> The "Humanure Handbook" guy hasn't developed a prion disease
As much as HN loves obsessing over prions they're still an extremely rare phenomenon and there's few real solutions to resolving them regardless of how you deal with organic matter. Your poop is also not the only way it spreads. Saliva, urine, blood, etc all spread it. Ultimately a prion is just a protein malformed in a very specific configuration. If anything, exposing organic matter to high heat might actually reduce the risk of prions spreading than collecting all sewage together and washing it many miles away in underground tunnels
But yes, there are definitely other pathogens worth thinking about that can be spread from human organic products and I would really caution against relying on any composting strategy that doesn't get hot for treating it.
That being said, vermicomposting is a wonderful way to quickly turn food waste and other less dangerous organic waste products into usable soil
The prion thing was a joke. (Not prion disease, that's objectively terrifying.)
> I would really caution against relying on any composting strategy that doesn't get hot for treating it.
Oh yeah. If I were to use this system for human poop I'd probably go a step further and use the resulting compost only on plants that were themselves destined to be (hot) composted.
As much as HN loves obsessing over prions they're still an extremely rare phenomenon and there's few real solutions to resolving them regardless of how you deal with organic matter. Your poop is also not the only way it spreads. Saliva, urine, blood, etc all spread it. Ultimately a prion is just a protein malformed in a very specific configuration. If anything, exposing organic matter to high heat might actually reduce the risk of prions spreading than collecting all sewage together and washing it many miles away in underground tunnels
But yes, there are definitely other pathogens worth thinking about that can be spread from human organic products and I would really caution against relying on any composting strategy that doesn't get hot for treating it.
That being said, vermicomposting is a wonderful way to quickly turn food waste and other less dangerous organic waste products into usable soil