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"This is sometimes used as a political football to further an agenda. For example, some on the right of the political spectrum in the United States have used the fact that people have gotten sick from vegetables imported from Mexico to argue against NAFTA and even illegal aliens, although the latter relationship is tenuous." - I am removing this comment, I don't know the specifics of the cases the author of this comment mentions, but the way he injects a political dimension into this article without any context seems inappropriate. The comment also reflects the author's bias.
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)
Hi, I think night soil is the substance, not any practise of using or disposing of the substance. I think it can be put in other words eg night dirt dirt from soiled or dirty. The dirt was and is still removed at night at places where development has not progressed that much.. Gregorydavid 06:21, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
"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)
If heavy metals in our doo-doo are bad, then how did it get into us in the first place? Explain!
68.188.203.251 ( talk) 21:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC) I just read the article and also got the impression that human waste was 'dangerous' 'suspect' due to heavy metals. Only in industrialized waterways does the heavy metal aspect present itself. So the article should do more to present current experiments in human waste composting. What temps are needed to destroy cholera? By discouraging night soil profiting by attaching a dangerous and unsafe aspect to it, the profitability is negated. Yes, who wants to do that for a living? Who wants to do that and be denied profit? Profits build esteem.
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)
Is this really appropriate? The Tudors ruled England, not Britain. 86.21.225.156 ( talk) 21:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Good calls on most of these changes, User:EvMsmile. (That lamp was oddly uninformative, but I guess images help to break up the text and add visual interest.) I have two disagreements - please explain: 1. The removal of Sustainable sanitation. 2. The removal of a quote. Just because Humanure now redirects to a section within Compost doesn't invalidate material taken from a published work. The quote in question is:
I propose something along the lines of:
That way, any readers searching for "humanure" will be able to find this page too, and it preserves a reference link to his book, which is an accessible read. What do you think? Carbon Caryatid ( talk) 11:18, 15 August 2016 (UTC)