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Bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system

Lack of access to clean water and sanitation is a major factor impacting public health in communities worldwide. To address this, the S-Lab at Providence College and the Global Sustainable Aid Project developed a microflush composting toilet system to isolate and treat human waste. Solid waste is co...

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Autores principales: Williams, Laura E., Kleinschmidt, Claire E., Mecca, Stephen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6286801/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30564526
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6077
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author Williams, Laura E.
Kleinschmidt, Claire E.
Mecca, Stephen
author_facet Williams, Laura E.
Kleinschmidt, Claire E.
Mecca, Stephen
author_sort Williams, Laura E.
collection PubMed
description Lack of access to clean water and sanitation is a major factor impacting public health in communities worldwide. To address this, the S-Lab at Providence College and the Global Sustainable Aid Project developed a microflush composting toilet system to isolate and treat human waste. Solid waste is composted within a filter-digester bed via an aerobic process involving microbes and invertebrates. Liquid waste may be sanitized by solar disinfection (SODIS) or slow sand filtration (SSF). Here, we used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of samples from a scaled-down test version of the system to better understand the bacterial component of the toilet system. Immediately after fecal matter was deposited in the test system, the bacterial community of the filter-digester bed at the site of deposition resembled that of the human gut at both the phylum and genus level, which was expected. Genus-level analysis of filter-digester bed samples collected over the next 30 days from the site of deposition showed reduced or undetectable levels of fecal-associated taxa, with the exception of Clostridium XI, which persisted at low abundance throughout the sampling period. Starting with the sample collected on day 4, the bacterial community of the filter-digester bed at the site of deposition was dominated by bacterial taxa commonly associated with environmental sources, reflecting a major shift in bacterial community composition. These data support the toilet system’s capacity for processing solid human waste. We also analyzed how SODIS and SSF sanitization methods affected the bacterial community composition of liquid effluent collected on day 15 from the test system. Untreated and treated liquid effluent samples were dominated by Proteobacteria. At the genus level, the bacterial community of the untreated effluent included taxa commonly associated with environmental sources. In the SODIS-treated effluent, these genera increased in abundance, whereas in the SSF-treated effluent, they were greatly reduced or undetectable. By analyzing operational taxonomic units that were unclassified at the genus level, we observed that SSF appears to introduce new taxa into the treated effluent, likely from the biological film of microbes and small animals that constitutes the key element of SSF. These data will inform continued development of liquid waste handling strategies for the toilet system. Using the test system as an indicator of the performance of the full-scale version, we have shown the effectiveness of the microflush composting toilet system for containing and eliminating gut-associated bacteria, thereby improving sanitation and contributing to better public health in rural and peri-urban communities.
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spelling pubmed-62868012018-12-18 Bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system Williams, Laura E. Kleinschmidt, Claire E. Mecca, Stephen PeerJ Microbiology Lack of access to clean water and sanitation is a major factor impacting public health in communities worldwide. To address this, the S-Lab at Providence College and the Global Sustainable Aid Project developed a microflush composting toilet system to isolate and treat human waste. Solid waste is composted within a filter-digester bed via an aerobic process involving microbes and invertebrates. Liquid waste may be sanitized by solar disinfection (SODIS) or slow sand filtration (SSF). Here, we used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of samples from a scaled-down test version of the system to better understand the bacterial component of the toilet system. Immediately after fecal matter was deposited in the test system, the bacterial community of the filter-digester bed at the site of deposition resembled that of the human gut at both the phylum and genus level, which was expected. Genus-level analysis of filter-digester bed samples collected over the next 30 days from the site of deposition showed reduced or undetectable levels of fecal-associated taxa, with the exception of Clostridium XI, which persisted at low abundance throughout the sampling period. Starting with the sample collected on day 4, the bacterial community of the filter-digester bed at the site of deposition was dominated by bacterial taxa commonly associated with environmental sources, reflecting a major shift in bacterial community composition. These data support the toilet system’s capacity for processing solid human waste. We also analyzed how SODIS and SSF sanitization methods affected the bacterial community composition of liquid effluent collected on day 15 from the test system. Untreated and treated liquid effluent samples were dominated by Proteobacteria. At the genus level, the bacterial community of the untreated effluent included taxa commonly associated with environmental sources. In the SODIS-treated effluent, these genera increased in abundance, whereas in the SSF-treated effluent, they were greatly reduced or undetectable. By analyzing operational taxonomic units that were unclassified at the genus level, we observed that SSF appears to introduce new taxa into the treated effluent, likely from the biological film of microbes and small animals that constitutes the key element of SSF. These data will inform continued development of liquid waste handling strategies for the toilet system. Using the test system as an indicator of the performance of the full-scale version, we have shown the effectiveness of the microflush composting toilet system for containing and eliminating gut-associated bacteria, thereby improving sanitation and contributing to better public health in rural and peri-urban communities. PeerJ Inc. 2018-12-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6286801/ /pubmed/30564526 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6077 Text en © 2018 Williams et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Microbiology
Williams, Laura E.
Kleinschmidt, Claire E.
Mecca, Stephen
Bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system
title Bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system
title_full Bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system
title_fullStr Bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system
title_full_unstemmed Bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system
title_short Bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system
title_sort bacterial communities in the digester bed and liquid effluent of a microflush composting toilet system
topic Microbiology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6286801/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30564526
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6077
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