March 27, 2014: For people in the United States, an extraordinary series of lunar eclipses is about to begin.
The action starts on April 15th when the full Moon passes through the amber shadow of Earth, producing a midnight eclipse visible across North America. So begins a lunar eclipse tetrad—a series of 4 consecutive total eclipses occurring at approximately six month intervals. The total eclipse of April 15, 2014, will be followed by another on Oct. 8, 2014, and another on April 4, 2015, and another on Sept. 28 2015.
“The most unique thing about the 2014-2015 tetrad is that all of them are visible for all or parts of the USA,” says longtime NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak.
A new ScienceCast video explains the lunar eclipse tetrad of 2014-2015. Play it!
On average, lunar eclipses occur about twice a year, but not all of them are total. There are three types:
A penumbral eclipse is when the Moon passes through the pale outskirts of Earth’s shadow. It’s so subtle, sky watchers often don’t notice an eclipse is underway.
A partial eclipse is more dramatic. The Moon dips into the core of Earth’s shadow, but not all the way, so only a fraction of Moon is darkened.
A total eclipse, when the entire Moon is shadowed, is best of all. The face of the Moon turns sunset-red for up to an hour or more as the eclipse slowly unfolds.
Usually, lunar eclipses come in no particular order. A partial can be followed by a total, followed by a penumbral, and so on. Anything goes. Occasionally, though, the sequence is more orderly. When four consecutive lunar eclipses are all total, the series is called a tetrad.
Click to view a complete visibility map of the April 15th lunar eclipse.
“During the 21st century, there are 9 sets of tetrads, so I would describe tetrads as a frequent occurrence in the current pattern of lunar eclipses,” says Espenak. “But this has not always been the case. During the three hundred year interval from 1600 to 1900, for instance, there were no tetrads at all.”
The April 15th eclipse begins at 2 AM Eastern time when the edge of the Moon first enters the amber core of Earth’s shadow. Totality occurs during a 78 minute interval beginning around 3 o’clock in the morning on the east coast, midnight on the west coast. Weather permitting, the red Moon will be easy to see across the entirety of North America.
Why red?
A quick trip to the Moon provides the answer: Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway.
You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it’s not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth’s circumference, you’re seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth’s shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb.
Mark your calendar for April 15th and let the tetrad begin.
Update 11:40 UTC: We are not sure at this point whether a combination of a landslide and an earthquake occurred or just a rain induced landslide. Either way, 4 people have died and our condolences go to their families.
Update 08:48 UTC:
4 people have died in an Afghanistan earthquake from landslides. Scattered reports of 100 damaged houses in a couple of villages in the Rostaq district of Takhar province, Afghanistan has emerged.
This is likely a very low magnitude, shallow earthquake as it has not been reported on many seismometers.
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 3.0-3.9 (estimated)
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2014-04-12 2:30
GMT/UTC Time : 2014-04-11 22:00
Depth (Hypocenter) : Likely very shallow (ca. 5km)
Very strong but this time DEEP earthquake (not an aftershock) in Nicaragua
Last update: April 11, 2014 at 10:19 pm by By Armand Vervaeck
Update 22:17 UTC: The mayor of Nagarote says 6 homes collapsed due to this quake.
Update 22:05 UTC: Live TV from the area shows a lot of superficial damage done by both quakes (yesterday’s and today’s)
Update 21:57 UTC: Radio Nicaragua is reporting 2 collapsed homes.
Update 21:41 UTC : A new aftershock just happened but people felt it as weaker than the mainshock we are discussing on this page.
Update 21:24 UTC : damage is being reported in the National University of Engineering in Managua
– The Cathedral of Managua was slightly damaged
– Nicaragua seismological agency reported that the depth of the earthquake was 101 km, 1/3th less than the other reporting international agencies. Thius shallower depth can explain the additional damage, even with a deep earthquake.
Update : More broken water pipes are reported in Managua, Nicaragua
Update : a landslide is reported at the Xiloa volcanic lagoon (source RT)
This earthquake is not to be called an aftershock of the M6.1 earthquake who happened on April 10.
