I don't know enough about using it as fertilizer though. I wonder about its substance concentration that might burn plants if not diluted.

Urine and humanure have been used throughout human history. Except for the occasional cholera outbreak (and a few other diseases), it seems to be okay to fertilize with. Personally I would not use it directly on something I would be eating, but maybe that's just me. When it is composted it becomes one with Nature.

As for cobra venom, you don't have to do anything to it, you can drink it staight up, right from the source and it's actually quite good for you! Plenty of amino acids and mico-nutrients.
You see it is a "Venom" not a "toxin" as long as you don't get it into your blood you'd be fine.
Sorry for that... it's late and I'm feeling "sassy"

There's also a nice table of urine contents.

Urine is sterile while it is in the body. The moment it comes out of the body and hits oxygen and other elements is when it starts to not be sterile which is why it starts to smell - bacteria start growing... the bacteria you want in a compost pile to help break it down.

I believe West Nile, SARS, and a lot of other very bad diseases can be spread through contact with urine from infected persons.

So what if your neighbor visits China and comes home and pees in his back yard. Big rain washes that into your back yard. Your kids are splashing thru the puddles. I just don't think using your compost pile for a toilet is a good idea, but that's just me. Oh, and if any of you live upstream from me, cut it out.

As mentioned in the post above yours. Humane urine is sterile only while it is in the body.. Once it is released and starts reacting to oxygen an other elements, it begins to break down.

"Human urine makes an excellent high nitrogen liquid fertiliser for most plants. Dilute it 10 to 1 and pour it over and or round fast growing plants once a week; like vegetables, Green manure crops and sugar cane. Indeed just about anything that you want to push along rapid green growth

Studies indicate that each person’s waste fluids can provide enough nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium to grow a year’s supply of wheat and maize for that person. According to some studies, human waste can be an even more effective fertilizer than animal manure.

Urine, which comprises 90 percent of human waste, contains about 80 percent of our waste’s fertilizer value. It can be applied to field crops without treatment because it is generally sterile. By the way "fresh urine" does not contain any bacteria, unless the person has a urinary tract infection, so you could even use it to wash out wounds without causing any infections,

Human urine can be used as an alternative to chemical fertilizer to reduce pollution in air, water and soil and help avoid or control other environmental hazards which surface due to the use of chemical fertilizer, Human urine contains nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium at a much higher ratio than in commercial fertilizers and is environmentally safe to use.

If you want to use urine to fertilize your gardens, keep in mind that when urea becomes ammonia, it also becomes volatile and part of it strips into the air. Both ammonia and nitrates are also very soluble and if not picked up by plant's root systems can enter groundwater with the irrigation water. So it would be best to keep gardens moist but not over watered, but these are similar problems faced by people who use other forms of fertilizers."

You express a valid concern regarding human waste.

The only thing that I would remind you of is that, as has been stated alread, urine is sterile when in the human body (unless the owner has some type of bladder or UT infection).

After it leaves the body, it comes into contact with various bacteria etc in the atmosphere and it begins to break down.

The diseases that you mention can indeed be spread by infected urine. Do you know someone who is infected and do you plan on using their stuff in the garden?

I, personally, don't plan on handling anyone's urine other than my own so, therefore, the biggest concern I have is how to apply it to the petunias in a way that won't splatter on my leg.

Sewage is not fresh human urine. It's usually a mix of urine, feces, and other stuff that's been allowed to go anaerobic. Plague- black plague- was carried by rats as a reservoir, using fleas as a vector. Other illnesses are associated with sewage- diarhea causing diseases that kill millions.

It was effectively used as a disinfectant by our ancestors, but with how common global travel has become, exotic diseases would be more of a concern these days.

I guess the big concern is if you fish it out of a public toilet, or compost urine samples from a local drug testing facility :)

Please go back and re-read what I said.

Urine is sterile unless the "owner/producer" has some sort of infection.

Since I am using my own urine exclusively there is no disease concern there.

If I were to get some sort of infectious disease then, since I am already sick, using/handling my own urine would not really be an issue since I cannot give myself something I already have.

I wonder if the pathogen issues you mention will survive composting at 140 to 160 degrees?

How about prolonged exposure to the atmosphere? Sunlight?

I wonder how much worry is being wasted over this issue when it really may not be at all warranted.

(By the way Pablo, I aint fishin' no urine from a toilet...public or otherwise.)

How much should I expect it to heat up a pile of partially composted leaves? Is adding a pint the equivalent of a pint of green grass, or more?

I have a lot of leaves I want broken down--how much can just adding urine accelerate it?

