You should go for it, and i envy you to be able to do such a great thing with human waste. Just, tell no one.....if you could.

I do 6 months to a year. Israel being a much warmer climate than here probably means composting processes can go faster.

I have been known to use mine after about 8 months. I do make sure the rest of the process is totally 'by the book' though, with the poopy bits of the compost reaching 65C to make sure any potential nasties are well and truly cooked.

While that was composting, being digested, what temperatures were attained? If in the 80 degree Celsius range it may well be but if the temperature is unknown it may be okay if the US Center for Disease Control, and other, guidelines are followed for applying any manure for growing food crops. Manure should not be applied to the soil sooner than 90 days for food crops to be harvested above ground or 120 days for food crops that produce edible roots.
While not everyone will get sick from one of the potential disease pathogens, simply that there is a possibilty is enough to warrent caution.

The temperature is unknown...

what can happen,really if pathogens are left in the compost?
what should i worry about?

To my knowledge, pathogens in the soil do not pass through the roots, up the stem, and into the fruit. You could use compost made from human manure on crops like tomatoes, peppers, and green beans with little risk. Root crops like carrots and potatoes might harbor pathogens on the outer surface, or skin. One would think that lettuce and cabbage could be safely grown on this soil if the outer layers of leaves were removed at the time of harvest. The question becomes who is doing the harvesting, and how clean are their hands?

I'm going to recommend a reading of Joe Jenkins, he wrote The Book (literally) on humanure and is my 'go to guy' for this topic.

While chapter 7 is devoted to pathogens and such, I'd read the whole thing, it's free, very informative, seems to be very accurate and there are good points throughout the book.

Lloyd

80C = 176F, not likely attained in a home composting system.

Lloyd

g'day karnina,

we used ours after about 7 months, so can't see any issues, we had composting worms working ours for that period. ours from a dry composting toilet system, not far removed from the humanure system.

any left over pathogens will be controlled by the earth worms and other bacteria in your garden. and then the only way you can be affected is from hand to mouth/face before washing your hands, or if you were to irrigate with it over the plants and then not wash or cook the plants. how plants take up nutrients would make it virtually impossible for any pathogen to affect the plants edible material.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

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I let the gift of the dogs set for closer to a year. My climate is similar to Isreal and I struggle to keep it moist all the time. I like a year for all the worms to make their way inside and then do their work.

to sense
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I forgot to mention that during one of those e coli scares, e coli was found inside some lettuce. Apparently. that can happen with lettuce and cabbage.

to sense
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So what I understand is that it's more safe to use it on summer crops like tomatoes,peppers and squash then on leafy vegetables ,
and that I should wash the vegetables carefully before eating..

(But again I ask ... what's the worst thing than can happen? :-) diarria? )

Thanks for all of your answers...

I hear you, kimmsr...

again some fear hype coming into the equation, as before i ask for real time evidence of people catching a health endangering illness from using humanure for their food gardens.

there is no doubt one of the many e-coli's and other illnesses mentioned, effect someone each day somewhere around the world, but how did they pick up the bug in the first instance? teh real reason not a hyped reason.

know of a case where someone went to a doctor with a tummy bug, when asked by the doc' what they had done the day before? the patient said visited my sister in the country and drank tank water, well it was like winning the lotto for the doc', he blamed listeria, but the patient omitted to say that around a dozen or so other people had been visiting as well and none of them had gotten sick.

last i heard a family upheavel was in oder as littigation was hinted at, this is what un-substantiated fear hype does, ruins relationships and makes money for lawyers.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

E-Coli, Solmonella, and Listeria are some of the potential disease pathogens that might be in any warm blooded animals (including humans) manure and people have died from those.

True, but those people are infants, small children, elderly, immuno-compromised, etc. The average healthy adolescent or adult will get ill, but won't die, even from a virulent strain like E. coli O157H7.

I cold-compost only, so I don't use manures, but imagine that humanure has minimal risks as does other forms of manure. Keep in mind people get food poisoning ALL the time, but it's not likely to be from produce harvested from their gardens. The more likely sources are from fecal bacteria on raw meat that is brought into the home or from improperly cooked food. Occasionally sources like fecal bacteria that is cross-contaminated to fruits or veggies in the field.

Interestingly, the kitchen sink is the germiest place in your average house (mostly bacteria from raw meat/meat juices) - people always think it's the toilet bowl, but that doesn't even make the top 10.