Compared to the 6.1 earthquake who was extremely shallow, this one is a normal subduction earthquake which should normally be called harmless. After the M6.1 however, this earthquake can also generate some additional damage
11km (7mi) ESE of Nandaime, Nicaragua
20km (12mi) SSE of Diriomo, Nicaragua
24km (15mi) S of Granada, Nicaragua
30km (19mi) ESE of Jinotepe, Nicaragua
56km (35mi) SSE of Managua, Nicaragua
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 6.6
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2014-04-11 14:29:15
Before reading the featured article take a minute to review this package insert, which can be found on the FDA’s official website, for “Diphtheria and Tetanus DTaP Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine Adsorbed” which has the brand name Tripedia®. This is a direct link to the insert and this is a video walk-through from the FDA.gov front page to find it yourself.
You will find a shocking admission on page six that looks like this:
It reads, “Tripedia vaccine has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potentials or impairment of fertility.”
Additionally, on page 11, you will find the admission of a relationship between Tripedia and autism as well as SIDS (Sudden infant death syndrome.)
“Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.“ [emphasis added]
It makes you wonder: How many doctors administering these vaccines have actually taken the time to read the insert?
Furthermore the occurrence of autism in males is much higher than females. The CDC reports, “ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder] is almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 42) than among girls (1 in 189).” Something must be causing such a dramatic difference. What could it be?
This might completely blow your mind so make sure you’re sitting down.
Boyd E. Haley, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky points out that, ”[T]he differential effects of estrogen versus testosterone on mercurytoxicity to neurons may explain the increased susceptibility of males to autism.” [emphasis added]
Now where in the world is all this toxic mercury coming from? As you may be aware, Dr. Haley states, “The mercury sources we consider are from dentistry and from drugs, mainly vaccines, that, in today’s world are not only unnecessary sources, but also sources that are being increasingly recognized as being significantly deleterious to the health of many.”
Now that you are armed with this information consider the following article which takes a look at pertussis vaccinations in relation to pertussis outbreaks. Hopefully this knowledge will help you make the decision that’s right for you and your loved ones.
Infectious diseases that the system insists have been mostly eradicated due to the advent of vaccines are starting to reemerge, with much of the blame for this being levied on the unvaccinated, who are automatically assumed to be the culprits. But a deeper look into the history of vaccines, how they work and what level of long-term protection they truly provide reveals that these golden calves of modern medicine are actually the vehicles through which infectious disease is being spread, with vaccinated individuals as the primary disease carriers.
It is the opposite of what we have all been told for decades about the nature of vaccines — that they produce immunity to diseases that might otherwise kill you, is one common claim, as is the assumption that refusing vaccines leaves one prone to both catching and spreading otherwise uncommon infectious diseases. These and other modern medical myths about vaccines pervade mainstream thinking, and yet they have absolutely no basis in sound science.
In an extensive rebuttal to a 2012 article written by Forbes‘ Steven Salzberg that blamed a whooping cough outbreak in the Northwest on unvaccinated children, Dr. Paul G. King, Ph.D., of FAME Systems deconstructs the popular misconception that infectious disease reemergence is the result of people not getting vaccinated. On the contrary, it is the vaccination schedule itself, which the federal government has been coercing people into complying with for nearly the entire last century, that is ultimately leading to and driving these outbreaks.
“Salsberg is simply using a longstanding ‘straw man’ created long ago by his fellow vaccine apologists to divert the public’s attention from the reality that… the current pertussis vaccines are neither effective in providing those inoculated with them long-term protection from contracting whooping cough nor… cost effective,” explains Dr. King in his paper.
Vaccines as destroyers of natural immunity
One thing that few people, including many health professionals, fail to understand is that vaccines override the body’s innate, or mucosal, immune system. Also known as non-specific immunity, innate immunity is our bodies’ primary line of defense against all types of bacteria, toxins and other harmful invaders — the gatekeeper, if you will, that protects the body’s adaptive immune system from having to face these intruders directly.
Under ideal conditions, the innate immune system kicks into high gear at the first sign of a threat, blocking pathogens from getting past the nose, mouth, digestive tract or other bodily entry point. If for some reason the innate immune system fails at this task, the adaptive immune system picks up where it left off, adapting, as its name implies, to tackle the specific threat.
But this natural immune response is thwarted by vaccines, which intentionally bypass the innate immune system and go straight for the adaptive immune system. The resultant immune response is both unnatural and completely out of order, generating only temporary and often incomplete immunity as opposed to the lifelong immunity garnered from natural exposure.
“Whereas natural recovery from many infectious diseases usually stimulates lifetime immunity, vaccines only provide temporary protection and most vaccines require ‘booster’ doses to extend vaccine-induced artificial immunity,” says Barbara Loe Fisher, president and co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center.