:)

I transplanted this tree last May. It just wouldn't seem to grow, no matter how much I watered or mulched it. I even added coffee grounds in an attempt to stimulate worm activity, but I never saw any indication of budding or any kind of leaf growth on the tree until I used urine water.

When I used it on my transplanted (from seedling pot to the ground) flowering plants, they all rooted well and began to grow immediately.

I'm a convert now and use yellow water (my name for it) on all my outdoor plants/trees. This stuff works like a miracle!

How often it can be used?

"Urine is 95 percent water, with less than five percent urea, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, hormones, proteins, antibodies, and other beneficial pharmacological agents. Contrary to popular belief, urine is actually a by-product of blood filtration and not waste filtration. Medically, it is referred to as "plasma ultrafiltrate." It is a purified derivative of the blood itself, made by the kidneys whose principal function is regulation of all the elements and their concentrations in the blood. Nutrient-filled blood passes through the liver where toxins are removed to be excreted as solid waste. Eventually, this purified blood undergoes a more extensive filtering process in the kidneys, where excess components not usable at that time by the body are collected in the form of the sterile, watery solution that is urine."

dejw, urine is not necessarily sterile. I don't know how that got started. Below taken from fema's website. There is a lot of stuff on the net including info from the CDC about virus and bacteria spread by urine. Check out the CDC site.

SARS Could Spread Through Coughs, Sweat, Urine
Excerpt from the article:

The deadly SARS virus might be more contagious than previously thought and possibly transmitted by contaminated food or water, droplets of mucus, urine, feces and sweat, scientists reported on Friday. Researchers at the Groningen University Hospital in the Netherlands and the First Military Medical University in Guangzhou, China, said their findings emphasized the need for more stringent infection-control measures.

From the NCBI web site:
Persistent shedding of viable SARS-CoV in urine and stool of SARS patients during the convalescent phase. (4 wks or more)

Really, if you ingest or inhale enough aerosolized urine to contract SARS- then I suspect that you have made lifestyle choices that put you at risk anyway :)

It’s a simple fact that disease could be spread this way. If you’re really into this idea of open air peeing, probably no amount of reasoning is going to dissuade you, so…

Carry on.

I did put a smiley in there... I was trying to make an off color joke...

"It’s a simple fact that disease could be spread this way."

I'd think you're at a MUCH higher risk using a public restroom where urine could be aerosolized, and is in a contained space. If you have an example of how it has been spread this way outdoors in a garden situation- I would be very interested to see it.

I took a course offered by the American Biological Safety Association last year at MIT. Many instances of aeroslized urine causing disease in animal testing workers were discussed. That requires that you breathe the aerosolized urine- a condition that is SUPER unlikely, and I'm guessing, unrecorded in cases like we are talking about outside. I've presented models of vapor dispersal in narcotics and explosives contraband scenarios- this would follow the same patterns. In short- aerosolized urine would disperse incredibly quickly, and few diseases would remain viable in compost. Then you'd have to get the disease from the neighbor's compost into your body.

I'm just not seeing it happen.

You're referring to people who don't wash their hands after using a bathroom, touch toilet handles to flush, touch bathroom stall handles, open bathroom door handles then go about their business of picking up a pencil, shaking your hand, using a keyboard, handing you money, giving you an object, etc.

Unless the owner of the urine has something like a urinary tract infection or other infection, it is a fact that urine is sterile. It is not a "false assumption" it is fact. See my post above yours and see the other posts which also respond to your first mention of the concern. That urine is sterile can be verified by anyone in the medical profession. What makes it not sterile is exposure to bacteria when it comes out of the body that may be around the genetalia or as mentione for at least the third time in this thread, someone with an infection.

If your neighbor has SARS, then you have more to worry about then them urinating in their compost.

It is a fact that you are much more at risk at picking up something as a direct result of someone not washing their hands after using a bathroom by picking up a piece of candy from a basket near the cash register of a restaurant the you would be from a neighbor using urine in their compost pile.

You've stated your opinion and we know where you stand, we hear you.

My research team at work is getting into biological threat detection methods. Indoors is a lot easier. When you get outdoors you usuall need a lot of sensitivity to even see an intentional release. The real scary scenario is where they infect a room full of terrorists with a contagious disease (smallpox), send them out in NY, and they just walk around spitting on handrails and eating in public restaurants.

I'll stay outside with my compost pile and doggies, thanks :)

(Jeez you're a good sport Pablo.)

heh heh

Neighbors using pesticides and herbicides is a lot more hazardous to everyone's health than someone peeing on their plants or compost. Certainly where hubby has peed outside the grass is really green! Being female I can't manage the aiming, so I don't try it. :-) The person who said it is a crime to waste gallons of water to flush a little bit of 'liquid fertilizer' away has a really good point.