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I don't believe anyone here is trying to hype fear. The fact of the matter is handling manures comes with pathogens. If you're going to handle manures you should be aware of it. That's why I prefer a different term for manure, because it's pretty clear cut about what you're dealing with.

I've heard some people reporting that they will bury their pet waste directly into the garden. Since I occasionally dig in the garden, I'd rather not come across anything like that. For my money, I think such things are far better off being composted before anything else. I just take more care when composting such things and I think it is in everyone's interest that care is taken when we do so.

I wouldn't say don't do it, I would say don't do it in windrows next to a watershed.

to sense
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Here is how you avoid "handling" manure. Take one of the ubiquitous cardboard boxes from your environment, and put it in some (hopefully) private place where getting the floor a little damp doesn't matter. I used my basement for a long time, now I have a little outdoor shitehaas/toolshed. One fills the box progressively with nuggets, sawdust, and urine. When full one scoops up the box with a quick "pulling the table-cloth" type move with a snow shovel, carries the box to the compost pile. I seal mine shut with muck from my graywater pit. Tha tends to keep the rats from messing with it. Soon the manure worms riddle it.

You'll need to do some squat exercises first for a few months if you don't have good squat muscles.

Actually, when it comes to humanure, I think the biggest hurdle is psychological. The thought of eating a vegetable that has been fertilized with human poop makes people disgusted, even if it were 100% safely decomposed. And we spend untold water and fossil fuel processing and disposing of our own excrements when maybe they could be a valuable resource as fertilizer.

And yet people routinely bring raw meat into their house which has a good possibility of being contaminated with fecal bacteria from the excrement of slaughtered animals. Then possibly cross-contaminate their sink, counter-top, cutting board, or utensils. In 2007 Consumer Reports reported that 83% of chickens tested positive for salmonella or campylobacter.

People are okay with animal poop as fertilizer or coating the food they cook, but human poop is somehow scary and gross...?

If manure could be composted and used as fertilizer, wouldn't cities and counties try that?

Oh, wait.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sludge based products

No one is trying to hype fear among anyone, just provide good information so intelligent use of manure can happen. I use manures in my gardens every year and have for many years and used the common sense criteria I have posted here, numerous times, when they have been used.
Common sense says that if something has a potential of spreading a disease pathogen due care should be used in handling that to prevent the spread of those potential disease pathogens. Healthy adults have been among those stricken with one of those food borne disease pathogens and it is not a pretty picture when you are. While not many healthy adults die from them they do wish while fighting them off that they had. If anyone thinks having the flu is bad you never want to know anyone that has had one of these.
What is wrong with taking precautions to prevent exposure to potential diseas pathogens? Do you not wash your hands?

karnina, I don't see where you live, but the best advice I can offer is to get in touch (if you aren't already) with the large and helpful group of permaculture folks who are all over the country. There are some wonderful folks who know huge amounts of info. Also check out the "Shinui Yarok" (Green Change) website, LOTS of kindred souls. Let me know if you need more! Batya from Haifa

the hype fear comes with unsubstantiated claims that people have gotten sick or worse from doing a certain process, if a claim against the health of a life is made then the hard copy evicence of that happening would be needed.

the only common sense needed is that gardeners like shoppers and others should wash their hands at the end of their adventure. as for common sense saying something is dangerous don't do it that won't work take a look at road trauma.

we used humanure for 6 years with not a single issue, we gave excess vege's away and again not a single issue, have never heard of a single genuine fully proven case of anyone getting ill or worse. and that is in all the years i have been involved in this group and this matter has been discussed.

len

Ok . I had to literally dig deeper into this so I went again and checked it..

I saw mainly brown ,wonderful non smelly stuff thay lookes a lot like composted sawdust.. I thought it would look more like regular compost - when I can't really see what was inisially put there..
But the sawdust is still quite visible...

Tell me,len, how long have you waited before using yours on the garden?

Batya - thanks.. I'll contact them..

Whether that bout of diarrhea was from E-Coli, Listeria, Salmonella, or something else can only be determined by culturing and many people are able to get better without medical intervention, so we only hear about those really bad cases where people die or are sick enough to almost die. That does not mean that many people do not get sick from them but have mild symptoms that do not get reported. Very often even cases of severe food poisoning go unreported because people stay home and fight it off with no medical help thinking they have the flu, which can be somewhat similar.
If it is so simple to prevent potential exposure to these disease pathogens by putting the manures on/in the garden 90 to 120 days before harvest why would anyone say it is not necessary to do that?

