The essential sanitation of tropical mountain villages

Tropical mountain villages without sanitation pollute the hydrosystems very heavily. The work of scientists from the Géosciences Environnement Toulouse (GET/OMP) laboratory and their partners in France and Laos, carried out in South-East Asia, highlights the significant fecal contamination coming from these small rural towns at the time of floods or rains: there are then 1,000 times more pathogenic germs drained towards the hydrosystems located downstream from the villages, than in the others.

Read more in IRD le Mag’ (in French)

Contacts GET: Laurie Boithias and Inpeng Saveng

Olivier Blot, journalist IRD-DCPI

Sources :

Village Settlements in Mountainous Tropical Areas, Hotspots of Fecal Contamination as Evidenced by Escherichia coli and Stanol Concentrations in Stormwater Pulses, Laurie Boithias, Emilie Jardé, Keooudone Latsachack, Chanthanousone Thammahacksa, Norbert Silvera, Bounsamay Soulileuth, Mose Xayyalart, Marion Viguier, Alain Pierret, Emma Rochelle-Newall & Olivier Ribolzi., Environnemental Science & Technology, 2024. DOI : 10.1021/acs.est.3c09090

More news

10,000 Years of Food Inequality

An international team of researchers (Inrap, CNRS, Simon Fraser University) has published an article in the journal PNAS titled “Dietary Inequality Marker Reveals 10,000 Years of Gender and Cultural Disparity […]

Deciphering ancient oceans using pyrite and iron isotopes

Iron isotopes in pyrite are frequently used to better understand environmental conditions throughout our planet’s history, going back to sedimentary archives dating back billions of years. A team of researchers […]

A temperature jump of 400°C at a depth of 2 km—it’s possible in Krafla to cook a steak!

This study explains the heat transfer between a magma reservoir and the surrounding rock in the high-enthalpy geothermal exploration area of Krafla, Iceland. Thermomechanical numerical models explain the sudden jump […]

Search