Fred Pearce describes the role of "honey-suckers" in recycling human waste as fertiliser in contemporary India (16 February, p 48). Less than a hundred years ago, this was a not-uncommon practice in the urban UK. Houses built in central Gateshead in the 1890s, and still standing, typically have two hatches in the wall separating them from the back lane. The upper was for deliveries of coal, the lower for taking out human faeces, to which ash from the coal fire had been added.
Those doing the removal were called "honey-pot men"; the euphemism has clearly travelled and lasted. In the mining town of Ashington, Northumberland, a narrow-gauge railway ran down the back lanes between rows of houses, to take the closet contents for use as fertiliser on the mine company's farm.
Pearce does not mention pharmaceuticals and the risks they pose when using human effluent as fertiliser. There are, ...
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