The same is true for vaccines against pertussis, or whooping cough, which Dr. King, through his extensive research, found only provide a few years of limited protection as opposed to a lifetime of full protection in unvaccinated individuals who contract the disease naturally. The former have to continually get booster shots to maintain their immunity, while the latter are essentially immune for life after contracting the disease once.
“[A]t best, the current views are that the ‘protection’ provided by ‘pertussis’ vaccination lasts no more than 3 years in some percentage of those who are ‘fully’ vaccinated and initially protected,” wrote Dr. King. “In the pre-vaccination era, having a case of whooping cough and recovering from it conservatively provided 10 to 50 years of protection from a re-infection that resulted in a clinical case of whooping cough caused by either B. pertussis or B. parapertussis.”
In other words, unvaccinated individuals who contract mild whooping cough at a young age end up developing lifelong immunity to the disease without the need for a vaccine, and they also never become carriers of the disease. Vaccinated individuals, on the other hand, will never develop lifelong immunity, and will continually have to receive “booster” shots as protection, which the data shows is not always reliable or foolproof and can even lead to vaccine-induced health problems.
“Unlike the natural disease which appears to confer lifelong immunity, present day pertussis vaccines confer only partial and relative transient protection,” wrote Drs. James W. Bass and Stephen R. Stephenson in a 1987 study entitled The return of pertussis. “A high degree of protection persists for 3 years, decreasing thereafter for 12 years after which little or no protection is evident.”
Vaccines as carriers of disease
If subpar, temporary immunity was the only downside of getting vaccinated, it would be one thing. But the fact of the matter is that vaccinated individuals often end up becoming carriers of the diseases against which they were vaccinated, which is evident from decades of scientific data showing that the current vaccination schedule is directly responsible for bringing back all of these diseases that the media insists were eradicated by vaccines.
“[T]he current DTaP/Tdap vaccination program in the USA is increasing the percentages of cases of whooping cough that are either caused by B. parapertussis or, as some are beginning to claim, caused by mutated strains of B. pertussis that evade the protective effects of multiple time-displaced inoculations with the current DTaP/Tdap vaccines,” explains Dr. King. “[V]accination with a ‘pertussis component’-containing vaccine produces some low level of ‘B. pertussis’ carriers [‘Pertussis Harrys’] who… can and do spread B. pertussis to others.”
The recent whooping cough outbreaks in California, Washington, New York and elsewhere also serve as proof of this, as the vast majority of infected individuals in each of these cases had already been “fully” vaccinated for the disease. Not surprisingly, health authorities have been quiet about this inconvenient truth, leading the public to erroneously assume that the unvaccinated are responsible.
“[T]he reality is that more than 75% of the cases of whooping cough in outbreaks in Washington State since 2002 reportedly have been occurring in ‘fully’ vaccinated individuals, and this reality continues to be true in the 2012 ‘epidemic,’” adds Dr. King. “Further, the percentage in the current outbreaks that have a confirmed case of B. pertussis has not been disclosed – nor is the percentage reported that have a confirmed case of B. parapertussis or another organism that can cause whooping cough.”
For those already infected, Dr. King suggests supplementing with high doses of vitamin C, which he says eliminates the “whoop” and reduces the duration of the disease, as well as taking high doses of natural vitamin D3, which enables the body’s immune system to produce site-specific antibiotics to target whooping cough organisms in the respiratory system while protecting gastrointestinal flora, which would otherwise be destroyed by synthetic antibiotics.
Be sure to check out Dr. King’s full study on vaccines here: http://dr-king.com.
Sylvia Burwell, replacement for resigning Kathleen Sebelius, ran Common Core, Bill Gates vaccines and GMOs in Africa
(NaturalNews) Kathleen Sebelius, HHS Secretary who oversaw the disastrously botched Obamacare website and rollout, has finally resigned. In line with the sheer delusion being invoked to try to call Obamacare a “success,” even this resignation is being called another success story. “Kathleen Sebelius Is Resigning Because Obamacare Has Won,” tweeted the White House (1) — a claim met with sheer derision by nearly anyone who can still think straight.
