Airplane bathrooms aren’t exactly the most pleasant, comfortable, or even hygienic experiences. But their sheer number of daily occupants while cruising at 30,000 feet may present a major public health opportunity. As everyday pathogens continue developing into deadly superbug variants, researchers believe the collective wastewater inside commercial aircraft can provide an easy-to-access, cheap, and noninvasive source of real-time pandemic monitoring………Continue reading….
By: Andrew Paul
Source: Popular Science
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In developing countries (or low- and middle-income countries), universal access to water and sanitation, coupled with hygiene promotion, is essential in reducing infectious diseases. This approach has been integrated into the Sustainable Development Goal Number 6 whose second target states: “By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations”.
Due to their close linkages, water, sanitation, hygiene are together abbreviated and funded under the term WASH in development cooperation. About two million people die every year due to diarrheal diseases; most of them are children less than five years of age. The most affected are people in developing countries who live in extreme conditions of poverty, normally peri-urban dwellers or rural inhabitants.
Providing access to sufficient quantities of safe water and facilities for a sanitary disposal of excreta, and introducing sound hygiene behaviors are important in order to reduce the burden of disease. Research shows that, if widely practiced, hand washing with soap could reduce diarrhea by almost fifty percent and respiratory infections by nearly twenty-five percent Hand washing with soap also reduces the incidence of skin diseases, and eye infections like trachoma and intestinal worms, especially ascariasis and trichuriasis.
Other hygiene practices, such as safe disposal of waste, surface hygiene, and care of domestic animals, are important in low income communities to break the chain of infection transmission. Cleaning of toilets and hand wash facilities is important to prevent odors and make them socially acceptable. Social acceptance is an important part of encouraging people to use toilets and wash their hands, in situations where open defecation is still seen as a possible alternative, e.g. in rural areas of some developing countries.
Household water treatment and safe storage ensure drinking water is safe for consumption. These interventions are part of the approach of self-supply of water for households. Drinking water quality remains a significant problem in developing and in developed countries; even in the European region it is estimated that 120 million people do not have access to safe drinking water. Point-of-use water quality interventions can reduce diarrheal disease in communities where water quality is poor or in emergency situations where there is a breakdown in water supply.
Since water can become contaminated during storage at home (e.g. by contact with contaminated hands or using dirty storage vessels), safe storage of water in the home is important. Methods for treatment of drinking water at the household level include:
- chemical disinfection using chlorine or iodine
- boiling
- filtration using ceramic filters
- solar disinfection — Solar disinfection is an effective method, especially when no chemical disinfectants are available.
- UV irradiation — Community or household UV systems may be batch or flow-though. The lamps can be suspended above the water channel or submerged in the water flow.
- combined flocculation/disinfection systems — available as sachets of powder that act by coagulating and flocculating sediments in water followed by release of chlorine
- multibarrier methods — Some systems use two or more of the above treatments in combination or in succession to optimize efficacy.
- portable water purification devices
Hygiene promotion is seen by many as an integral part of sanitation. The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council defines sanitation as “The collection, transport, treatment and disposal or reuse of human excreta, domestic wastewater and solid waste, and associated hygiene promotion.” Despite the fact that sanitation includes wastewater treatment, the two terms are often used side by side as “sanitation and wastewater management”.
Sanitation can include personal sanitation and public hygiene. Personal sanitation work can include handling menstrual waste, cleaning household toilets, and managing household garbage. Public sanitation work can involve garbage collection, transfer and treatment (municipal solid waste management), cleaning drains, streets, schools, trains, public spaces, community toilets and public toilets, sewers, operating sewage treatment plants, etc. Workers who provide these services for other people are called sanitation workers…….
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