Health/Sanitation/Environmental

Natural disasters, including floods, storms and earthquakes, force citizens from their homes. The burden for the health and safety of these displaced persons is set squarely on the shoulders of local emergency management personnel who are responsible not only for providing food and shelter but also for meeting the necessities of basic human sanitation.

Generally, this responsibility is adequately met with the facilities available at emergency shelters, supplemented, if necessary, with traditional porta-john systems for public use. In some situations, however, the emergency shelter cannot accommodate the numbers of people needing toilet facilities, and traditional porta-johns cannot be brought in or properly maintained.

Under these conditions people have no choice but to relieve themselves wherever they can, exposing everyone to direct contact with human waste which in turn transmits disease—a serious threat to public health and safety. Families displaced by natural disasters need to return to their homes and businesses at the very first opportunity. They want to rebuild their lives and their assets and to protect what possessions may remain. To ensure families’ quick and safe return to their homes and businesses the Disaster Recovery community takes charge. It evaluates the structural safety of buildings, roads, and utilities. It may supplement available food and water supplies. It may even provide temporary lavatory systems.

Without all of the elements for health and safety in place, the public remains at risk.

What are the health risks of contact with human waste?

Because they may contain disease-bearing bacteria such as E. coli, Salmonella, and Shigella and such viruses as Hepatitis A, B and F, urine and feces are potentially infectious and contact with them, directly or through airborne transmission, provides exposure to a variety of diseases. In addition, open and untreated urine and feces create a fertile environment for the further growth of infectious bacterial and viral agents, some of which can produce life-threatening disease and contagion, even resulting in wide-scale public health risk. Among the more serious diseases transmitted through the bacteria and viruses in human waste:

• pneumonia
• gonorrhea
• septicemia
• meningitis
• stomach cancers
• gastroenteritis
• dysentery
• hepatitis
• typhoid & related fevers

Restop waste containment system meets EPA requirements and is the only national landfill approved system that is documented.

Leave No Trace

Restop proudly supports the Leave No Trace program. LNT promotes and inspires responsible outdoor recreation through education, research and partnerships. A non profit organization, unites four federal land agencies—the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Leave No Trace message is more than a campaign for clean campsites. It’s a program dedicated to building awareness, appreciation, and most of all, respect for our public recreation places.