Recycling sewage should be a last resort: expert ...
Excerpt from Sydney Morning Herald:
Recycling sewage should be a last resort: expert
5 June 2007
The author of Australia's drinking water guidelines has stressed recycled sewage drinking water should be a last resort, warning that people could die if the system failed and there was an outbreak of disease.
Professor Don Bursill yesterday said he was not concerned about the technology, but human error.
He said six weeks ago in Spencer, Massachusetts, plant operators mistakenly released caustic soda into the town's water, causing a shutdown of supply.
More than 80 people were rushed to hospital, suffering burns and eye problems.
Professor Bursill, the CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Quality and Treatment, said sewage had very high levels of human pathogens "alive and kicking and ready to infect people".
Professor Bursill told a Senate inquiry that international water expert Dr Steve Hrudey had analysed 98 water-borne disease outbreaks, including a disaster in Walkerton, Canada, when seven people died and 2300 became ill from E.coli. "Eighty per cent of the failures he recorded were not due to failures of technology … but were due to human error," he said.
These included lack of attention to operating procedures, lack of maintenance of critical equipment, poor operating training and deliberately suppressing information to avoid problems with regulators.
Professor Bursill said complacency was the biggest danger.
He said Australia's regulatory regime was not strong enough to guarantee the safety of a system sourced from sewage.
See - Dangers of recycled sewage.
posted by Concerned Ratepayer at 6:20 AM
1 Comments:
Beattie has NO LONGTERM STUDY to rely on and he is prepared to use Brisbane as the experiment in a Toilet to Tap scheme!!
People of Brisbane should be up in arms and be marching on the parliament.
He says that he has 70% support for this radical scheme. He has used scare tactics to get some margin of acceptance by telling people that the taps will run dry.
It is a total lack of building in-fracture by this Beattie team and previous Labour governments which now has the S/E Qld in this delemere.
"Scaremongering" is the name of the game and the people who opposed Mayor Thorley's plan in Toowoomba were called this and much more when they pointed out exactly the same points Dr Bursill has now stated.
8:05 AM, June 18, 2007
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