Reuse of wastewater at the San Juan de Miraflores stabilization ponds: public health, environmental, and socioeconomic implications.

The large-scale reuse of untreated domestic sewage for irrigation is commonplace in many arid and semiarid zones of Latin America, as a result of increasing population pressures, water shortages, and protein shortfalls. Twenty per cent of the land is arid or semiarid, having only 5% of the water resources of the Region; but this land supports 60% of the population (367 million people in 1983-I). Hence, rivers that adequately served the inhabitants’ water supply, waste disposal, and irrigation requirements in earlier times cannot meet these needs today. This suggests the suitability of some form of land disposal and the increased importance of reuse. However, this practice may pose some health risk for farm workers and for the general population consuming agricultural produce from sewage reuse sites. High rates of enteritis, other diarrheal diseases, typhoid, and hepatitis occur in the populations that generate the sewage, and the environmental survival of the pathogenic or-