

Why people irrationally reject cleaned sewer water, and how to change their mind - e1ven
http://www.wbur.org/npr/139642271/why-cleaned-wastewater-stays-dirty-in-our-minds

======
AretNCarlsen
"[I]f you have people imagine the water going into an underground aquifer, for
example, and then sitting there for 10 years, the water becomes much more
palatable to the public. It budges even those most unwilling to drink the
water. ... 'When you do introduce a river or even groundwater ... you run the
risk of deteriorating the water that's been treated. You can make the water
quality worse.'"

I am singularly amused at the possibility of contaminating treated post-sewage
water with river water, resulting in a medically less safe but socially more
acceptable water supply. The results of a public vote (as to whether to mix
river water with the treated water) would at least tell us who needs to be
mailed a printed copy of lesswrong.com.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> a printed copy of lesswrong.com.

Does such a critter exist? Not as an actual printed copy, but a way of diving
into it that's not quite so ... scary? The closest thing I see to a "table of
contents" is the list of Sequences.

~~~
mstevens
ciphergoth produced an ebook of Eliezer's posts recently which I'm finding
useful:

[http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/)

------
jonnathanson
Consider the sausage.

Many sausages are made with the intestinal linings and viscera of animals who
live in, root around in, and occasionally even eat their own feces. Shit
that's passed through shit that's passed through shit.

And yet, few people bat an eyelash at hot dogs, brats, or cocktail weenies. Of
course, there's that old chestnut about not wanting to know 'how the sausage
gets made.' But, by and large, people cognitively distance the making-of-the-
sausage from the sausage itself. Why? Because they've been trained to think of
"sausage" as a wholly separate class of item from "pig's colon." And because
they've first encountered -- and enjoyed -- sausage before anyone ever told
them about how it got there.

We need to use similar psychology to fight the psychology of contamination
thinking w/r/t treated wastewater. The message needs to be about how the input
is apples, and the output is oranges. But we have to _start_ with the oranges.
It's very tough to sell the story when the story begins with the making-of-
the-sausage and not the sausage itself.

~~~
reemrevnivek
Hot dogs, brats, and cocktail weenies are all types of Americanized sausage
which don't use intestinal linings anymore. You have to work pretty hard today
to find sausage in your supermarket that is made the old-fashioned way.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casing_(sausage)>

~~~
jonnathanson
Fair. But I suggest that we're picking at nits here. Most mass-market
sausages, even of the American variety, are made with mixed and mechanically
separated parts, drawn from all over the animal and highly likely to be
include portions of bone, head(!), feet, and visceral matter. And the animals
themselves live in horrid conditions that often includes standing knee-deep in
lakes of their own waste. I think my overall point still stands.

~~~
burgerbrain
My local standard (non-specialist) grocery store sells whole pigs heads,
chopped at the neck. Feet are even more popular. I think you might be
overestimating how squimish the general population is/would be of such things.

~~~
bricestacey
Where do you live? I actually go out of my way to find exotic things, but I
have never seen that. In fact, I'm one of this people that visit 3-4 grocery
stores on the weekend. For reference, I live in New England.

~~~
burgerbrain
Currently Philadelphia. I just checked the grocery store's website and
although they list feet/tails/jowls/skin/neck, they don't seem to be listing
head right now. I may be recalling seeing it in Reading Terminal Market^ which
certainly has that kind of stuff (one stall there has piles and piles of
chicken feet.. I have no idea what you'd even do with those. Stews perhaps.)

^
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Reading_Termi...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Reading_Terminal_Market)

------
ChuckMcM
I think if they bottled the water and called is 'Dasani' it would be
acceptable to the public :-)

As a resident of California, and an engineer, I to find this discussion
difficult to fathom. The notion of 'contagion thinking' was probably the best
thing in that article. By having the water 'touch' something good it can
become 'good.' NASA has a vested interest in such systems [1] for things like
the space station. No doubt a lunar colony would have a similar system.

[1] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nasa-
all-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nasa-all-systems-
go-for-space-urine-2008-11-25)

~~~
justincormack
Oh no not Dasani, I remember the uk launch when they made tap water less safe
and withdrew it. [http://www.stevedenning.com/Storytelling-in-the-
News/95-coke...](http://www.stevedenning.com/Storytelling-in-the-News/95-coke-
dasani-launch.aspx)

~~~
xyzzyz
It's interesting how easily people mistake orders of magnitude when they are
using different units of measure simultanously -- in the article you linked,
first they say:

 _give it a mark-up from 0.03p to 95p per half litre;_

and then:

 _In other words, Dasani is less healthy than regular tap water, but at more
than thirty times the price._

It's not _thirty_ times the price -- it's _three thousand_.

It reminds me of a Verizon Math story[1].

[1] - <http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/>

------
gst
People often act irrationally...

Here in Vienna the tap water basically comes straight from mountain springs in
the Alps. Still, almost everyone here buys bottled water, instead of directly
drinking the tap water which has the same quality, if not even better.

~~~
binarymax
When I was in Vienna in 2007 I spoke to a random entrepreneur during lunch and
he noticed I was drinking bottled water.

It turned out he was in the business of bottling water and said the tap water
in Vienna was what he was trying to bottle, and the joke was on me that I was
drinking water bottled elsewhere when the free tap water was a much higher
quality.

~~~
viraptor
Why joke? I happily buy bottled water which tastes better than the local tap
one. It really depends on what you look for. I wouldn't mind if it's filtered
sewage, as long as it tastes good.

The "quality", which can be defined in many ways is hard to judge... Does it
matter that much though? At least we can judge the taste ourselves.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It matters because tap water doesn't generate plastic waste (created by
wasting oil).

------
peng
Simple solution: don't use the words 'sewer' or 'reused' anywhere near the
promotional materials for this product. Call it 'filtered water' or some other
safe euphemism.

~~~
rokhayakebe
And how long would it take before someone blogs about it.

~~~
jleader
I suspect the trick is to get people to think about it as "recycled water" (or
whatever name gets them to accept it) while also intellectually realizing that
it's treated wastewater, so when someone blogs about it, people just shrug and
say "Oh, yeah, doesn't everybody know that?" I'm not sure if that's possible,
but that's probably the only way it would work.

For example, the idea of passing it through an underground aquifer lets people
think "yeah, I know it came from a sewer treatment plant, but now it's
_different_ ". You're not trying to _hide_ anything, you're just trying to get
them to view it differently.

------
leeHS
I'm a scientist. I have no issues with the process of turning sewage water
into clean drinking water. Absolutely none. However, I do have an issue with
humans. Humans screw things up. Humans don't always implement the proper
quality assurance programs, and when they do, they might not follow them.
Every time I pour myself a glass of water from the tap, it's not the science
I'll doubt, I'll just be wondering if Timmy down at the local water treatment
plant did his job properly today, because if he didn't, I'm now drinking
someone's shit.

~~~
ahi
"Whoah Timmy, that stuff is expensive! The inspector doesn't take samples
until the end of the month so go easy on the disinfectant until then will ya?"
says Ned the beancounter. True story though my google fu is failing me.

The failure modes are not equal. Timmy cuts corners with river/aquifer water
and I get some very diluted nasty shit. Timmy cuts corners with waste water
and I get some very concentrated nasty shit.

~~~
mikeash
That might actually be an argument that fewer shortcuts would be taken since
the consequences would be so dire. Ned is willing to take shortcuts on river
water because it's likely that nothing will happen, but if he's smart, he
won't make that same statement with sewage.

(Not saying this is any sort of guarantee, just thought it was an interesting
thing to consider.)

------
kbutler
The problem isn't just contagion theory: it's percentages.

We know that the treatment process doesn't remove everything (witness the
taste of tap water in various cities).

Purification rates are generally stated as percentages, suggesting that the
dirtier the input, the dirtier the output (GIGO)

Searching for "waste water treatment effectiveness" yields interesting
articles about failures - for instance: [http://www.cabq.gov/progress/public-
infrastructure/dcc-18/in...](http://www.cabq.gov/progress/public-
infrastructure/dcc-18/indicator-18-2) which indicates that upstream failures
treating the waste water increase health risks and treatment costs of water
users downstream - why should it matter without the GIGO principle above?

How sure are you that the treatment systems remove 100% of the micro-
organisms? 100% of the chemical hazards? All the time?

There's definitely room for concern, even on the purely scientific/engineering
side, though advocates say that the treated waste water is the cleaner water
source.

~~~
jerf
"How sure are you that the treatment systems remove 100% of the micro-
organisms? 100% of the chemical hazards? All the time?"

I am 100% sure that they do not. It's impossible. No water in nature is that
clean, either, by any standard.

But also, you are not a wilting flower that can only survive on the purest
triple-distilled angel tears. There absolutely is a such thing as "good
enough" and any water that meets existing US standards is well in excess of
"good enough". It is certainly far, far, _far_ cleaner than anything your
ancestors ever had to drink!

This isn't about safety. All "room for concern" has been abundantly addressed;
US water standards are incredibly strict both in theory and in practice. It is
entirely about psychology.

~~~
delackner
The article, and all of the responses I've seen so far, all ignore the problem
that sewer water is overflowing with the prescription drugs that people have
consumed. Municipal water AND many bottled water suppliers don't even bother
testing for drug contamination.

[http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/there-are-
drugs-...](http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/there-are-drugs-in-
drinking-water-now-what/)

~~~
jerf
Broadly speaking, I would consider the burden of proof to be on those who say
that things in concentrations measured in small numbers of parts per billion
are really bad and worth panicking over. It may be, it can not be ruled out,
but the list of things that you routinely consume, that you can't _help_ but
consume, at similar concentrations would blow your mind.

Heck, a complete rundown of every microorganism you just ingested the last
time you took a breath would blow your mind. (Mine too. I'd love to see it.)

The world is a dirty, dirty place, and always has been. You aren't a wilting
flower, you are the product of billions of generations of organisms that
survived, all of which except maybe the last three generations lived in a
radically dirtier world than you do. I'm really not that worried about ppb
pharmaceuticals in my water; if I'm going to go that route I'm going to finger
my _food_ for things like hormones and antibiotics long before my _water_.

~~~
delackner
[http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-10-drugs-tap-
wat...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-10-drugs-tap-water_N.htm)

""" Troubled by drugs discovered in European waters, poisons expert and
biologist Francesco Pomati set up an experiment: He exposed developing human
kidney cells to a mixture of 13 drugs at levels mimicking those found in
Italian rivers.

There were drugs to fight high cholesterol and blood pressure, seizures and
depression, pain and infection, and cancer, all in tiny amounts.

The result: The pharmaceutical blend slowed cell growth by up to a third
suggesting that scant amounts may exert powerful effects, said Pomati, who
works at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. """

~~~
jerf
Unfortunately (and I mean that, I wish this style worked better than it does
because it is so easy compared to real experiments), that style of experiment
is well known for producing useless results.

Think about it; if the water was _that_ poisonous, such that 1/3 of our
celluar growth was being eliminated, we wouldn't be _speculating_ about
whether our water was killing us, we'd _know_ and long since have taken some
sort of action. The strength of the real signal is bounded by the fact that we
have millions upon millions upon millions of _real people_ consuming these
things every day. Reality always trumps both theory and experiment, and don't
ever listen to anybody who forgets that. An experiment that shows an enormous
signal, which we can observe in the real world can not possibly be occurring,
is far more likely to be a flawed-beyond-usefulness experiment than a real
reason for concern.

It is, however, a great way to get in the news.

You get the same problem when some people discover that X causes cancer,
except that if you take their results seriously you end up with
(metaphorically) 245% of the population dying of cancer X by the time they are
30. Except we don't. Hidden dangers can only be so dangerous.

------
rlpb
What about the fallibility of the system?

If there's a set of processes feeding into each other taking sewage and
producing clean drinking water, I feel that there's a much higher possibility
of a failure causing contamination to the drinking water. Engineers can be
complacent about fail-safes and politics may compromise good engineering.

If there's a river in the way, then although the water must be processed
again, this apparent wastefulness also has the effect of preventing engineers
(or their managers) from taking shortcuts.

~~~
abstractbill
Any system for producing drinking water is fallible - why is this one special?
Why should we be more suspicious of it than any other process?

Just for one example, I remember in 2004 when Dasani launched in the UK [1].
Aside from a bunch of other rather hilarious mistakes, their purification
process (applied to regular mains drinking water) introduced bromate - a
suspected carcinogen.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani#United_Kingdom>

------
anamax
Rejecting cleaned sewer water would seem to be a logical consequence of
accepting homeopathic theory.

~~~
fferen
But isn't the idea of homeopathy to consume miniscule amounts of things that
are toxic in large quantities, like arsenic? In that case, cleaned sewer water
should be good for you.

------
JoeAltmaier
Its not good water or bad water; its desecrated water or sanctified water. No
engineering principle is involved; only culture, belief and emotion guide the
issue. For better or worse, its people that have to be convinced, and people
are emotional creatures.

------
calloc
While in school I was taught and learned that all water went through a
filtration system including sewage and after cleaning it would go back into
the drinkable water lines running to our house.

I grew up in Europe :-)

~~~
tybris
I learned the same. I was quite disappointed later to find that, while all the
sewage here goes through treatment, it does not get directly pumped back into
the water pipes, but instead gets pumped back into the rivers. Although
pragmatically speaking that makes more sense, since surface water is surface
water, and completely separating these systems avoids any risk of
contamination.

------
Create
real sewage is not 'gone': remember all the drugs and pharmaceuticals that are
emptied on a daily basis.

~~~
scott_s
And remember that all water must be treated. So the real question is, why is
sewage different than all of the other contaminants that get in fresh water?

~~~
Create
Sewage is different, because it has a high concentration of WC water (urine),
which in turn contains high level of hormone supplements (contraception). Some
of the problem is, that these drugs can eventually find their way to fresh
water.

The standard scientific (chemical) process is the mechanical separation and
dilution mentioned, but there is no evidence that there is a safe level of
hormone that can be absorbed daily. Not unlike DDT: actually hormones were
cited as evidence during the fight for the ban. However, there is scientific
evidence of sexual mutation in creatures living in water (frogs, fish etc. --
though many other things could be blamed for this, but none rule out the
above)

------
schnaars
psychological contagion - why i don't want my mashed potatoes touching my
turkey, but I'm cool with my gravy being the mediator between the two.

------
pbreit
I'm not sure "irrational" is the best description. It's not obvious to most in
California that water is in that short of supply. It also seems reasonable
that treated water would be used for things like watering crops before things
like human drinking water. Finally, it's reasonable to be wary of something
newish that sounds obviously problematic.

------
monkeypizza
People alive today are descended from people who've been through a multi-
thousand year selection process, where the main factor that determined whether
you lived or not was how important you & your parents thought it was to drink
really clean water. It's no wonder people are pretty touchy about the water
issue.

------
Joakal
Interesting fact: Pure water tastes very bitter and can in fact be dangerous
to drink [0].

[0] [http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean-
wat...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1750612/the-dangerously-clean-water-used-
to-make-your-iphone)

~~~
gnosis
Not necessarily.[1]

[1] <http://www.finishing.com/156/65.shtml>

------
daimyoyo
I cannot understand why California has a water supply issue when they are
located right next to the largest body of water on Earth. I think the public
is much more accepting of desalinized ocean water than they are of reclaimed
municipal water.

~~~
wtracy
Let's see:

It takes 5kW/h to produce a cubic meter of fresh water from sea water via
reverse osmosis.[0] The population of just LA is a bit over 3 million.[1] The
average U.S. citizen consumes 2842 cubic meters of water per year.

5 kWh/m^3 * 8765 h/year * 3,000,000 people * 2842 m^3/person-year = 4863662 kW
= 4863 MW.

I will conservatively estimate that a nuclear power plant will produce 800
MW.[3] So:

4863 MW / 800 MW/plant = 6

That means we're talking about six full-size nuclear power plants running 24/7
with their entire energy output going toward desalinization to supply LA
alone.

Extrapolating further, I get that it would take twenty nuclear power plants
running full-time to meet just half of the demand for the entirety of southern
California.

Does that answer your question?

(I know my sources aren't all that authoritative--they are just what Google
pulled up. Feel free to redo the calculations with more accurate numbers, or
just to double-check my arithmetic.)

