12/12/2008
“You may hear a good deal about cholera outbreaks, like the recent one in Zimbabwe, on the nightly news, but Ms. George drives home the specifics of its awfulness: “Cholera victims who don’t have clean water or a 20-cent sachet of salts will soon have agonizing stomach and muscle cramps, they will lose up to 30 percent of their body weight in hours, then they will turn blue, their eyes will go glassy, and they will die.” The toilet, she writes, may be the “single biggest variable in increasing human life span.” A good deal of “The Big Necessity” relates Ms. George’s travels to slums in various parts of the world, from where she delivers the grim news about what she finds. She also brings us stories about brave and interesting people who are working to bring sanitation to places that do not have it. One surprise: So-called civilized societies often aren’t much better than slum areas when it comes to dealing with human waste.”
— Rose George’s ‘Big Necessity’ - Excreta, Examined - Review
