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0 INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC HEALTH ENGINEERING

1.1 Definition
Public health Engineering may be defined as the practice of those engineering skills which affect
public health or more elaborately, as the application of the laws of science, including those of
physics, chemistry and biology, to the betterment of man’s environment.
Public health is the branch of engineering which deals with water supply and sanitation works.
Water supply engineering comprises of storage of water, purification of water and its distribution
for its proper use while sanitary engineering starts where water supply engineering ends. Sanitary
engineering starts with the collecting system and ends after discharging the collected system into
the streams rivers etc. Sanitary works comprise of collection systems, treatment works and
disposal works.

1.2 History

History of modern sanitation started with the development of the protected water wells in the
Neolithic period. Creation of these wells enabled humans to always have clear water available to
them.
The first sanitation facility was the sump or cesspit that appeared in Babylon around 4000 B.C. A
simple digging in the ground to concentrate the excreta that could soon be found in other cities of
the empire and in rural areas.

The first buildings with latrines connected to a sewage system was done around 3000 B.C ., in
the city of Mohenjo-Daro, in the Indo valley (in modern-day Pakistan. The citizens washed down
their latrines with water and the sewage system collected this waste water and took it to the sump
or to the Indo River.

In 100 BC, The roman empire;

 Developed seating toilet (earlier toilets were squatting toilets)

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During the middle ages (500 AD to 1500 AD) after the fall of the roman empire, the Roman
advances in sanitation were forgotten. This was referred to as the ