Sanitation is the hygienic Hygiene is an old concept related to medicine, as well as to personal and professional care practices related to most aspects of living. In medicine and in home and everyday life settings, hygiene practices are employed as preventative measures to reduce the incidence and spreading of disease. In the manufacture of food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic means of promoting health Health promotion has been defined by the World Health Organization's 2005 Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion in a Globalized World as "the process of enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, and thereby improve their health". The primary means of health promotion occur through developing healthy through prevention of human contact with the hazards A hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment. Most hazards are dormant or potential, with only a theoretical risk of harm; however, once a hazard becomes "active", it can create an emergency situation. A hazard does not exist when it is happening. A hazardous situation that has come to of wastes Waste is unwanted or unusable materials. Litter is waste which has been disposed of improperly, particularly waste which has been carelessly disposed of in plain sight, as opposed to waste which has been dumped to avoid paying for waste disposal fees. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic wastewater (sewage, sullage, greywater), industrial wastes, and agricultural wastes. Hygienic means of prevention can be by using engineering solutions (e.g. sewerage and wastewater treatment Sewage treatment, or domestic wastewater treatment, is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater and household sewage, both runoff and domestic. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove physical, chemical and biological contaminants. Its objective is to produce a waste stream (or treated effluent) and a solid), simple technologies (e.g. latrines, septic tanks), or even by personal hygiene practices (e.g. simple handwashing Hand washing for hand hygiene is the act of cleansing the hands with or without the use of water or another liquid, or with the use of soap, for the purpose of removing soil, dirt, and/or microorganisms with soap). Sanitation as defined by the WHO (World Health Organisation); Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and faeces. Inadequate sanitation is a major cause of disease world-wide and improving sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial impact on health both in households and across communities. The word 'sanitation' also refers to the maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services such as garbage collection and wastewater disposal. ^[1]

The term "sanitation" can be applied to a specific aspect, concept, location, or strategy, such as:

• Basic sanitation - refers to the management of human feces at the household level. This terminology is the indicator used to describe the target of the Millennium Development Goal The Millennium Development Goals are eight international development goals that 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. They include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS, and developing a global partnership for on sanitation.
• On-site sanitation - the collection and treatment of waste is done where it is deposited. Examples are the use of pit latrines, septic tanks, and imhoff tanks.
• Food sanitation - refers to the hygienic measures for ensuring food safety.
• Environmental sanitation - the control of environmental factors that form links in disease transmission. Subsets of this category are solid waste management, water and wastewater treatment, industrial waste treatment and noise and pollution control.
• Ecological sanitation Ecological sanitation, also known as ecosan or eco-san, is a sanitation process that uses human blackwater and sometimes immediately eliminates fecal pathogens from any still present wastewater at the source. The objectives are to offer economically and ecologically sustainable and culturally acceptable systems that aim to close the natural - a concept and an approach of recycling to nature the nutrients from human and animal wastes.

History

The earliest evidence of urban sanitation was seen in Harappa Harappa is an archaeological site in Punjab, northeast Pakistan, about 20 km (12 mi) west of Sahiwal. The site takes its name from a modern village located near the former course of the Ravi River, some 5 km (3 mi) southeast of the site, Mohenjo-daro Mohenjo-daro was one of the largest city-settlements of the Indus Valley Civilization of ancient India situated in the Larkana District of Sindh in modern-day Pakistan. Built around 2600 BCE, the city was one of the early urban settlements in the world, existing at the same time as the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete. The and the recently discovered Rakhigarhi Rakhigarhi, or Rakhi Garhi , is a village in Hisar District in the northwest Indian state of Haryana, around 150 kilometers from Delhi. Actually, Rakhigarhi is a common name for two separete villages Rakhi Shahpur and Rakhi Khas. It lies on the Chautang River. In 1963 archeologists discovered the village was the site of an extensive city, part of of Indus Valley civilization The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) which was centred mostly in the western part of the Indian Subcontinent and which flourished around the Indus river basin.[n 1] Primarily centered along the Indus and the Punjab region, the civilization extended into the Ghaggar-Hakra River. This urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump . It can also be drawn up using containers, such as buckets, that are raised. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes.

