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Who said: “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”
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Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Sewage

Sewage Quotes (9 quotes)

All that would be required to prevent the disease [cholera] would be such a close attention to cleanliness in cooking and eating, and to drainage and water supply, as is desirable at all times.
John Snow
In 'On the Mode of Communication of Cholera', The Edinburgh Medical Journal (Jan 1856), Vol. 1, No. 7, 670.
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Bearing in mind that it is from the vitality of the atmospheric particles that all the mischief arises, it appears that all that is requisite is to dress the wound with some material capable of killing these septic germs, provided that any substance can be found reliable for this purpose, yet not too potent as a caustic. In the course of the year 1864 I was much struck with an account of the remarkable effects produced by carbolic acid upon the sewage of the town of Carlisle, the admixture of a very small proportion not only preventing all odour from the lands irrigated with the refuse material, but, as it was stated, destroying the entozoa which usually infest cattle fed upon such pastures.
'On a New Method of Treating Compound Fracture, Abscesses, etc: With Observations on the Conditions of Supperation', Part 1, The Lancet (1867), 327.
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City after city, state after state, had essentially failed in their efforts to protect their air and their water, the land, the health of their citizens. By 1970, our city’ skylines were so polluted that in many places it was all but impossible to see from one city skyscraper to another. … We had rivers that were fouled with raw sewage and toxic chemicals. One actually caught on fire. There was a very famous photograph from my teenage years of the Cuyahoga River burning. In fact, it was memorialized in a song at the time.
In 'Environmental Protection: Meeting the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century', Harvard Environmental Law Review (2001), 25, 329, 330-331. [In fact, the Cuyahoga River had caught fire several times over a number of decades, and there had been fires on other rivers. Webmaster]
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From packaging materials, through fibers, foams and surface coatings, to continuous extrusions and large-scale moldings, plastics have transformed almost every aspect of life. Without them, much of modern medicine would be impossible and the consumer electronics and computer industries would disappear. Plastic sewage and water pipes alone have made an immeasurable contribution to public health worldwide.
'Plastics—No Need To Apologize', Trends in Polymer Science (Jun 1996), 4, 172. In Paul C. Painter and Michael M. Coleman, Essentials of Polymer Science and Engineering (2008), 21.
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I grew up in Japan and Hong Kong and then came to the States. Japan was a huge influence on me because, as a child, I would hear the oxcarts come and collect our sewage at night out of our house from the latrine and then take it off to the farms as fertilizer. And then the food would come back in oxcarts during the day. I always had this sort of “our poop became food” mental model. The idea of “waste equals food” was pretty inculcated, that everything was precious and the systems were coherent and cyclical.
In interview with Kerry A. Dolan, 'William McDonough On Cradle-to-Cradle Design', Forbes (4 Aug 2010)
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Now, it may be stretching an analogy to compare epidemics of cholera—caused by a known agent—with that epidemic of violent crime which is destroying our cities. It is unlikely that our social problems can be traced to a single, clearly defined cause in the sense that a bacterial disease is ‘caused’ by a microbe. But, I daresay, social science is about as advanced in the late twentieth century as bacteriological science was in the mid nineteenth century. Our forerunners knew something about cholera; they sensed that its spread was associated with misdirected sewage, filth, and the influx of alien poor into crowded, urban tenements. And we know something about street crime; nowhere has it been reported that a member of the New York Stock Exchange has robbed ... at the point of a gun. Indeed, I am naively confident that an enlightened social scientist of the next century will be able to point out that we had available to us at least some of the clues to the cause of urban crime.
'Cholera at the Harvey,' Woods Hole Cantata: Essays on Science and Society (1985).
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The more fodder, the more flesh; the more flesh, the more manure; the more manure, the more grain.
Letters on the Utilization of London Sewage (1865)
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The solution is dilution.
Anonymous
Aphorism, seen for example, in Frank R. Spellman and Nancy E. Whiting, Environmental Engineer’s Mathematics Handbook (2004), 291.
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This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species.
In 'The Land Ethic: The Community Concept', A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949, 1987), 204.
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Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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