Sensor-based evaluation of a Urine Trap toilet in a shared bathroom

Repurposing Sewage and Toilet Systems: Environmental, Public Health, and Person-Centered Healthcare Applications

Global terrestrial water supplies are rapidly depleting due to the consequences of climate change. Water scarcity results in an inevitable compromise of safe hygiene and sanitation practices, leading to the transmission of water-borne infectious diseases, and the preventable deaths of over 800.000 people each year. Moreover, almost 500 million people lack access to toilets and sanitation systems. Ecosystems are estimated to be contaminated by 6.2 million tons of nitrogenous products from human wastewater management practices. It is therefore imperative to transform toilet and sewage systems to promote equitable access to water and sanitation, improve public health, conserve water, and protect ecosystems. Here, the integration of emerging technologies in toilet and sewage networks to repurpose toilet and wastewater systems is reviewed. Potential applications of these systems to develop sustainable solutions to environmental challenges, promote public health, and advance person-centered healthcare are discussed.

Impact of heat-treatment on wastewater analytical parameters

Raw wastewater analysis is an important step in treatment assessment; however, it is associated with risks of personnel exposure to pathogens. Such risks are enhanced during virus outbreaks, such as the COVID pandemic, and heat-treatment is a commonly used mitigation measure. We examined whether heat-treatment compromises wastewater analytical parameters results. We found that heat-treatment of blackwater at 60 °C for 90 min in capped containers yielded no statistically different values (p > 0.05) for pH, chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia (NH3), total nitrogen (TN), total suspended solids (TSS), and turbidity for specimens from three different sources. This heat-treatment inactivated coliform bacteria (>4 log10 reduction) thus compromising the measurement of commonly used fecal contamination indicators. The observation of intact helminth eggs in heat-treated specimens suggests that the helminth egg enumeration assay is not compromised. These findings indicate that heat-treatment for the safe handling of wastewater, as may be needed in future virus outbreaks, does not affect the measurements of many common wastewater physico-chemical properties.