Roman Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world cities and Roman villas A Roman villa is a villa that was built or lived in during the Roman republic and the Roman Empire. A villa was originally a Roman country house built for the upper class. According to Pliny the Elder, there were two kinds of villas: the villa urbana, which was a country seat that could easily be reached from Rome for a night or two, and the villa had elements of sanitation systems, delivering water in the streets of towns such as Pompeii Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, its sister city, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in 79 AD. The eruption, and building stone and wooden drains to collect and remove wastewater Wastewater is any water that has been adversely affected in quality by anthropogenic influence. It comprises liquid waste discharged by domestic residences, commercial properties, industry, and/or agriculture and can encompass a wide range of potential contaminants and concentrations. In the most common usage, it refers to the municipal wastewater from populated areas - see for instance the Cloaca Maxima The Cloaca Maxima is one of the world's earliest sewage systems. Constructed in ancient Rome in order to drain local marshes and remove the waste of one of the world's most populous cities, it carried an effluent to the River Tiber, which ran beside the city into the River Tiber The Tiber (Latin Tiberis, Italian Tevere, Italian pronunciation: [ˈtevere]) is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing 406 kilometres (252 mi) through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It drains a basin estimated at 17,375 square kilometres (6,709 sq mi). The river has achieved in Rome. But there is little record of other sanitation in most of Europe until the High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages was the period of European history in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries . The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which by convention end around 1500. Unsanitary conditions and overcrowding were widespread throughout Europe Europe is one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus region (Specification of borders) and the Black Sea to the southeast. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean and and Asia Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population. During the 20th century Asia's population nearly quadrupled during the Middle Ages The Middle Ages is a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The period followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and preceded the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period in a three-period division of history: Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The term "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was coined in, resulting periodically in cataclysmic pandemics A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance a continent, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics exclude seasonal flu, unless the flu of the season such as the Plague of Justinian The Plague of Justinian was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman Empire , including its capital Constantinople, in the years 541–542 AD. The most commonly accepted cause of the pandemic is bubonic plague, which later became infamous for either causing or for contributing to the Black Death of the 14th century. Its social and cultural (541-42) and the Black Death The Black Death was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. It is widely thought to have been an outbreak of bubonic plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, although this view has been challenged by a number of scholars. Usually thought to have started in Central Asia, it had reached the (1347-1351), which killed tens of millions of people and radically altered societies.^[2]

Very high infant and child mortality prevailed in Europe throughout medieval The Middle Ages is a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The period followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and preceded the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period in a three-period division of history: Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The term "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was coined in times, due not only to deficiencies in sanitation but to insufficient food for a population which had expanded faster than agriculture Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. The study of agriculture is known as.^[3] This was further complicated by frequent warfare War is a behaviour pattern exhibited by many primate species including humans, and also found in many ant species. The primary feature of this behaviour pattern is a certain state of organized violent conflict that is engaged in between two or more separate social entities. Such a conflict is always an attempt at altering either the psychological and exploitation of civilians by brutal rulers. Life for the average person at this time was indeed 'nasty, brutish and short.

Wastewater sanitation

Wastewater collection

The standard sanitation technology in urban areas is the collection of wastewater Wastewater is any water that has been adversely affected in quality by anthropogenic influence. It comprises liquid waste discharged by domestic residences, commercial properties, industry, and/or agriculture and can encompass a wide range of potential contaminants and concentrations. In the most common usage, it refers to the municipal wastewater in sewers A sanitary sewer is a type of an underground carriage system, (the 'system of sewers' is called sewerage), for transporting sewage from houses or industry to treatment or disposal. In some areas, sanitary sewers are separate sewer systems specifically for the carrying of domestic and industrial wastewater, and are operated separately and, its treatment in wastewater treatment plants for reuse Historically, financial motivation was one of the main drivers of reuse. In the developing world this driver can lead lead to very high levels of reuse, however rising wages and consequent consumer demand for the convenience of disposable products has made the reuse of low value items such as packaging uneconomic in richer countries, leading to or disposal in rivers, lakes or the sea. Sewers are either combined with storm drains A storm drain, storm sewer , stormwater drain, drain (Australia and New Zealand) or drainage well system (UK) is designed to drain excess rain and ground water from paved streets, parking lots, sidewalks, and roofs. Storm drains vary in design from small residential dry wells to large municipal systems. They are fed by street gutters on most or separated from them as sanitary sewers A sanitary sewer is a type of an underground carriage system, (the 'system of sewers' is called sewerage), for transporting sewage from houses or industry to treatment or disposal. In some areas, sanitary sewers are separate sewer systems specifically for the carrying of domestic and industrial wastewater, and are operated separately and. Combined sewers A combined sewer is a type of sewer system that collects sanitary sewage and stormwater runoff in a single pipe system. Combined sewers can cause serious water pollution problems due to combined sewer overflows, which are caused by large variations in flow between dry and wet weather. This type of sewer design is no longer used in building new are usually found in the central, older parts or urban areas. Heavy rainfall Stormwater is a term used to describe water that originates during precipitation events. It may also be used to apply to water that originates with snowmelt or runoff water from overwatering that enters the stormwater system. Stormwater that does not soak into the ground becomes surface runoff, which either flows directly into surface waterways or and inadequate maintenance can lead to combined sewer overflows or sanitary sewer overflows Sanitary sewer overflow is a condition whereby untreated sewage is discharged into the environment prior to reaching treatment facilities thereby escaping wastewater treatment. When caused by rainfall it is also known as wet weather overflow. It is primarily meaningful in developed countries, which have extensive sewage treatment facilities. The, i.e. more or less diluted raw sewage Sewage is water-carried wastes, in either solution or suspension, that is intended to flow away from a community. Also known as wastewater flows, sewage is the used water supply of the community. It is more than 99.9% pure water and is characterized by its volume or rate of flow, its physical condition, its chemical constituents, and the being discharged into the environment. Industries often discharge wastewater into municipal sewers, which can complicate wastewater treatment unless industries pre-treat their discharges.^[4]

The high investment cost of conventional wastewater collection systems are difficult to afford for many developing countries Developing country is a term generally used to describe a nation with a low level of material well being. There is no single internationally-recognized definition of developed country, and the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries, with some developing countries having high average standards of living. Some countries have therefore promoted alternative wastewater collection systems such as condominial sewerage, which uses smaller diameter pipes at lower depth with different network layouts from conventional sewerage.

