?)?

See screenshot:



At Taber: I completely agree with your point. The more I think about this sentence, the less I understand it. I think for laypersons it is very unclear:

Organic material makes up 65-85% of the dry solids with volatile solids making up 75-85% of the total solids

(from here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine#Constituents)

People won't even know what volatile solids are and why that's important. Normally in wastewater treatment, volatile solids is pretty much identical to organic solids, isn't it?

Alison, perhaps you could explain a little what this sentence means so that we can come up with an easier to understand version for the Wikipedia article on urine?

Thanks.

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. If you are wondering - like me - what Buzzfeed is, read here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed :
BuzzFeed is an American internet news media company. It describes itself as the "social news and entertainment company . . . redefining online advertising with its social, content-driven publishing technology . . . provides the most shareable breaking news."

"Organic material makes up 65-85% of the dry solids with volatile solids making up 75-85% of the total solids."
I am able (smile) to understand this, but perhaps it can be said more succinctly for all Wiki readers.

For example, yet still awkward:
Within the total solids component, volatile solids make up 75-85%. The remaining 25-15% is dry solid matter that is 65-85% organic material.

Somewhat bizarrely, one of the stats from the paper has now been made into a Buzzfeed video....

The research was funded under an EPSRC grant and they now require all papers to be open access (and give the university a block grant to cover open access fees). But I was glad as I think it would be useful to a lot of practitioners too!

Thanks for taking the initiative to edit the Wikipedia pages, that's great!

I hadn't realized that "per capita" would be so confusing as I thought it was widely used in other fields as well e.g. economics. Obviously we can't change the paper now, but please do use "per person" in the wikipedia pages if you think it would be less confusing.

Yes, well looking at that wikipedia page again, it needs more work as much is repeated and unreferenced. I also added this reference to the human faeces page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_feces

I would avoid using the per capita (replace with per person) for ease of understanding, Elisabeth.

Dear Alison,
So glad that you've made this an open access paper!

I noticed that Joe already used it to update content on the page of "urine" on Wikipedia which is nice. See here Joe's edit to the page (comparison with what was there before which was citing data from 1971):
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Urine...2225&oldid=664073923

Your article being a review article, this fits perfectly as a reference for Wikipedia pages dealing with medical content.

Come to think of it, shouldn't we also say something about the phosphorus concentration in urine in the Wikipedia article?

So far it says this now in the Wikipedia article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine#Constituents

Characteristics[edit source | edit]
Constituents[edit source | edit]
Humans on average excrete 1.4 L of urine per person per day, at a pH of about 6.2 with a high percentage of the total being water. The total solids in urine are on average 59 g per person per day. Organic material makes up 65-85% of the dry solids with volatile solids making up 75-85% of the total solids. Urea is the largest constituent of the solids, comprising of more than 50% of the total. On an elemental level, human urine contains 6.87 g/L carbon, 8.12 g/L nitrogen, 8.25 g/L oxygen, and 1.51 g/L hydrogen. The exact proportions vary with individuals and with factors such as diet and health. [2]

Could also add this: "content of P in urine 0.4–2.5 g/cap/day"

And something like this: "The urinary excretion of nitrogen is about 11 g/cap/day)."

Regards,
Elisabeth

Not a daft question. cap = capita = person! So your guess is correct!