WHO Publishes Third Edition of its Guidelines for the Safe Use of Wastewater, Excreta And Greywater

WHO Publishes Third Edition of its Guidelines for the Safe Use of Wastewater, Excreta And Greywater

September 11, 2006

    BEIJING, Sept. 11 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- In many parts
of the world, good quality fresh water resources are
becoming increasingly scarce.  At the same time, wastewater
is produced in ever-larger quantities, mainly as a result of
the continued growth of the human population and the process
of rapid urbanization.  In reality, wastewater is a water
resource of ever-growing importance, particularly for the
urban and peri-urban poor whose livelihoods depend on
agricultural products that can be marketed locally. 
However, its use for crop and fish production carries
important health risks and the disease burden that can be
attributed to its unsafe use is considerable.

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    The third edition of the WHO Guidelines for the Safe
Use of Wastewater, Excreta and Greywater in Agriculture and
Aquaculture is published in four volumes, addressing,
respectively, policy and regulatory aspects, wastewater use
in agriculture, wastewater and excreta use in aquaculture
and excreta and greywater use in agriculture.  It
supersedes the second edition of the guidelines, which was
published in 1989.

    "This third edition of the Wastewater Guidelines
marks an important departure from the previous
edition," says Susanne Weber-Mosdorf, Assistant
Director-General for the Cluster of Sustainable Development
and Healthy Environments.  "The rigid and prescriptive
character of the second edition has evolved to a more
contemporary and flexible approach based on scientific
evidence and process-oriented risk assessment and
management.  The Guidelines reflect a strong focus on
disease prevention and public health principles. Water
quality regulators will have to work towards attaining
health-based targets through an integrated approach."

    Parallel to this new thinking on handling risks in an
integrated manner, the guidelines also reflect new thinking
in the field of sanitation.  This has evolved in part in
response to the sanitation target within the Millennium
Development Goals.  Volume 4 of this third edition
elaborates on this issue and the links to safe use of
excreta and greywater in agriculture.

    "Eco-sanitation is scaling up from a stage of
pilot studies to extensive use in a number of countries,
for example China and South Africa," says Professor
Thor Axel Stenstroem who holds positions at the Swedish
Institute for Infectious Disease Control and the Stockholm
Environment Institute.  "Now, for the first outcomes
of a recently initiated WHO/Sida study provides proof of a
significantly reduced health impact.  In a comparative
study, the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine of the
University of KwaZulu Natal (Durban) and the Ethekwini
Municipality measured the incidence of diarrhoea, vomiting,
skin infections and worms in six cohorts of a total of more
than 7000 people from 1337 households.  The study now
provides evidence of significant correlations between
disease outcome in relation to sanitation interventions,
outcomes for disease per area, incidence rates of health
outcome and incidence rate ratio of disease outcome."

    The guidelines clearly reflect regional differences in
wastewater use and in associated public health issues.  For
example, the use of wastewater and excreta in aquaculture in
SE Asia brings with it region-specific risks, such as the
transmission of food-borne trematodes.  These parasitic
flukes have a complex life cycle that involves aquatic
snails and fish as intermediate hosts; water bodies are
contaminated by human excreta containing the parasite's
eggs. Consumption of raw or fermented fish -- a common
practice in rural communities of SE Asia -- from infected
ponds closes the infection cycle.

    The burden of disease caused by infections with
food-borne trematodes is considerable: globally, an
estimated 40 million people are at risk.  Recent studies
indicate that in China alone over the period 1995-2004 the
incidence of one of the various parasitic infections in
this group, clonorchiasis, tripled -- some 15 million
Chinese were estimated to be infected with Clonorchis
sinensis in 2004.  A large part of this disease burden is
thought to be attributable to excreta and greywater use in
fishponds. 

