The big necessity

"[A] tour through the world of human waste - one of the biggest unchallenged causes of death worldwide and, for many, to their immense cost, the last remaining taboo. Produced behind closed doors, disposed of discreetly and hidden by euphemism, human waste is rarely out in the open in 'civilised' society ... With a journalist's nose for a story and campaigner's desire for change, Rose George ... takes us underground into the Victorian brick sewers of London and New York ... and overground to meet the heroes of India's sanitation movement. We examine the hi-tech Japanese revolution in toilet engineering, we go to sewage beds and sewage school; we investigate whether re-naming sewage sludge 'biosolids' might actually prove an eco-friendly alternative to petrol; we nip into public toilets the world over to see what they reveal about civilization; and we stand right in front of the biggest unsolved public health problem on the planet"--Cover.