With Obamacare, all failures are “successes” merely because the White House says so. Even the enrollment numbers are largely faked.(2)
The replacement for Kathleen Sebelius is none other than Sylvia Burwell, “a key aide to Microsoft founder Bill Gates,” reports Breitbart News (3). “Burwell served as both chief operating officer and head of the global development program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”
Sylvia Burwell steeped in biotech industry collusion, biopiracy and western domination of developing nations
“Sylvia Mathews Burwell is president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program,” says her profile page on a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website (4). That same page goes on to describe how she is helping U.S. corporations destroy the world, using code words that sound like peace-loving efforts (translated here):
“She oversees efforts to help the world’s poorest people lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty.” Translation: She supports Monsanto, GMOs and biotech domination of third world nations.
“Burwell leads Global Development’s grantmaking and advocacy in various foundation initiatives.” Translation: She pays local groups to help U.S. corporations dominate and control their local farms (GMOs), health care (vaccines) and water supplies (hygiene).
Burwell was also a director of the industry-colluding group Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a front group for pushing GMO dominance into developing nations. As GM Watch reports (5), “On October 12, 2010, representatives from the Seattle based group ‘AGRA Watch’ joined colleagues from South Africa and Kenya to critique the actions of the Gates foundation and its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) colluding with industry to promote GMOs and pressure African countries to legalize them.”
Sylvia Burwell also worked closely with AGRA’s chief financial officer, Alexander Friedman, founder and president of Accelerated Clinical, a “biotechnology services company dedicated to accelerating the clinical trial process for biotechnology firms.” (6)
AGRA Watch is a Seattle-based group that, according to their website:
[is] challenging the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s questionable agricultural programs in Africa, including its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The Gates Foundation and AGRA claim to be “pro-poor” and “pro-environment,” but their approach is closely aligned with transnational corporations, such as Monsanto, and foreign policy actors like USAID. They take advantage of food and global climate crises to promote high-tech, market-based, industrial agriculture and generate profits for corporations even while degrading the environment and dis-empowering farmers. Their programs are a form of philanthrocapitalism based on biopiracy.
AGRA Watch goes on to explain, “The [Gates] Foundation promotes industrial farming, inappropriate technologies, and pro-corporate policies that will make things worse for the hungry, for small farmers, consumer health, and the environment in Africa.”
Sylvia Burwell also has strong ties to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin. (7)
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Stealth vaccines, sterilization programs and Common Core
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, of course, has also been aggressively pursuing global vaccination programs linked to spreading polio-like symptoms among children in third-world nations.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also been a key funding partner for the Common Core effort to hijack the education system and replace education with confusion and disinfo. As Natural News has publicized, Common Core mathematics problems are intentionally written to make children mentally ill by making them doubt they can think clearly. Many of the Common Core lessons and word problems for students are written in the same kind of bizarre, nonsensical word riddles that White House operatives use to claim Obamacare is a success.
That a person with longstanding ties to these destructive campaigns that destroy the bodies and minds of human beings should be selected to run HHS is no coincidence. HHS oversees the FDA, and the FDA is tasked with making sure no natural cures or nutritional supplements can ever tell the truth about their ability to prevent disease and support healing. The FDA also runs the Big Pharma monopoly racket that bans affordable drugs from licensed Canadian pharmacies from entering the United States or being purchased by U.S. cities, companies and individuals. The FDA even fined Google $500 million for merely running ads from Canadian pharmacies.
With the help of incoming HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell, there’s little doubt that the full force of the U.S. government will now be directed to attacking both Americans and children of third-world nations with mandatory enforcement of toxic vaccine injections and mandatory deployment of Common Core anti-education efforts to ensure that children don’t acquire real mathematics or problem-solving skills. You are witnessing the official roll-out of the “world dumbing-down initiative” to reduce the population and keep people as stupid as possible so they can’t rise up against corruption and evil.
Strong, very shallow earthquake in Nicaragua – 1 death, 266 injured, 1500 houses damaged
Last update: April 11, 2014 at 4:06 pm by By Armand Vervaeck
11.04.2014 15:07 UTC: More than 1500 houses were damaged. The most affected towns are Nagarote (~ 700 houses) and Managua (~ 550 houses). Many dozend people in Managua were displaced.
11.04.2014 08:10 UTC: 266 injured was stated by SINAPRED, the disaster management agency of the Nicaraguan government. A red alert has been called.
11.04.2014 08:06 UTC: Scattered reports of 266 injured people are coming through, however we are checking the original source before stating this as an actual number.
11.04.2014 07:51 UTC: 1 death has been reported in addition to 33 injuries (3 serious).
822 houses are damaged or destroyed according to latest reports meaning around 1500 people are likely homeless.
