H5N1 in chicken manure. Not glamorous but important.

Thanks Revere. Interesting result about the UV, indicating resistance to deactivation by UV. Does it say whether germicidal UV-C was used in the protocol? Bad news if it was, I was hoping UV-C would be a viable decontamination method and water treatment in the event of panflu.

I'm not sure what to make of the UV resistance. Since manure is opaque, even dark in places, it might simply be that the UV only treated the upper millimeter, and the rest was untreated. I think the take-home lesson is that you have to rake it or turn it over many times, risking exposure each time, if you want to use UV, but tossing it onto a compost heap works in a day or two. Just watch that outer layer when digging into it.

Gee, reveres, this seems like really chickenshit research to me and not at all clear that it relates to real world conditions.

to all: The problem with not having the paper is I can't answer the questions. My purpose for the post was twofold: the first, hoping someone might have a .pdf or have access to the paper and can elaborate on the methods and contents. The second, and the one I made explicitly, is that some of the important research we need to do ASAP is not fancy molecular biology but (as Melanie so delicately put it) "chickenshit" research the "real" scientist look down on and if they did it wouldn't get any brownie points in the profession because it is so mundane. But it uses techniques that scientists and not others know how to do. Someone needs to do this "chickenshit" research and do it in ways that are informative of real world problems. The academic reward system isn't well set up for this.

Wow: it is obscure! I checked out our (very extensive) journal holdings to see if I could get you a pdf of the article, and not a trace of it. Wow.

Of course, you might, for all I know, work at the very same school of public health where I have library privileges (JHSPH), but I thought I'd try anyways.

Seems pretty important to me, so I hope Melanie is just joking. Wild bird poop might be active up to 24 hours and sunlight isn't going to deactivate it. This is bad news for animals drinking from open water.

This was always a 'red herring' used only to come up with a way to tie any and all potential infections to a chicken source...to avoid among other things stage 4. The WHO was not a follower in this but the 'leader of the pack'.

Ask and about manure piles. It's called composting or 'heating' and by heat I mean steam coming off it and hot enough that you can't touch it.

Sometimes we are a little too cute in using a lab environment to try and mimic field conditions when those in the lab no nothing about farming and unwilling to ask those that do know.

Please excuse the 'brain cramp' causing typo's. I will do better next time!!

hilzoy: thanks for looking. I used to be where you are (in fact I once had the pleasure of a seminar with RB Braithwaite there many moons ago) but now am somewhere else very well endowed with libraries. No luck.

They heated it to 113 degrees?

I can just imagine the scene at noon in that lab: "Hey, Ted, is this your lunch in the microwave?"

Also.... conducting the tests in the field is hard to do.... even with the best chicken shit....

My chicken, as she gets older (one can also think in terms of a chicken's immune system becoming less effective either way....), has looser stools. This means that ...um.... it can go longer distances.... sorry about that!

Aerosols from the explosive 'event' can spread droplets to near-by birds. The darker parts of the excrement in the stool is formed in the large intestine - the lighter material is uric acid crystals ..... Like reptiles, the white materials were formed in the kidneys.

UV penetration of either water (if excreted by ducks directly) or in the excrement (either in the dark matter from the large intestine or from the kidneys) will vary.

Reveres: I just read some disturbing articles about backyard chicken flocks and fish ponds in southeast Asia. It seems that these poor people use raw chicken waste to fertilize the fish ponds, allow ducks to feed from those ponds, suspend dead chickens over the ponds on which maggots feed and drop into the ponds for fish food. Also dead chickens are dumped directly into the ponds for the fish to feed on. And all this going on out in the open for wild birds to feast upon as well.

A different article stated that the US used poultry manure as fertilizer in fish ponds, dried poultry manure in fish feed, and eggs, feather meal and bone/blood meal to produce fish meal. I had no idea pond farms used this. I'm hoping these fish-meal producers know what they're doing.

Would you discuss this in your forum?

LL: This has been raised a number of times. It is a common practice and makes a great deal of sense from the renewable resources point of view as well as basic economy. There is the problem in this case of H5N1 virus which can spread to wild bird populations. Spread through water and -- who knows? -- fish isn't known.

This is a very complicated problem, insinuating itself into all manner of things that on first look wouldn't have been on the radar screen. That's the nature of epidemic disease. It involves more than the virus. It is a social and environmental phenomenon as well.

