In a new paper published in Water Research, Senecal et al. assessed what hygienic health risks may occur when human urine is dehydrated. The experiment was set up to simulate that the last person using the toilet (before the dehydration medium is changed) is contaminating the medium with misplaced faeces, with no time for dehydration of the urine, i.e. a worst-case scenario. It was found that urine dehydration in itself achieved a concentration < 1 A. suum per 4 g of dehydrated medium which fulfils the WHO guidelines for unrestricted use.
The bacteria and bacteriophages were inactivated to below the detection limit (100 cfu mL-1 for bacteria; 10 pfu mL-1 for bacteriophages) within four days storage at 20 °C. A. suum inactivation data was fitted to a non-linear regression model, which estimated a required 325 days of storage at 20 °C and 9.2 days at 42 °C to reach a 3 log10 reduction.
Continue reading the full article: Senecal, J., Nordin, A., Simha, P., & Vinnerås, B. (2018). Hygiene aspect of treating human urine by alkaline dehydration. Water Research. In Press.
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Post published by Prithvi Simha
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