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Recycled
Sewage
Would You Drink Recycled Sewage? Why
It Grosses Us Out
By Rachael Rettner
For years, we've been able to turn our own sewage into
clean, drinking water.
Such technology would seem like an ideal solution for
water-strapped regions. But the technology remains sparsely used.
And even when it is employed, no one actually drinks the
water — not directly at least.
Why not? Part of the reason is the "ick" factor —
we're reluctant to imbibe anything we think has once been in the toilet.
"You can get rid of the
actual contaminants in the water," said Carol Nemeroff, psychologist and professor of social
and behavioral sciences at the University of Southern Maine.
"What you can't do is unhook its
original identity as sewage."
Psychologists are working to understand our misgivings and
just what it would take to get people to drink this water.
Ick factor
Recycled water that is potable goes
through a rigorous purification process designed to filter out and kill off
anything that would make us sick.
Once it's done, the water is
completely safe to drink, said Brent Haddad, a professor of environmental
studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
"It is so
clean that you have to add back minerals for flavor," Haddad said. "It comes out the equivalent [of]
distilled water."
Our repulsion to drinking recycled sewage can be explained by one
of the principles underlying human beliefs called "magical
contagion."
The idea here is that once two
objects come into contact, they are always in contact, or continue to influence
each other, even if they no longer actually touch.
"Contagions" can be both
positive and negative. For instance, this way of thinking is why your
grandmother's ring is more valuable to you than a replica would be, Nemeroff
said.
Such a mindset, though not rational,
is evolutionarily helpful, Nemeroff said.
"We are making
decisions in daily life all the time with incomplete information," Nemeroff said. "We rarely can sit down and
logically think of the pros and cons of everything we do."
Would you drink it?
To get a sense of people's
willingness to drink recycled water, Nemeroff and colleagues surveyed about
2,700 people from five U.S. cities.
Participants were first asked how
willing they were to drink recycled water. Thirty-eight percent said they were
willing, about 50 percent said they weren't sure, and 13 percent said they
would refuse.
The participants were then asked how
willing they were to drink the water if it had been subjected to various
purification processes, including skimming the water, boiling it, putting it
through filters, etc.
For those who were uncertain or
unwilling to drink recycled water initially, the extra purifications made very
little difference — these groups barely budged from their initial views.
Virtually the only thing that made a
difference was when the participants were asked if they would drink water that
came out of a bottle or tap.
Almost everyone was willing to drink
this water.
"Some people
just want [their water] to be certified safe; they don't want to know the
details," Nemeroff said.
Solutions
Breaking the chain of continuity
between sewage and tap water might be one way to get people over their
squeamishness, Nemeroff said.
On the surveys, participants
indicated they were more willing to drink recycled sewage water that had been
sitting in an aquifer for a period of time — a process that already occurs with
treated sewage water.
Another solution is to just start
sending recycled water into people's kitchens. If you found out you'd been
drinking the water and you hadn't grown three heads, you might be OK with it,
Nemeroff said.
"When we do
something enough, we stop seeing it as risky," Nemeroff said. "When risks are unfamiliar, we
tend to overreact to them."
Nemeroff presented her work Aug. 4 at the American
Psychological Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Follow staff writer Rachael
Rettner on Twitter @RachaelRettner.
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