Learn about the history of waste management and how current systems came to be.
For thousands of years, people have understood the health effects of being near human waste and the importance of removing said waste from their livable space. Early in human history, the waste would just be buried on location, but as civilization advanced, new measured were taken to remove waste. In Rome, elaborate pipelines and tunnels were constructed to bring waste away from cities. These sewage Lines were connected to public latrines similar to the one pictured. Users would sit on the benches as already used bath water would flow in, taking the waste outside of the city, usually dumping it in a river, lake, or the ocean. This system, while good for its time, were extremely hazardous to the environment due to its dumping methods. Many people using this system throughout history got sick for reasons unknown at the time. Since then, sewage systems like this have taken over as one of the main techniques of waste disposal.
Problems with this system started to become apparent in 1832 when nearly 15,000 people were killed by a cholera epidemic in London. Finally, a solution to a history of sickness was about to be uncovered. An anesthesiologist by the name of John Snow hypothesized that so many people got sick with cholera, because they were drinking tainted water poisoned because of the proximity of water pipes to the sewage pipes. He first noticed that the drinking water was the main problem because of the fact that the spread of the disease was centered around one public water pump where the people in the area got their water from. He also noticed that a bar on the same street suffered no problem with sickness. They explained to Snow that they used their own tap and never used the city water. This gave Snow enough evidence to bring a proposal to the local government to allow him to dismantle the water pump. After doing this, the cholera epidemic died down and many people took note of the discovery from around the world. This changed how humans designed and constructed wastewater systems in the future.
Before Snow’s discovery, the city of Boston and many other large cities alike discharged its wastewater into storm water sewers which were then emptied out into clean bodies of water. In Boston the sewage was discharged into the Charles River; Boston’s drinking-water source. After the discovery of how harmful bacteria from human waste can spread diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever, millions of dollars were put directly into waste water management and treatment in order to clean the water before it gets back into water sources and properly maintain piping. Snow’s discovery saved many lives and emphasized the importance of cleaning wastewater before dumping it back into the environment.
The common down fall of sewage lines is the city or towns willingness to run the pipe lines to houses in less populated areas. It costs the cities millions of dollars to build the lines therefore it leaves many people with no waste water treatment options. The septic tank was created in the 1860's by John Mourns. He ran a pipe from his home and connected it to a large concrete tank. This was a huge success and is still used to this day as a decentralized waste water treatment for houses far away from sewage pipelines.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/wastewater-treatment