Wastewater treatment

In developed countries treatment of municipal wastewater is now widespread,^[5] but not yet universal (for an overview of technologies see wastewater treatment Sewage treatment, or domestic wastewater treatment, is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater and household sewage, both runoff and domestic. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove physical, chemical and biological contaminants. Its objective is to produce a waste stream (or treated effluent) and a solid). In developing countries Developing country is a term generally used to describe a nation with a low level of material well being. There is no single internationally-recognized definition of developed country, and the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries, with some developing countries having high average standards of living most wastewater is still discharge untreated into the environment. For example, in Latin America only about 15% of collected sewerage is being treated (see water and sanitation in Latin America Water supply and sanitation in Latin America is characterized by insufficient access and in many cases by poor service quality, with detrimental impacts on public health. Water and sanitation services are provided by a vast array of mostly local service providers under an often fragmented policy and regulatory framework. Financing of water and)

Reuse of wastewater

The reuse of untreated wastewater in irrigated agriculture is common in developing countries. The reuse of treated wastewater in landscaping (esp. on golf courses), irrigated agriculture and for industrial use is becoming increasingly widespread.

In many peri-urban and rural areas households are not connected to sewers. They discharge their wastewater into septic tanks or other types of on-site sanitation.

Ecological sanitation

Ecological sanitation Ecological sanitation, also known as ecosan or eco-san, is a sanitation process that uses human blackwater and sometimes immediately eliminates fecal pathogens from any still present wastewater at the source. The objectives are to offer economically and ecologically sustainable and culturally acceptable systems that aim to close the natural is sometimes presented as a radical alternative to conventional sanitation systems. Ecological sanitation is based on composting A composting toilet is an aerobic processing system that treats excreta, typically with no water or small volumes of flush water, via composting or managed aerobic decomposition. This is usually a faster process than the anaerobic decomposition at work in most wastewater systems, such as septic systems or vermicomposting Compost is composed of organic materials derived from plant and animal matter that has been decomposed largely through aerobic decomposition. The process of composting is simple and practiced by individuals in their homes, farmers on their land, and industrially by industries and cities toilets where an extra separation of urine and feces at the source for sanitization and recycling has been done. It thus eliminates the creation of blackwater and eliminates fecal pathogens from any still present wastewater (urine). If ecological sanitation is practiced municipal wastewater consists only of greywater, which can be recycled for gardening. However, in most cases greywater continues to be discharged to sewers.

Sanitation and public health

The importance of waste isolation lies in an effort to prevent water and sanitation related diseases, which afflicts both developed countries as well as developing countries to differing degrees. It is estimated that up to 5 million people die each year from preventable water-borne disease^[6], as a result of inadequate sanitation and hygiene practices. The affects of sanitation have also had a large impact on society. Published in Griffins Public Sanitation proven studies show that higher sanitation produces more attractiveness.

Global access to improved sanitation

The Joint Monitoring Program for water and sanitation of WHO and UNICEF has defined improved sanitation as

• connection to a public sewer
• connection to a septic system
• pour-flush latrine
• simple pit latrine
• ventilated improved pit latrine ^[7]

According to that definition, 62% of the world's population has access to improved sanitation in 2008, up 8% since 1990. [1] Only slightly more than half of them or 31% of the world population lived in houses connected to a sewer. Overall, 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation and thus must resort to open defecation or other unsanitary forms of defecation, such as public latrines or open pit latrines.^[8] This includes 1.2 billion people who have access to no facilities at all.^[9] This outcome presents substantial public health risks as the waste could contaminate drinking water and cause life threatening forms of diarrhea to infants. Improved sanitation, including hand washing and water purification, could save the lives of 1.5 million children who suffer from diarrheal diseases each year.^[9]

In developed countries, where less than 20% of the world population lives, 99% of the population has access to improved sanitation and 81% were connected to sewers.

Solid waste disposal

Disposal of solid waste is most commonly conducted in landfills, but incineration, recycling, composting and conversion to biofuels are also avenues. In the case of landfills, advanced countries typically have rigid protocols for daily cover with topsoil, where underdeveloped countries customarily rely upon less stringent protocols.^[10] The importance of daily cover lies in the reduction of vector contact and spreading of pathogens. Daily cover also minimises odor emissions and reduces windblown litter. Likewise, developed countries typically have requirements for perimeter sealing of the landfill with clay-type soils to minimize migration of leachate that could contaminate groundwater (and hence jeopardize some drinking water supplies).

For incineration options, the release of air pollutants, including certain toxic components is an attendant adverse outcome. Recycling and biofuel conversion are the sustainable options that generally have superior life cycle costs, particularly when total ecological consequences are considered.^[11] Composting value will ultimately be limited by the market demand for compost product.

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