Another Reason Not to Play in Sewage

Scientists from University of Pittsburgh, Washington University and University of Barcelona have published a paper titled “Raw Sewage Harbors Diverse Viral Populations,” in the online journal mBio and found a surprisingly large amount of viruses residing in raw sewage that had not been previously described.

This just shows that raw sewage just might not be the best play area for growing children or adults for that matter.

While some of these viruses are relevant to human health, a large amount of the known and unknown viruses also infect bacteria and plants.  This research isn’t a scare tactic, but rather it is an approach to understand how new viruses may emerge and/or evolve, which according to the researchers is due to gene exchange.

Pitt biologists find ‘surprising’ number of unknown viruses in sewage