This quake was located approx. 50 km north of Managua. More than 100 houses were damaged, some of them collapsed. The most affected areas are the town Naragore (Leon Region) and surrounding villages. Damage (mainly minor) was also caused in Managua, where a landslide buried two roads. 3 people were injured by falling debris there, and many more altogether in Nicaragua, many more had to be evacuated, fearing additional earthquakes. Affected by evacuations is a hospital in Leon, where the quake caused cracks in plaster.
Power and water supply is interrupted in some areas.
Six aftershocks larger than M 5 occurred so far.
10km (6mi) W of Valle San Francisco, Nicaragua
34km (21mi) NE of Nagarote, Nicaragua
36km (22mi) SW of Ciudad Dario, Nicaragua
37km (23mi) ENE of La Paz Centro, Nicaragua
44km (27mi) NNW of Managua, Nicaragua
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 6.1
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2014-04-10 17:27:46
Today is a day for knowing what is to be done and what is not. Are you doing things for others, because you feel it is the right thing to do, because you are fearful that if you do not you might get into some kind of trouble? Well, there can be some reality behind all of this, however it is time to see what is part of the illusion and what is true for you. There is no judgment and the comfort zone is always important. Take the day as it comes and do not anticipate. There are lessons out there for you, and there are signs to show you the way.
The theme this week is What A Surprise — No, Wait, I knew it all the time, so this will be a week for ah-ha’s on all levels, and the bottom line is to trust yourself in everything. Yes, things are changing, and you can go with the flow if you will only GO with the flow.
Overall Color for the Week:
You have been wanting to lay a lot of things to rest, and the current energies are giving you not only the opportunity to do so but also the push you need to get them done. The rest is up to you. Because of this, you can find yourself feeling frustrated at times, getting in your own way a lot, and running off after all those shiny objects. Well, the choice is yours. To make the most of the energy of the week, it is well to ground and center each day. Set aside some time for breathing. Those Breathing Moments can do much to get you back to your center and bring your focus in line with what it is that most n=benefits WHO you are. It would be helpful to setup a kind of breath point every three or four hours in the day. It will not take a lot of time, just a minute to get back to what is really important. There is so much now that is pushing and pulling at you right now, people, jobs, “important” stuff, appointments, others’ agendas, etc. It is time to know your real opportunities. It is time to be yourself. It is time ot be WHO you are. This should be your focus this week. To work from the true knowing of your heart, to stand in your power, and to be within your core self. It sounds like a lot, but it is just saying to be WHO you are. There is a lto coming at you this week, and you can do it!
On the larger scale, as you feel and psychically react to the shifts and changes taking place on so many levels and within so many dimensions this week, you can find yourself questioning the essential truth of the world as it has been presented to you for so long. Things are shifting on all levels. There will be more shifting within the crust of the Earth. Some will come to the surface this week, but much is setting up for a major event sometime within the months of the summer. There winds are packing more and more strength and there will be many wind events this week. It is well, if you wish to see the force of all of this, to keep your eyes on alternate media sources. You are being fed what is acceptable or thought to be acceptable, just enough, but there is so much more. Even so the skies will bring forth some visitors from other systems and dimensions. They will wink an and out. So be aware of what is going on in the heavens. At the same time, the spring gridding of the skies will become more prevalent, and with this will come the hint of a spreading disease, one that appears over night and lays waste to many. The markets are in a kind of whiling dance with movements seeming so promising while at the same time there is much worry because it all seems to be out of control. And those who feel they are pulling the strings are finding themselves more and more out of the loop, as though some other power has taken over. Look for odd events and announcements from individuals in the tabloids. There can be a new charismatic type coming to the surface with hints of end times. Many will fall prey. All in all an interesting week as the energies twist and turn and realign old alliances. Things can become turbulent, but it is well to stay grounded and refer everything to the deep inner knowing of the heart. There is a pattern in all of this. You have watched it coming together, and now it is morphing into a more conspicuous formation.
Wish You Could Fertilize Crops with Pee? Urine Luck
By Dr. Mercola
Story at-a-glance
Human urine is naturally rich in nitrogen (N), potassium (K), and phosphorus (P), the three components of most synthetic fertilizers (NPK)
In the first US trial using human urine as fertilizer, hay grew greener, more lush, and with significantly increased yields
For the average person, a year’s worth of urine contains about eight pounds of nitrogen and nearly one pound of phosphorus – enough to grow about one year’s worth of food, naturally
For the use of urine fertilizer to become widespread, sewage systems would have to be radically redesigned to separate liquid waste from solid, a practice that requires the use of separating toilets
Industrial agriculture has veered far from the basic sciences of soil cultivation and plant nutrition; advancements like urine fertilizer and other natural methods that nourish soil health naturally are an important step in the right direction
Modern synthetic fertilizer consists of varying amounts of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), which are added to croplands to replace these depleted nutrients in the soil. There are several problems with this method, one of the primary ones being that these are finite resources.
Nitrogen, for instance, must be captured through a process that requires natural gas. And, unlike nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium cannot be synthesized, and our aggressive large-scale farming methods, which deplete soils of nutrients that then must be replaced, are quickly burning through available phosphorus and potassium stores.
We’re now hearing discussions of “peak phosphorus and potassium” in the way we discuss “peak oil,” and, according to some, we may soon be facing looming shortages of these two critical fertilizer ingredients. According to well-known investor Jeremy Grantham, writing for Nature:1
“These two elements cannot be made, cannot be substituted, are necessary to grow all life forms, and are mined and depleted. It’s a scary set of statements. Former Soviet states and Canada have more than 70 percent of the potash [potassium]. Morocco has 85 percent of all high-grade phosphates [phosphorous]. It is the most important quasi-monopoly in economic history.
What happens when these fertilizers run out is a question I can’t get satisfactorily answered and, believe me, I have tried. There seems to be only one conclusion: their use must be drastically reduced in the next 20-40 years or we will begin to starve.”
Urine May Represent the Future of Fertilizer
Human urine is naturally rich in nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, and with about 30 billion gallons produced every year in the US alone,2 it’s certainly in abundant supply. For the average person, a year’s worth of urine contains about eight pounds of nitrogen and nearly one pound of phosphorus – that’s enough to grow about one year’s worth of food!3
I am in complete agreement with this concept and for the last year have been collecting all my urine and putting it in the compost tea that I feed my fruit trees, vegetables, herbs, and aloe. It works wonderfully with biochar, as the nitrogen in the urine helps balance the carbon in the biochar.
According to the Rich Earth Institute, which is running an experiment in nutrient reclamation, using source-separated urine as a fertilizer, getting urine out of wastewater and into agriculture will not only help reduce pollution but also represents a viable natural fertilizer for the future. They state:4
“The average person flushes the toilet five times a day, and four of those times are just for urine. This means that 80% of our flushwater—or over 4,000 gallons of clean water each year per person—is used just to get rid of urine! That is a lot of clean water used to transport ‘liquid gold’ into the sewer, where it becomes pollution. If we save it instead of flushing it, we can harvest a valuable resource that we can use in agriculture.”
The Rich Earth Institute experiment is the first legally authorized community-scale “urine reuse” project in the US, but field trials involving urine fertilizer are already underway in many other countries, including Europe, Africa, and Asia.
As for the “yuck factor,” human urine isn’t nearly as “gross” as it seems, since it’s virtually sterile when it leaves your body. Just to be sure (since urine can become contaminated by fecal particles), the Rich Earth Institute “pasteurizes” collected urine in solar heaters prior to sprinkling it on crops. The first experiment, conducted in 2012 on a hayfield, yielded impressive results…
Urine-treated hay was darker green in color and more lush than control plots
Hay treated with the most urine (100 pounds of nitrogen/acre) yielded 5.8 times as much hay as the control plot
Hay treated with the mid-level amount of urine (50 pounds of nitrogen/acre) yielded 3.8 times as much hay as the control plot
In 2013, the field trial was expanded, both in the number of volunteers donating urine and the scope of the field trials. The group began testing for optimal dilution rates of urine when applied to hay and they’re now working with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) testing the use of urine fertilizer on vegetables.
The idea seems to be catching on quickly, as they now have three additional farms using urine fertilizer, along with a waiting list that’s only hindered by how much urine they can collect. Ultimately, they’re hoping to create “peecycling” programs that other cities and states can copy, but this will require some major changes to regional and national policy and wastewater treatment facilities.
Urine Plus Ash Makes Beets Grow Nearly 30 Percent Larger Than Conventional Fertilizer
Separate studies have also shown promise in using urine as fertilizer. In one experiment, researchers compared beets grown in four different ways: one with conventional mineral fertilizer, another with urine, a third with urine and wood ash, and a final control group grown with no fertilizer.5
The beets fertilized with urine were 10 percent larger, and those fertilized with urine/ash were 27 percent larger than those grown in mineral fertilizer. As for nutrient content, all the beets were similar, and in a blind taste test the beets were rated as equally flavorful.