[0] [http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/large-scale-
desa...](http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/large-scale-desalination-
is-there-enough-energy-to-do-it/) [1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California> [2]
<http://www.waterfootprint.org/> [3]
[http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_output_MW_of_a_nuclear_power_plant)

~~~
BrandonM
You've got the _h_ on the wrong side of the fraction. A Watt is a rate of
energy usage: 1 J/s. It requires an amount of energy that could power 100
50-watt light bulbs for an hour to desalinate a cubic meter of water. That is,
the _8765 h/year_ in your calculation doesn't belong.

From
[http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/usnu...](http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/usnuclearpowerplants/),
a 90% capacity nuclear power plant can produce 7.9 billion KWh in a year.
Let's round that down to 6 billion. The math is:

5 kWh/m^3 * 3,000,000 people * 2842 m^3/(person _year) / 6,000,000,000
kWh/(power-plant_ year) = 7.1 power plants for LA.

It looks like something funny happened in your math/numbers, but your final
calculation and conclusion somehow ended up correct.

------
resdirector
Paul Bloom (Psychologist at Yale) did a fascinating talk on a whole lot of
different examples of psychological contagions:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWOfP-Lubuw>

------
Fateasy
Its already done in Singapore, called NEWater
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater>

------
georgieporgie
On a related note, Portland recently blew $36,000 draining a reservoir after a
guy peed in it.

[http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011...](http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/06/portland-
ore-drains-reservoir-after-man-pees-in-it/1)

The reservoir is completely open. Untold numbers of animals pee, poop, and die
in it every year.

~~~
prawn
Here in South Australia (Adelaide, a city of 1m or so people), we often face
water restrictions due to low water levels in our reservoirs and low rainfall
projections. These restrictions include only being able to water gardens on
certain days of the week, etc. It's quite remarkable to hear about a
city/council 'wasting' water and spending money to do so.

~~~
ScottBurson
It's quite remarkable to us in California as well, only a few hundred miles
south of Portland. If Oregon has that much water to spare, maybe we should get
them to let us build a pipeline.

~~~
softbuilder
We built a pipeline, it's called the Pacific Ocean. Enjoy.

------
gcb
call it "rain"

------
swah
Can you use it to make belgian beer?

------
fawek
Just have Barack drink it on TV.

------
dwc
Put it in bottles, charge a lot of money, and label it "Egawes"

------
bugsy
Words like "irrational" are propaganda and "how to change their mind" suggests
that people should be drinking cleaned sewer water provided by a municipality
whose equipment is run by drug addicts and losers, and equipment provided by
the lowest bidder.

------
stretchwithme
Its not irrational.

I know for a fact that the sun only evaporates the water and leaves the crap
behind. Its a process that has been happening for a very long time.

And we all know how perfect industrial processes are, especially when managed
by the government.

The sewer water isn't THAT MUCH cheaper than regular water. So I'd prefer that
the experiment be run on someone other than me.

If it is cheaper and a city wants cheaper water, let them enjoy it. We should
be charging market prices to all users. Then if this actually made economic
sense, it would be adopted.

~~~
InclinedPlane
And then that water in the clouds falls as snow and rain and then feeds into
rivers and reservoirs where fish, insects, deer, ducks, beavers, bears, bird,
etc. urinate, defecate, bleed, and die into it. That's why pure unfiltered
river water doesn't feed directly to a municipal water supply and is filtered
and treated first.

~~~
stretchwithme
Yes, that's true. I guess I don't trust the municipal water system to do the
job.

I also don't see how they can filter out all the drugs and salt that sewage
water currently contains and is being released into the environment. These
things are just going to accumulate. Or is there new invention I'm not aware
of?

Granted, that's not the argument I originally stated but its definitely a
question.

If you're aware familiar with the Colorado River, you may know that the water
gets saltier and saltier as it is taken out, run through the land and drains
back into it. Without any intervention, its pretty brackish by the time it
gets to Mexico.

Running the same water through humanity over and over again is bound to have a
similar problem.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The water of the Mississippi river gets filtered and processed and drunk by
the residents of Minneapolis, then their waste water gets dumped into the
river only to be taken up and processed by St. Louis who also dump their waste
water back into the river only to later run out of the taps of the residents
of New Orleans.

~~~
stretchwithme
Thats traveling with a whole lot of other water not the same water all of the
time. And that's only 3 recycles not an endless number of recycles.