If the sawdust is still quite visible, I think I'd leave it a while longer. The earliest I ever used mine was ten months, by which time the sawdust had 'disappeared' completely. Here's a humanure heap which has been curing for ten months, complete with it's uncomposted strawy covering layer - the sawdust really wasn't visible at all.

{{gwi:262832}}

And here it is all spread out on the garden ready to plant cabbages in.

{{gwi:262834}}

we waited about 6 months(because that is how the toilet worked empty the full drum when the in use drum filled up) before we used it (it came from a dry system composting toilet), at that time no smell, had no ressemblance to what it started out as just very dark humus material, good for plant food the worms love it.

len

i've no doubt that people get sick from some form or other of e-coli or related pathogens the chat is not about that realy, and as i indicated doctors given half a hint by the patient lock into something to make their job easier, people who get sick are very rarely if ever fully tested to find out how they actually got infected.

and as there is so little humanure used in our western gardens it is never going to be the cause of any illness, as we have found from using it, recycling all your rottable and human waste makes environmental sense, just pushing a button and letting some other body of people look after your personal waste is not at all responsible mangement of your waste, and i'm not talking about people who are in situations where they can't consider this, that is another story.

good mangement of pesonal wastes should be promoted, ok if? and it is a big if? someone has hard evidence of someone suffering fataly and it is with absolute cetainty what caused that then we need to look at what went wrong and where it went wrong before we critisise the process. no one can make anything foolproof, i have said before the fool will circumvent any safety measures.

look at your mowers with all the safety features especially the one where you shouln't be able to reach under the mower when it is running ie.,. long handles, dead mans grip lever the second you let it go the engine stops rapidly employing an electro magnetic brake. yet people are still injuring their fingers and toes, how? don't ask me, i'm no fool, but do we see fear hype about the dangers of mowers? when there is going to be clear iriffutable evidence.

how do we set things up to beat the fool we can't, it all comes back to common sense, i've used a mower all my adult life haven't never come close to injuring myself, oh! don't take this anywhere please but over here our mowers don't have mcuh if any of those um! safety features, why? you tell me, i make no judgement.

len

Kimmser, I don't see anyone on this thread saying that people shouldn't follow proper procedures when using humanure, i.e. washing hands or waiting x months. My point above was that people are already being exposed to dangerous fecal pathogens doing routine things like buying a raw chicken or eating out at a restaurant. And probably much more so than they would be composting their own poop, except the yuck factor grosses them out, and they'd rather have it flushed away somewhere else.

Bpgreen, yes municipalities are already making it into fertilizer, except doesn't the human waste get mixed with all the other waste that people put down the drain, not to mention lots of fossil fuels were used in the process. Composting on site seems most efficient to me - honestly I don't even know if my town/state would allow it.

g'day terrene,

yes compsoted human humus waste is used in all sorts of garden supplements bought in plastic bags wherein pathogens can multiply because these bags often stored in the sun, hence the legionaires type disease problem associated with using potting mix's of moderner times(which in my gardening life i have used tonnes of the stuff and never gotten sick).

what goes into the sewerage before it gets to the sewerage farm all human wase, hospital waste including chemo' therapy residues and radioactive material, and light grade industrial waste, then it is treated (their terms) and the wate is filtered and recycled back for drinking, the solid is somewhat composted on site then it gets added to that composted waste created at you local refuse centre,which gets up to meduim grade industrial liquid waste added in, then the finished product is onsold to gardeners in various compost and potting mixes all blenders use it.

do i use those products? yes i do i just don't use anymore than i actually need. prefering to add my own slected mulch/composting materila to break down and add to our garden mediums, just have to use potting mix from time to time.

so if more houseowners managed their own waste onsite there would be less for the local council to handle and less wate to recycle for drinking, as good (advisedly term) does not get wasted on flushing loo's. so less opportunity for some of the above to happen as well.

len

This thread has done well to address the pathogen concern, but I'd also like to examine the presence of pharmaceutical drug remnants. Like the birth control pill. Do these chemicals, or any others, break down while the humanur goes through it's year long compost process?