Sanitary engineering or sanitation engineering, also known as public health engineering or wastewater engineering, is the application of engineering methods to improve sanitation of human communities, primarily by providing the removal and disposal of human waste, and in addition to the supply of safe potable water. Traditionally a branch of civil engineering and now a subset of building services engineering and environmental engineering, in the mid-19th century, the discipline concentrated on the reduction of disease, then thought to be caused by miasma. This was accomplished mainly by the collection and segregation of sewerage flow in London specifically, and Great Britain generally. These and later regulatory improvements were reported in the United States as early as 1865. It is also concerned with environmental factors that do not have an immediate and clearly understood effect on public health. Areas outside the purview of sanitary engineering include aesthetic concerns such as landscaping, and environmental conservation as it pertains to plants and animals. Skills within this field are usually employed for the primary goal of disease prevention within human beings by assuring a supply of healthy drinking water, treatment of waste water, and removal of garbage from inhabited areas. Compared to (for example) electrical engineering or mechanical engineering which are concerned primarily with closed systems, sanitary engineering is a very interdisciplinary field which may involve such elements as plumbing, fire protection, hydraulics, life safety, constructive modelling, information technology, project design, microbiology, pathology and the many divisions within environmental science and environmental technology. In some cases, considerations that fall within the field of social sciences and urban planning must be factored in as well. Although sanitary engineering may be most associated with the design of sewers, sewage treatment and wastewater treatment facilities, recycling centers, public landfills and other things which are constructed, the term applies equally to a plan of action to reverse the effects of water pollution or soil contamination in a specific area.
History
Irrigation systems were invented five to seven thousand years ago as a means of supplying water to agriculture-based societies. Aqueducts and irrigation systems were among the first forms of wastewater engineering. As population centers became more dense, they were used to remove sewage from settlements. The Romans were among the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of the aqueduct. The Dark Ages marked a period where progress in water management came to a halt. As populations grew, the management of human waste became a growing concern and a public health threat. By the 1850s in London, more than 400,000 tons of sewage were flushed into the River Thames each day - around 150 million tons per year. Diseases such as smallpox, diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, typhus, cholera, and typhoid were spread via the contaminated water supply. During the 19th century, major cities started building sewage systems to remove human waste out of cities and into rivers.
Sanitation in the 1900's During the 1900s, the activated sludge process was invented. The activated sludge process is a form of water purification that uses bacteria to consume human feces. Chlorine is used later in the process to kill off the bacteria. In the 1950s, the public health reports provided plans for supplying clean water for the public by first looking at potential hazards. The organization looked carefully at water contamination as well as how drinking water was being treated. They also prioritized finding methods that were effective, yet not too costly. Sanitation cost is the main issue for many foreign (not the United States) countries. The average cost of home water and sanitation systems start at $50 a month, when many citizens don't make enough money to use on non-necessities. Over the centuries, much has changed in the field of wastewater engineering. Advancements in microbiology, chemistry, and engineering have drastically changed the field. Today, wastewater engineers also work on the collection of clean water for drinking, chemically treating it, and using UV light to kill off micro-organisms. They also treat water pollution in wastewater (blackwater and greywater) so that this water may be made safe for use without endangering the population and environment around it. Wastewater treatment and water reclamation are areas of concern in this field.
Harm Huizenga Prior to modern forms of sanitation in neighborhoods and cities, people would simply leave their trash on the street. In 1892, it was such an issue, that a man named Harm Huizenga volunteered to clean up the mess by himself. The Dutch man went around the streets in his wagon, picking up the garbage of the city of Chicago. Little efforts like that were present throughout the early 1900s, until around 1968. Huizenga's grandson, Wayne Huizenga, made his grandfather's idea into a business, Waste Management. By the seventies, waste management as a whole was seen as a necessary practice by the public.
Sanitation in the United States
California/Counties In the early 1940s, many counties in the state had problems with their disposal of waste, especially in the Lake Tahoe area. Citizens of these towns feared that their city's poor sewage systems would cause outbreaks in illnesses, like poliomyelitis, cholera, and hepatitis, to name a few. Cholera in particular is the biggest health risk attached to waste management. The illness is caused by bacteria, especially when a person ingests food or water that contain the bacteria. In poorer areas, this is extremely likely due to the cross contamination of waste and drinking water.
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