    The WHO Guidelines for the Safe Use of Wastewater,
Excreta and Greywater in Agriculture and Aquaculture
reflect the knowledge and experience of a unique group of
scientists, regulators and public health specialists
brought together by the Water, Sanitation and Health
Programme of the World Health Organization.  The next step
will be their implementation by WHO Member States.  To
study the obstacles and opportunities that may be
encountered in their application and use, WHO and the
Canadian International Development Research Centre shortly
will start joint research in three countries in North and
/or West Africa.

    The Guidelines are available online at:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/wastewater/gsuww/en/index.html

    If you haven't already replied but would like to attend
the launch of the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines
for the Safe Use of Wastewater, Excreta and Greywater in
Agriculture and Aquaculture in Beijing at 13:00 on Tuesday
September 12, please contact Elizabeth Loughnan:

     Elizabeth Loughnan
     WHO China
     Tel:      [phone] 
     Email:    [e-mail]  

    For more information, please contact:

    Africa

     WHO Regional contact for Water, Sanitation and Health
in Africa: 
     Dr Ahmed Nejjar
     Environmental Health Officer
     WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo.

     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

    The Americas

     WHO Regional contacts for Water, Sanitation and Health
in the Americas:
     Mr Luiz Augusto Cassanha Galvao
     Manager, Sustainable Development and Environmental
Health Area

     WHO Regional Office for the Americas, Washington DC,
USA. 
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

     Dr Mauricio Pardon
     Director CEPIS, Lima, Peru 
     Email: [e-mail]

    Eastern Mediterranean Region

     WHO Regional contacts for Water, Sanitation and Health
in the Eastern   
     Mediterranean:
     Dr Houssain Abouzaid
     Coordinator, Healthy Environments, WHO Regional Office
for the Eastern 
     Mediterranean, Cairo, Egypt. 
     Tel:   [phone] (operator) 
            [phone] (direct)
     Email: [e-mail]

     Dr M.Z. Ali Khan
     Director, WHO/EMRO Centre for Environmental Health
Activities, P.O. Box 
     926769, Amman, Jordan. 
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

    Europe

     WHO Regional contact for Water, Sanitation and Health
in Europe:
     Mr Roger Aertgeerts, Regional Adviser, Water and
Sanitation, WHO    
     Regional Office for Europe, Centre for Environmental
Health, Rome, Italy. 
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

    South East Asia and the Western Pacific

     WHO Regional contact for Water, Sanitation and Health
for South and part 
     of South East Asia: 
     Dr Han Heijnen
     Senior Adviser Water and Sanitation, WHO Regional
Office for South-East 
     Asia, based at the WHO Office Kathmandu, Nepal. 
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

     WHO Regional contact for Water, Sanitation and Health
for part of South 
     East Asia and the Western Pacific:
     Dr Terence Thompson
     WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific, Manila,
Philippines. 
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

    National Technical Experts available for interviews.

    This list of experts contains the names and coordinates
of some of those who have contributed substantially to the
third edition of the Guidelines:

     Peter Edwards
     Emeritus Professor
     Asian Institute of Technology
     Home address:
     593 Soi Lad Prao 64
     Bangkok 10310, Thailand
     Tel:   [phone]
     Fax:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]
            [e-mail]

     Blanca Jimenez
     Universidad nacional autonoma
     Apdo Postal 70472
     Ciudad Universitaria
     04510 Coyoacan DF
     Mexico
     Tel:   [phone] x8684 
     Fax:   [phone] x8055

     Duncan Mara
     University of LEEDS
     School of Civil Engineering
     University of Leeds
     Leeds LS2 9JT
     West Yorkshire
     UK
     Tel:   [phone]
     Fax:   [phone]

     Professor Hillel Shuval D.Sc.
     Kunen-Lunenfeld Emeritus Professor of Environmental
Sciences
     The Hebrew University
     Jerusalem 
     Israel
     Tel/Fax:  [phone]
     Email:    [e-mail]

     Professor Thor Axel Stenstroem
     Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control
     Lundagatan 2
     105 21  Stockholm
     Sweden
     Tel:   [phone]
     Fax:   [phone]

SOURCE  World Health Organization