num_pages: 304
description: Finalist for the 2022 NASW Science in Society Journalism AwardLonglisted for the 2022 AAAS/Subaru SB&amp;F Prize for Excellence in Science BooksFrom an award-winning science journalist a deeply researched entertaining and impassioned exploration of sanitation ( Nature ) and the future of the toiletfor fans of popular science bestsellers by Mary Roach.Most of us do not give much thought to the centerpiece of our bathrooms but the toilet is an unexpected paradox. On the one hand it is a modern a ubiquitous fixture in a vast sanitation system that has helped add decades to the human life span by reducing disease. On the other hand the toilet is also a tragic less than half of the worlds population can access a toilet that safely manages body waste including many right here in the United States. And it is inefficient squandering clean water as well as the nutrients energy and information contained in the stuff we flush away. While we see radical technological change in almost every other aspect of our lives we remain stuck in a sanitation status quoin part because the topic of toilets is taboo.Fortunately theres hopeand Pipe Dreams daringly profiles the growing army of sewage-savvy scientists engineers philanthropists entrepreneurs and activists worldwide who are overcoming their aversions and focusing their formidable skills on making toilets accessible and healthier for all.This potential revolution in sanitation has many benefits including reducing inequalities mitigating climate change and water scarcity improving agriculture and optimizing health. Author Chelsea Wald takes us on a wild world tour from a compost toilet project in Haiti to a plant in the Netherlands that salvages used toilet paper from sewage and shows us a toilet seat that can watch users poop for signs of illness among many other fascinating developments.Toilet humor is one thing but toilet fact as digested by skilled science writer Wald is quite another[ Pipe Dreams is] a highly informative well-reasoned call to rethink the throne ( Kirkus Reviews ).
language: English
title: Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet
publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster