When we think of hygiene, we think of getting rid of microbes. Hygiene equals absence of microbes or ‘germs.’

This is reinforced by advertisements for cleaning agents and pest control inputs in journals and cinema, on hoardings and on TV. However, their application is limited, and cleaning and pest-control agents often add to environmental pollution.

There is a historical background and logic to this prevailing attitude. And there is a way out of the conventional approach.

As recently as the mid-nineteenth century, conscientious physicians in Europe were obliged to warn their patients against all forms of surgery. More patients died from surgery, due to infections caused by the doctor, than from the disease for which they underwent it.

Modern surgery could only take off when disinfectants were discovered, by Semmelweis and by Lister, and when Lister introduced phenol (carbolic acid) into mainstream medicine. The discovery of microbe-killing substances, or biocides, was a breakthrough for surgery and medicine.

When a surgeon could kill all micro-organisms on the patch of skin through which his knife was to enter the patient’s body, surgery was rendered hygienically safe. Only then, in the late 1870’s, could modern surgery start its rapid and glorious course from operations on appendix, hernia, gall-bladder and stomach, to open heart surgery, organ transplants, limb replacements and endoscopic, minimally invasive surgery.

However, it is unwise and unhealthy to regard annihilation of all microbes on the body surface as a step towards physical health and hygiene. It is harmful to make this the basis for household hygiene, and it is ecologically disastrous to pursue it in the environment.

In 2006/07 Ekoventure, a Puducherry-based NGO, organised farmers to grow marigolds for use in eye medicine, a high-value crop where each petal counts. After using EM on soil and foliage, farmer Ezhumalai harvested over double his expected yield from his fields in Anumandai, Tamil Nadu.

In the same way agriculture has become a major polluter, ‘hygiene’ contributes heavily to the burden on the environment. Not only do we discharge excessive amounts of liquid and solid waste into soil and water, making rivers and lakes open sewers unfit for fishing, household, agricultural and recreational use, we also undermine nature’s mechanisms for self-purification and revival by killing the organisms responsible for recycling elements.

Microbes are pretty much everywhere on this globe. They are several kilometres inside the earth, in rocks and volcanoes and in thermal vents in the deep sea.

Unicellular organisms were the first forms of life, 3.8 billion years ago. They were the precursors to higher organisms, and helped make the globe’s atmosphere fit for higher life forms.

They protect our skin, our bodily orifices and our digestion. They are responsible for the development of our immune system, manufacture of vitamins and uptake of nutrients and calories from food.

While our bodies contain maybe a trillion cells, it has been estimated that there are hundreds of trillions of microbes in our gut.

Although Louis Pasteur discovered that the organisms of yeast were responsible for the formation of alcohol, microbiology originally progressed through the discovery of disease- causing germs.

Modern microbiologists know that, in comparison to the total number of microbial species – unidentified and identified – the number of pathogens is negligible. Humans have to live with and amongst microbes, and efforts to eliminate them are based on misconceptions of biology and health.

There is another approach to hygiene besides biocidal warfare, and one of the alternatives available is EM technology,a brand developed in Japan for use in agriculture and beyond.

EM, Effective Microorganisms,is a liquid culture with three genera of microorganisms; lactobacilli (as found in yoghurt and Sauerkraut), yeast(as used to make bread, beer and wine) and photosynthetic or phototrophic bacteria (as in some pickles and cheeses). All occur widely in nature on all continents.

These organisms have not been modified by genetic engineering. They are easy to handle and cause no harm even if accidentally ingested. In India, where I live, EM is easily affordable.

The father of EM technology is Prof Teruo Higa, an agriculturist from Okinawa, Japan. He discovered that some symbiotic aerobic and anaerobic organisms jointly exhibit stronger and more interesting properties than the individual organisms on their own. He went public with his product in Japan in 1982, and launched it internationally in 1989. EM is now manufactured in about 50 countries and used in about 150.

EM was initially developed for the agricultural sector. Its users claim it improves the quantity and quality of crops, affecting their taste, scent, color intensity and longevity. Early users also reported its power to counteract ‘rot, stink and rust.' If EM can control the fouling of organic debris, it can control associated pest nuisance, including flies and cockroaches, and the spread of pathogens.

It became obvious that EM could be utilised for composting and solid waste management, and for sewage and effluent treatment. And if EM is anti- oxidant or anticorrosive, it can also find use in medical and technical contexts.

Thus EM is used in agriculture and horticulture, in animal husbandry and aquaculture, in composting and solid waste management, in sewage and effluent treatment, in environmental rehabilitation of wastelands and of eutrophicated water bodies, and in management of hygiene.

EM is available as EM1 or so-called EM stock solution. This contains the microbes in a dormant state, as spores, and has a shelf life of twelve months. It needs to be activated or extended by mixing one part EM1 with one part molasses and twenty parts of water.

This mixture needs to be placed in an airtight container of food-grade plastic and kept undisturbed in a shaded place of stable temperature to ferment for between five and 14 days. Because of gas development during fermentation, metal or glass containers cannot be used. The pressure building up in the container needs to be released once a day.

When the pH has dropped to below 4, activated EM solution (AEM) is ready for use. AEM should be used within one month.

In agriculture, AEM is diluted in the range of 1:500 to 1:1,000, in wastewater treatment from 1:500 to 1:several thousands. In my experience, wherever its use has benefits, EM proves cost-efficient.

The hygienic need of our bodies and surroundings is not sterility, but cleanliness, and freedom from unpleasant odours and aggressively virulent microbes. It makes no sense to try to establish aseptic conditions on a floor – including a hospital floor – as every foot or shoe walking over brings millions of organisms.

It is indeed an effect of aggressive hospital hygiene that the most virulent microbes have developed resistance against all antibiotics and disinfectants and now threaten the life of in-patients more than any microbe outside hospital surroundings.

If we are ready to accept an eco- friendly approach to hygiene, beneficial microbes may be used to replace most cleaning agents. Instead of killing all life- forms, they establish themselves against pathogens and create an environment in which pathogens are not fostered.

One must first dispense with all biocidal hygiene agents, including disinfectants and chlorine. Initially some people will miss the scents added to these conventional agents.

EM applied on toilets and in bathrooms dispels unpleasant odors within seconds. It is effective on floors, walls, shelves and cupboards. It controls the development of fungus and mouldy odours, and eliminates fly nuisance and cockroaches, which can act as vectors of pathogens.

At Winner Dairy, a milk products factory near Puducherry, neighbours were complaining of a strong smell of sour milk. Introducing EM into the factory’s effluent treatment plant, through activated EM solution and EM bokashi balls, encouraged effective decomposition. Within a few weeks, the odours had reduced to insignificant levels.

AEM solution is diluted in the range 1:50 to 1:200 for floor surfaces. After about two weeks, tiled surfaces appear shiny. However, surfaces that are damaged by acids such as vinegar, for example certain soft stones, will also suffer from undiluted, highly acidic AEM.

Use a household sprayer to apply undiluted AEM in toilets and urinals, preferably late at night, and leave it overnight without flushing. Wash all surfaces, for example toilet bowls, urinals, sinks, floors and walls, with diluted AEM as frequently as it was done with other cleaning agents. For stain removal use detergent or soap, then use AEM in the last wash.

Both the World Health Organization ecosan (ecological sanitation) toilets. Microbes can be used in these systems to help ensure effective composting of human waste.

The technology has two major advantages over sewerage-based systems; it reduces the need for water and produces useful, sanitised compost. Recent surveys have estimated there are about 150 ecosan toilets in Germany and around 20,000 in India.

Long-term use of the right microbes has beneficial side effects. Wastewater gets inoculated, reducing the burden on any treatment plant and the environment and facilitating re-use of wastewater.

Microbes can help close natural ecological loops, transforming liquid and solid wastes into resources and facilitating quick, easy re-use of treated and processed waste materials on site.

With microbial technology, hygiene, composting, farming, gardening and wastewater treatment become eco- friendly practices.

Dr Lucas Dengel trained in medicine at the University of Mainz, Germany. He has 20 years experience in public hygiene, focusing on environmental and public health. He has co-ordinated Unicef programs addressing water management in Tamil Nadu schools and produced educational materials about sanitation and water management. He founded AuroAnnam in 2000, to promote and demonstrate organic farming. In 2007 he founded EcoPro, a business promoting EM technology and ecological approaches to agriculture and management of wastes and biological resources.

www.emrojapan.com, www.ecopro.in

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