Got Thirst? Drink Urine.
All roads begin somewhere. (Photo: Sukree Sukplang / Reuters)
About that whole world water shortage crisis?
It’s so awful and widespread, and not going away any time soon, that researchers at the U.S. National Research Council say we would be wise to look down to the end of the water bench and consider giving some playing time to a liquid so revolting many fans would rather die of thirst than ingest even one tiny drop of it.
Urine.
Actually, recycled and treated pee, but you get the gist.
We are all downstream from someone else," says psychologist Carl Nemeroff. "And even the nice, fresh, pure spring water? Birds and fish poop in it. So there is no water that has not been pooped or peed in somwehere.
Only two and a half percent of the water on Earth is fresh water, and less than one percent of that is usable. Roughly 884 million people—one of every eight around the world—don’t have access to safe drinking water, according to the World Health Organization and UNICEF. At the same time, water use has risen by more than twice the rate of the world's population growth during the past century.
The actual process by which your urine is converted into drinking water—something somebody who loves alliteration dubbed “toilet to tap”—can be broken down into five steps.
1) Water from toilets is flushed into a treatment plant.
2) Solid particles are removed at the plant.
3) At another facility, microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light are used to treat the wastewater.
4) Minerals are added and the water is eventually discharged into the ground, lakes, and reservoirs.
5) Some time later, the water ends up back at your home, only now it comes out of your tap.
With that behind us, let’s dive deeper into the deep end of this appetizing topic.
The Ick Factor
According to a study conducted by the University of California, Santa Cruz, more than 60 percent of respondents flat out refuse to drink any form of water that has had any direct contact with sewage. This position, says the head researcher of the study, is loaded with irony. “We are all downstream from someone else,” says psychologist Carl Nemeroff. “And even the nice, fresh, pure spring water? Birds and fish poop in it. So there is no water that has not been pooped or peed in somewhere.”
To Repeat, You’re Already (Most Likely, Probably) Drinking Urine
From i09: “Many treatment plants get their waters from the same rivers that cities upstream use to dump out their waste water. Though that doesn’t technically count as reuse, that’s what it really is. This proposal just calls for cities to start recycling their own water supply, rather than shift it along to the poor jerks downriver.”
Urine, the Drink of Choice for Stranded Victims
Aron Ralston, the Utah hiker who famously amputated his own arm to escape a boulder in 2003, admitted to drinking his own urine to keep hydrated. He’s not the only disaster victim to do so. In recent years, a Chinese man trapped for 146 hours in the aftermath of an earthquake and two men stranded for 11 days in the South China Sea arrived at a similar thirst solution. Still, the practice is not widely advised as a survival technique. While urine is 95 percent water, the other five percent is made of stuff you don't want to re-ingest on a regular basis, namely nitrogen, potassium, and calcium.
Pee Water, Coming to a Parched Texas Near You
This past summer, Texas’ drought became so Biblically bad that officials in the tiny town of Big Spring had no choice but to break ground on a $13 million treatment plant that will direct two million gallons per day of processed sewage into the water system.
Drinking My Own Pee Costs $250 Million?
Yes, if you were an astronaut living in a space shuttle. That’s how much lettuce NASA dropped to develop a system for its astronauts to purify pee into drinking water. Officials boasted that the water is cleaner than U.S. tap water. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the cost of the average toilet to tap system is generally considered to be cheaper than desalinization, though it is likely more expensive than water conservation efforts.
You're In Luck, We Found Three More Totally Random Urine Facts
Infamous shut-in J.D. Salinger drank his own pee.
Urine is sterile, and the Aztecs used it to prevent infection in wounds.
Depending on your interpretation, you might be inclined to believe that the Bible recommends urine therapy. “Drink waters from thy own cistern, flowing water from thy own well,” reads a verse in Proverbs.
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