Talk:Night soil

message: Anyhow, I was reading this interesting page by a museum on toilets [Internation Museum of Toilets] which makes frequent references to Night Soil or nightsoil.  Not knowing what "exactly" was meant, I naturally came to Wikipedia.  For now, I will assume that it means "human shit" whether produced at night or day.  --SVTCobra 01:13, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's called "night soil" because "night" is a good euphemism for anything that is necessary but needs to be discreet...(plus the fact that the coolies collected the night soil at...night, not a good idea to be carrying feces in the street in the hustle and bustle of broad daylight, you know). Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 18:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  what it is 

message: "Choosing between starvation and ultimate death due to low crop yields or the possibility of serious illness due to disease is easy."
Not really! Is this a typo ("not easy" would make more sense). On the other hand, if the risk of serious disease is negligable compared to starvation, then this sentence needs to be changed to reflect this. 
--163.1.176.254 00:20, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bizarre sentence 

message: If heavy metals in our doo-doo are bad, then how did it get into us in the first place? Explain!
: They're probably more heavily concentrated as fertilizer. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 18:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  They mostly come from industry.  Big sewage plants are more necessary in cities, and cities have factories in them too. Tweeq 06:26, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The citation does not support the assertion that human waste contains heavy metals in any significant proportion. It relates strictly to sewage - which contains far more than just human waste.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.0.159.16 (talk) 10:33, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  heavy metals 

message: This section really needs some scientific data.  Feces as fertalizer is dangerous and harmful.  To claim otherwise you need scientific studies and citations. (Posted by 146.96.81.162 to article.) -- Paleorthid (talk) 23:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sanitation issues 

message: Is this really appropriate?  The Tudors ruled England, not Britain. 86.21.225.156 (talk) 21:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No. I've fixed it. JIMp talk·cont 08:13, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Tudor Britain

message: I'm deleting the silly tautological phrase at the end of the sentence, "This was an unpleasant occupation and was predominately done by manual laborers" (emphasis mine). Having an occupation involving manual labor is what makes someone a "manual laborer." So if this job is a matter of manual labor then anyone performing it is by definition a manual laborer. If something else was meant by this phrase someone please re-add it in a better phrased form.--Ericjs (talk) 18:45, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  manual laborers 

message: In Collection: "This system is used in isolated rural areas and is important in developing nations or in areas that lack the adequate infrastructure to have running water."
This statement assumes that disposing of human excreta in running water is a good idea. In fact, it assumes that the disposal of human excreta is primarily a problem of dealing with a waste product, rather than a component of the natural cycle of land fertility in which humans participate and which they modify. Many societies throughout history have understood the clear connection that human excreta must make with our continued food supply if human societies are not to rely on ever new sources of soil fertility. Because of this understanding, disposing of human excreta is not dealing with waste, but with a valuable (or at least useful) resource. In this view, the reason so called "developing" nations use night soil on their farmland is not the lack of supposedly more developed infrastructure such as running water; it is the application of knowledge about the fertility of land. The modern West regards water-borne waste disposal as preferable 1) because it has invested in other forms of soil fertility (ie, agrochemicals), 2) because water resources are assumed to be limitless, and 3) because raw human excreta can cause disease. The last of these points has and always will be a problem; but the first and second may prove to cause much, much larger problems for society in the long run. In water limited areas especially, including many "developing" countries, disposing of human excreta in water otherwise usable for drinking, bathing, cleaning and irrigation is already a clear problem. 142.103.92.50 (talk) 21:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assumption of western superiority 

message: The article currently implies that night soil collection is a practice from the distant past in Western countries. Some relatives of mine were still receiving a night soil collection for their privies as late as the 1950s in England. They lived in a rural location, but in a village and only a few miles from a large city. I don't think this was particularly unusual at the time. --Ef80 (talk) 20:38, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical context 

message: The term night soil is nowadays seen as a "historical term" and the current sanitation literature speaks about "fecal sludge". I have just added that sentence to the lead. I would like to propose that it is made clearer that this article focuses more on the historical aspects but then we should make it clear that the practice continues in developing countries and refer to fecal sludge. The article on fecal sludge needs to be built up more (at the moment it redirects to "septage"). Another option which one could consider is to rename the article to fecal sludge but that's probably not ideal.EvMsmile (talk) 01:49, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The only question I have here is with the use of the term "sludge".  In some parts there is a perception problem with that word, in that "sewage sludge" contains both faeces and industrial effluents - which probably didn't happen in the old night soil collections - or at least the specific ones which involved household collection. I can also see people using the terms interchangeably (ie using faecal sludge as the new term for night soil), so it isn't something which has total acceptance. JMWt (talk) 08:45, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for your inputs! I would say sewage sludge is something different to fecal sludge. I wish we had a fecal sludge page - so far it re-directs to septage which is better than nothing. Septage is clearly different to sewage sludge... It's true the term "night soil" seems to imply something quite "dry", not like a slurry... The Eawag Compendium calls it a historical term though, and I would subscribe to that. From memory in current sanitation literature, night soil is no longer used or only rarely? Or have you seen new publications where it is still used? (it reminds me a bit of the thing about honey bucket versus bucket toilet so I am a bit scared to go there. ;-) EvMsmile (talk) 10:36, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Unfortunately this euphemism is still being used in the academic literature, see this abstract for example. Maybe it is still in use in come cultures? JMWt (talk) 14:12, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Night soil versus fecal sludge