Well, ordinary people want a stop to the bullshit and to cut to chicken shit, handling raw chicken, petting swans and keeping pigeons (popular around here), wearing masks (useful? made of what? obtained where?), gloves, the use of all-purpose disinfectant fluids on shoes for example (Javel: this question came from my cleaning lady), the efficacity of water, the danger of sheets and clothes that may have been ~contaminated~, how to handle cadavers, and other gruesome topics.

People in Switzerland are used to getting, via press and TV, and in the form of fact sheets distributed to the entire population, very clear and explicit instructions, in at least 7 languages, about what to do, what NOT to do, what to do if you can go the extra mile, what is NOT dangerous, and how to repair f*ck ups, if that is possible.

The model people refer to seems to be AIDS, tuberculosis, mad cow disease, and surprisingly, the plague.

I say surprisingly because while memories in rather stable French speaking communities in the geographical EU (as I have experienced them) are incredibly long they are not quite that long. The info. about the plague comes from school learning and movies. Seen in another way, it is not surprising...

Javel = NaClO

Harvard has this journal --- Countway Library of Medicine --- according to their online catalog. Does anyone here have access to Countway? They don't let just anyone in or I'd go myself.

Ana: Everybody prefers clear cut, unambiguous directions. We all want to be taken care of by someone we think has our interests at heart and we can trust. This includes me. I am a physician but when I seek medical care I don't want to be my own doctor. I want someone who will know what to do and take care of me competently.

So there are two components here. Is the information correct? And is it delivered or provided in a way that induces trust. These are correlated but not 100% correlated. You can have one and not the other.

BTW, I once lived for a while in Geneva. Really enjoyed it there. Boring, but enjoyable.

Aloyse: I thought I checked Countway, but maybe something dropped through the cracks. Meanwhile a kind reader sent me a .pdf so I will read it and report if there is anything to report.

People are like that, you Reveres, me, school kids, everyone. That is comprehensible.

The problem is, as I see it, is that there are no established frames, if one could call them that, to present certain kinds of uncertainty; and honesty, still a coin of the common realm, stipulates that questionable or inappropriate or doutbtful or downright false directives may do more harm than good. (So no fact sheets.)

However, I do think that authorities, trained to be elites, to exercise expertise and thereby power, underestimate the understanding of ordinary people.

Transparency and honesty are, in their minds, a double edged sword: on the one hand, adherence is gained, on the other, panic and uneasonable demands may arise.

There, they reveal an attitude of contempt and disdain, at the very least an accepted divide between those in the know and the others, the useless eaters -to put it baldly- and the hoi polloi ; the potentially violent homesteader and the counter reactionary forces who act with expedition and consummate deadly skill!

Boom boom!

Kill ya chickens!

....Hum. ;)

I very much appreciate and need this sort of research. Among the questions I wonder about:

Is it safe to compost chicken manure near my garden? If H5N1 becomes endemic will the barn where my birds live become a bio-hazard because there is manure on the floor?

Are my kids safe playing on a beach or walking a pier that features sun-baked seagull poop? How about an inland lake where ducks or swans swim?

It's nice to know that the virus isn't unusually hardy. We try not to swim near ducks or swans anyway because of swimmer's itch (cercarial dermatitis).

As an engineering firm that designs Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation systems for healthcare, pharmaceutical and nutritional clients in the US, Asia and Mexico, we are extremely interested in this paper.
We were able to test UVGI's effectiveness against SARS in 2004. We are close to testing H5N1, but our lab is in the middle of a facility upgrade, so we're reaching out to other potential partners. I'll keep you posted.
BTW-although I am not a MD, I find this forum educational, funny and thoughtful. I wish colleagues in my field had a place for open exchange of ideas. It irritates me that some others in our business claim that UV is effective against H5N1, although they've never tested it. This marketing puffery panders to people's fears and casts a shadow of illegitimacy (or at least skepticism) on all of us.
PS-we frequently find dead birds and droppings around, on and inside the rooftop HVAC units of hospitals. Bird poop has been shown to dry and become airborne, entering occupied building spaces via the ventilation system.

JAD: Yes, please keep us informed. UVGI is a possible application if we find H5N1 remains suspended for long periods in air. We still are not sure of the main mode of transmission of flu. The assumption it is large droplet (hence they settle quickly) has not really been shown as the only or even main mode. Also, virus on inanimate objects (fomites) is of unknown importance in transmission. UVGI could be useful in a health care setting for that as well if it turns out to work and it turns out this is important, two things we don't know at this point.