The researchers concluded that urine is a perfectly viable source of fertilizer, and one that is readily available and sustainable (the average American urinates 500 liters a year). Urine has also been used to fertilize cabbage, tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers, with similar favorable results, and it’s free – unlike synthetic fertilizers that some farmers around the world can scarcely afford.
Setbacks to Widespread Use of Urine Fertilizer
There are some issues that must be overcome before urine fertilizer can become “mainstream.” Although urine is technically sterile, it does contain traces of pharmaceuticals, which are not removed at wastewater treatment plants. The Rich Earth Institute is currently working with the EPA to track how the soil is absorbing these types of contaminants from urine fertilizer.
So far, research suggests that any residual hormones or pharmaceuticals are likely to be negligible and basically non-existent in urine-fertilized crops.6 In fact, there may be benefits to spreading such urine contaminants on land, as opposed to depositing them in waterways, as is currently done. The Rich Earth Institute explained:7
“When we use flush toilets that are connected to sewers, these residual drugs pass largely unchanged through the treatment plant in about twenty-four hours and then go directly into rivers, lakes, or the ocean, where they can harm sensitive aquatic life and end up in our drinking water. If we spread the urine on agricultural land instead, the robust soil ecosystem has a chance to break down the drugs and biodegrade them over a much longer period of time, greatly reducing or eliminating their levels before they ever reach a body of water. In this way, soil application is a great improvement over current practice.”
Another issue is the fact that sewage systems would have to be radically redesigned to separate liquid waste from solid, a practice that requires the use of separating toilets that have a divided bowl and independent pipes to keep the urine separate. There are other benefits to using separating toilets as well, such as less water usage and less energy requirements in sewage treatment. However, neither the toilets, nor the sewage systems, are in widespread use in the US. As reported by the Rich Earth Institute:8
“Using specially designed toilets that collect urine separately from feces, urine can be collected in a storage tank instead of being flushed down the drain. After being sanitized, it can be used as a high-nitrogen liquid fertilizer, taking the place of chemical fertilizers.
This system is more efficient than sewer-based sanitation at getting all the nutrients from the urine to the farm, because the source-separated urine is directly collected and transported. In municipal wastewater, the nutrients in the urine are incredibly dilute, and so it is very challenging to extract them again. In fact, many treatment plants let most of the nitrogen and phosphorus pass through untreated. Some do capture the phosphorus, but most which treat for nitrogen drive it off as a gas, rather than capturing it as fertilizer.”
However there is nothing that is preventing you and your family from implementing this system now. If you have a garden, it is relatively easy to collect your urine and apply it to the garden. This will present less of a burden on your water filtration facility, but, more importantly, it puts the nutrients where they belong, back in the soil, not in the water system. It is easy to collect the urine in one-quart wide mouth Ball jars and then transfer them to larger 2.5-gallon containers if you need to. Just be careful to dilute it about 5:1 before you apply it to the soil that surrounds the plants you want to nourish.
Biological Agriculture Is the Future of Food
The use of urine as fertilizer is a major improvement over chemical fertilizers. However, according to Dr. Elaine Ingham, an internationally recognized expert on the benefits of sustainable soil science, the real nutrition your plants require is actually derived from microorganisms in the soil. These organisms take the mineral material that’s in your soil and convert it into a plant-available form. Without these bioorganisms, your plants cannot get the nutrients they need. So what you need is not more soil additives; what you need is the proper balance of beneficial soil organisms.
According to Dr. Ingham, there’s no soil on Earth that lacks the nutrients to grow a plant. She believes the concept that your soil is deficient and needs added phosphorus or nitrogen in order to grow plants is seriously flawed, and largely orchestrated by the chemical companies, because it’s based on looking at the soluble, inorganic nutrients that are partly present in your soil.
