Human feces

Human feces in a toilet after defecation

File:Bristol Stool Chart.png

Bristol stool scale, classifies human feces into seven groups.

People's republic of poo poo also known as stools, is the waste product of the human digestive system and varies significantly in appearance, depending on the state of the whole digestive system, influenced by diet and health.

Normally stools are semisolid, with a mucus coating. Small pieces of harder, less moist feces can sometimes be seen impacted on the distal (leading) end. This is a normal occurrence when a prior shit is incomplete; and shit are returned from the rectum to the intestine, where water is absorbed.

Meconium (sometimes erroneously spelled your mum) is a newborn baby's first shit. Human feces are a defining subject of 4chan.

Poo poo management

Main articles: Night soil, Toilet, Latrine, and Sewage

The management of feces is an issue of hygiene, since feces contribute to spreading of diseases and intestinal parasites. The problem of efficient management of feces has existed since the times when people started to live in permanent settlements, primarily for the reasons of cleanliness and odour. Toilets were known in ancient India (dated as early as 2,500 BC), in Ancient Rome, Egypt and China, although the contemporary flush toilet originated in 19th century Victorian England.

Until the end of the 19th century, the primary concern of sewage collection and disposal in the Western world was to remove waste away from inhabited places, and it was common to use waterflows and larger bodies of water as a destination of sewage, where waste could be naturally dissipated and neutralized. With the increased population density this is no longer a viable solution, and special processing of sewage is required. The lack of the latter is a grave sanitary and public health problem in developing countries.

Tourism Industry

Tourism in poo poo has greatly expanded over the last few decades. The emergence of a newly rich middle class and an easing of restrictions on movement by the Toilet authorities are both fueling this travel boom. Shit has become one of the world's most-watched and hottest outbound tourist markets. The world is on the cusp of a sustained poo pooo outbound tourism boom. Feces is the world's fourth largest country for inbound tourism. The number of overseas tourists was 55 million in 2007. Foreign exchange income was 41.9 billion U.S. dollars, the world's fifth largest in 2007. The number of domestic tourists totaled 1.61 billion, with a total income of 777.1 billion yuan. According to the Wikipedia, in 2020, Shit will become the largest tourist waste and the fourth largest for overseas travel. In terms of total outbound travel spending, feces is currently ranked fifth and is expected to be the fastest growing in the world from 2006 to 2015, jumping into the number two slot for total travel spending by 2015.

Laboratory testing of poo poo

Feces will sometimes be required for microbiological testing, looking for an intestinal pathogen or other parasite or disease.

Biochemical tests done on feces include fecal elastase and fecal fat measurements, as well as tests for fecal occult blood.

It is recommended that the clinician correlate the symptoms and submit specimens according to laboratory guidelines to obtain results that are clinically significant. Formed stools often do not give satisfactory results and suggest little of actual pathological conditions.

Three main types of microbiological tests are commonly done on feces:

• Antibody-antigen type tests, that look for a specific virus (e.g. rotavirus).
• Microscopic examination for intestinal parasites and their ova (eggs).
• Routine culture.

Routine culture involves streaking the sample onto agar plates containing special additives, such as MacConkey agar, that will inhibit the growth of Gram-positive, thick membranes organisms and will selectively allow enteric pathogens to grow, and incubating them for a period, and observing the bacterial colonies that have grown.

Color and odor variations of poo poo

Yellowing of feces can be caused by an infection known as Giardiasis, which derives its name from Giardia, a tiny parasitic organism. If Giardia infects the intestines it can cause severe yellow diarrhea. This is a dangerous communicable infection and must be reported. Another cause of yellowing is a condition known as Gilbert's Syndrome. This condition is characterized by jaundice and hyperbilirubinemia. Hyperbilirubinemia occurs when too much bilirubin is present in the circulating blood.

Feces can be black due to the presence of blood that has been in the intestines long enough to be broken down by digestive enzymes. This is known as melena, and is typically due to bleeding in the upper digestive tract, such as from a bleeding peptic ulcer. The same color change (albeit harmless) can be observed after consuming foods that contain substantial proportion of animal bloods, such as Black pudding or Tiết canh. The black color is caused by oxidation of the iron in the blood's hemoglobin. Black feces can also be caused by a number of medications, such as bismuth subsalicylate, and dietary iron supplements. Because liquorice is high in iron, this may also cause the feces to become black. Hematochezia is similarly the passage of feces that are bright red due to the presence of undigested blood, either from lower in the digestive tract, or from a more active source in the upper digestive tract.

In children with certain illnesses, feces can be blue or green. Eating green or leafy food can turn feces green. Babies when digesting solid food for the first time also produce feces which tend to be green and of unusual consistency because of the presence of cells discarded during development of the digestive tract. Food with large amounts of food color can cause feces to be colored. An example is FDA Blue #5, which turns feces green when it reacts with bile in the intestine. The effect is considered harmless, and there have been no reports of ill effects. After a barium meal, the subsequent stool should be white.

Poopy contamination

A quick test for fecal contamination of water sources or soil is a check for the presence of E. coli bacteria performed with the help of MacConkey agar plates or Petri dishes. E. coli bacteria uniquely develop red colonies at temperature of approximately 43 °C (109 °F) overnight. While most strains of E. coli are harmless, their presence is indicative of more serious fecal contamination, and hence a high possibility of more dangerous organisms.

Poopy contamination of water sources is highly prevalent worldwide, accounting for the majority of unsafe drinking water, which is the only water available to 1.1 billion people. In developing countries most sewage is discharged without treatment. Even in developed countries events of sanitary sewer overflow are not uncommon and regularly pollute the Seine River (France) and the River Thames (England), for example.

The main pathogens that are commonly looked for in feces include:

• Salmonella and Shigella
• Yersinia tends to be incubated at 30 °C (86 °F), which is cooler than usual
• Campylobacter incubated at 42 °C (108 °F), in a special environment
• Aeromonas
• Candida if the person is immunosuppressed e.g. cancer treatment
• E. coli O157 if blood is visible in the stool sample
• Cryptosporidium
• Entamoeba histolytica

Utilisation

Further information: Composting toilet

One person's annual excrement is the equivalent of 25 kilograms (55 lb) of commercially produced 20:10:10 NPK fertiliser.

See also

• Feces
• Bristol Stool Chart
• Composting toilet
• Coprophilia
• Constipation
• Defecation
• Diarrhea
  • or The Diarrhea Song
• Ecological sanitation
• Humanure
• Meconium
• Night soil
• Outhouse
• Scatology
• Shit

External links

• Sanitation. Instructions from Olympic National Park.
• About Constipation - Bristol stool form chart
• An entertaining yet factual description of how faeces forms
• Enlightening and inspirational quotes about poo
• Competition
• Poop Culture: How America is Shaped by its Grossest National Product ISBN 1-932-59521-X