Waste Not, Want Not

Louisiana is refusing to accept the waste products that were recently collected from Thomas Duncan’s Dallas-Texas apartment. Duncan is the Liberian man who recently died in Dallas from Ebola and these collected apartment waste products have already been incinerated, but are still being denied disposal in a landfill in Louisiana … see: Breitbart Story. This is because there is a question about the inherent safety of even these well-burned items.

This revelation has got me to thinking about a similar matter. What is the potential danger from the contaminated liquid waste products (feces, vomit, blood, urine, spit, etc.) that were flushed down the toilets and into the Dallas’s sewers by Duncan and now by this new nurse victim of Ebola before they were admitted to the hospital? Is there a public health threat from this obvious vector of the Ebola virus? Can this virus survive and/nor multiply in the Dallas sewers and municipal sewage plant and pose a potential threat to workers there or to future generations?

I suspect that the waste disposal infrastructures in West Africa are not as sophisticated and efficient as they are in Dallas … and I wonder if, as such, this Texas municipal plumbing might pose another type of threat that didn’t exist in the lesser developed countries of West Africa?

I surely would like to have the Center for Disease Control (or someone) effectively address this possible problem.

Afterward: See a related story: The Watchers. Particularly note that reclaimed water from sewage treatment facilities may be used on food crops!