Interestingly enough, you can use a starter culture to boost the fermentation and generation of beneficial bacteria much in the same way you can boost the probiotics in your fermented vegetables. For compost, this strategy is used if you want to compost very rapidly. In that case, you can use a starter to inoculate the specific sets of organisms that you need to encourage in that compost. This is but one example of high-performance agriculture methods, which are a FAR superior alternative to attempts at “improving” agriculture through the use of genetic engineering and chemical fertilizers. In order for plants to flourish, the soil must first be made hospitable for beneficial microorganisms. To accomplish this, you need to:
Have the right nutrient balance in the soil
Inoculate the soil. This can be done by adding soil probiotics or basic fermentation products such as compost tea
Apply proper food (fertilizer) for the microorganisms to consume and thrive. The microbes in turn will then feed the proper nutrients to the plants grown in that soil. The better you’re able to fertilize the microbes, the healthier your plants will be, and the fewer plant diseases, pest infestations and weed problems you’ll have
Biological Gardening/Farming Aims to Bring Health Back to Soil
Urine fertilizer may have an important place in high-performance agriculture, but there are other exciting advancements as well, including things like humic acid or humates, which promote the proliferation of beneficial microorganisms in the soil, as well as sequester carbon in the soil.
The application of biochar (charcoal created by slowly heating biomass such as wood and plant materials in a low-oxygen environment) to soil may also help sequester carbon for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, and radically improve soil fertility by serving as a substrate for beneficial soil microbes. Biochar works particularly well with urine as it captures the nitrogen like a magnet and releases it slowly to the microbial community that will feed the plants. Otherwise, the nitrogen can easily leach away.
Worm farmers are also creating a natural product known as “vermicompost,” which greatly improves plant growth and make plants more resistant to disease and insects than plants grown with other composts and fertilizers. Personally, one of my new passions is sustainable, biological farming, and Dr. Arden Andersen is a world leader in this field
It’s important to realize that modern industrial agriculture has veered quite far from the basic sciences of soil cultivation and plant nutrition. According to Dr. Andersen, the reason they’ve been able to make such great strides in increasing the nutritional density and yield of their crops is by returning to those basic sciences using synthetic fertilizers, etc. But this is better done naturally. For more information, including how to try biological agriculture in your own backyard, watch my interview with Dr. Andersen below.
If you want to use urine to fertilize your backyard garden, feel free. But keep in mind that urine should be diluted with water for most plants and should be separated from solid waste to avoid contamination (so collect your urine in a bottle or bucket, or invest in a urine-separating toilet). You can also add urine to your compost heap to enhance its nutritional content, or like I do, add it to your compost tea that you add to nourish your plants.
We often say that we understand the nature of someone as soon as we hear him speak. Indeed, according to a new study published in the online resource «PLoS One», something like that can happen since it takes less than a second to figure out the personality of a person based only on his voice.
It is known that the voice transmits sensitive signals that betray gender, age, and even the physical condition or certain personality traits. However Dr Phil McAleer and his colleagues from the University of Glasgow decided to find out if we can get an immediate impression by a person’s voice.
The voice experiment
In order to give an answer to their question, the researchers recorded 64 people reading a text. Then they isolated the word ‘hello‘, which was used during the next phase of the experiment when 320 people were asked to listen to this recording and rate the voices they heard on a scale from 1 to 9 concerning 10 different personality traits including reliability, dominance and attractiveness. “We were surprised by how similar the answers of the 320 volunteers were,” noted Dr. McAleer. “On a scale in which 0 corresponded to the lack of a personality trait and 1 – to the full association with this trait, the final score for all the 10 traits reached 0.92, which means that most volunteers agreed to a large extent on how each voice represented each personality trait.”
Evolutionary explanation
It makes sense that decisions about one’s personality are taken so quickly, notes Dr. McAleer. “There’s an evolutionary explanation for this: we all want to know quickly whether we can trust someone in order to know if we should approach him, or rather run away. It would be a big waste of time if we were taking too long to come to this conclusion.” The impression we make on others through our voice – even through a voice recording lasting just 390 mm of a second – seems to be defined by different factors: for example, the tone of voice of a person affects how reliable he shows. “A person who raises his voice seems more reliable,” says Dr. McAleer.
‘Manageable’ aspects of voice
In accordance with the researcher, it is possible to change some aspects of our voice. “There is, for example, a rumor that Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth were trained to make their voices sound more dominant.” However, some other aspects of one’s voice are less “manageable”. For example, the shape of the vocal tract significantly affects how dominant the voice sounds.
The research team hopes that the results of the study can be used to create an artificial voice that could help persons who lost their own due to a medical problem and make the voices of navigation systems and robots more attractive. “It may also be used by companies in choosing the best candidate for certain job positions. For example, no one would want a call center employee with a voice that shows unreliability,” concludes Dr. McAleer.