Marcia

Once added to the compost bin or diluted and used as fertilizer around plants and, thus, exposed to the effects of the outdoor environment (sunlight, oxygen, micro-organisms, etc.) how long will the pathogens of concern survive this exposure?

As I said in my previous posts I am only adding my own stuff to the compost bin or to the garden so I am not concerned with infecting myself with something I already have.

If my neighbor has a terrible case of the Heebies then how long will those pathogens survive exposure to the environment?

My guess is that survival time would be very short indeed.

PS: My neighbors don't compost at their house (they bring their stuff to me) but I have seen their sons peeing in the yard on occasion.

Aside from restaurants, anyone who lives near a drinking establishment with parking lots and pedestrian walkways runs a much greater risk of litterally running into randon human urine.

After reading various posts in the SCM 'Human Urine' thread regarding the ubiquity of pathogens in the urban environment Paulns's extreme germophobia led him to a life of complete reclusion. After suffering a nervous breakdown in 2006, Paulns moved to a bungalow in the desert near Las Vegas where he employed local Mormons to protect him from contamination. Nonetheless, fearing that his home had become infected (and something of a tourist attraction), he began living in a succession of anonymous hotel rooms, moving secretly in the dead of night while strapped to a stretcher.

The windows of his rooms were taped over and its furnishings and fixtures reportedly draped in plastic. (By 2007, Paulns had stopped bathing and ate only cake and candy.) Visitors (there were fewer than a dozen between 2006 and his death in 2036) were rarely allowed and his only company was the newspaper (served in stacks of three so that Paulns could read the middle copy) and his television, upon which he watched the film Ice Station Zebra (1968), starring Rock Hudson and Ernest Borgnine, some 150 times...

"...anonymous hotel rooms..."

Oh boy... should have stayed home instead.

;)

Whenever I see a discussion like this it reminds me of the humanure handbook. (Thanks for the link Polly.)

Back to the biography-was the candy he lived on from the restaurant candy bowl? Should I go round to the local establishments to collect anything that lights up with the black light, for the compost pile?

Violet's link is so gross. I am wrapping myself in plastic next time I have to stay in a hotel.

Chatting about soil is so much fun!

Sounds like bean_counter would actually be better off encouraging his neighbors to stay home and pee on their compost piles, instead of going out to flush the toilets in the same public restrooms he might use :)

Kristin

Primetime even found traces of urine on a hotel room bible.

From the first link provided at the page I posted above.

Stop That....Right Now....

You'll have me not wanting to ever go on a trip again.

:)

Anyone see the recent study comparing the cleanliness of ice in fast food restaurants to the water in the toilets of the same establishments?

Yuck.

LOL...!

m i n d over m a t t e r ...

I hope it puts things in perspective about proximity to the stuff. Chances are higher in "public places" vs. "neighbor and their compost pile".

Uh... haven't seen that study... don't know if I want to. As many a nurse says... "bacteria is good for you. It's possible to be too clean."

But now that you mention it... "You'd be better off eating a carrot stick that fell in your toilet than one that fell in your sink," says Charles Gerba, a University of Arizona microbiologist who measured germ levels in 15 well tended homes."

Source: Emerging Infectious Diseases: Prevention and Control

Ah... life. I'm more worried about the squirrels eating my strawberries before I get to them...

The (ahem) *correct* way to add urine to compost is to pee in a bucket in your bathroom, and then gently add the fluid to your compost with as little splashing as possible.

Men. They have no sense of decorum, at all.

Where's your sense of adventure?

It is best to add it to the compost directly while still warm.

:)

Heh- a proud moment :)

I've trained him to go where he sees "browns". Not on the lawn, on that straw over there!

Thank god we have a privacy fence.

Kristin

;)

For my money, the best way to fend off a toxic and germy universe is to build up a healthy immune system and to wash your hands -- a lot.

and on the evidentry side i for one have never heard of any negatives from using urine, so if there are case histories of pandemics lets hear about them please?

len

I would never try to argue that an ill person does not have pathogens in their urine, but on the other hand many human diseases cannot survive long outside of a host. It's not like a healthy person peeing in their flower beds (or their neighbor doing the same) is going to turn the whole place into a dangerous cesspool of pathogens for years to come. If any are even there they will likely be dead within hours of hitting the air.

'Scuse me, I gotta go find a tree.

Second, Pee for me in my compost is like Bread is for Annpat....simply gross.

Third, where do you all you live that you can just drop your drawers and amend your piles?

You should write a book. Thanks for a huge, long-lasting laugh!!! I hope you're still here to witness the joy. It aboundeth. ;)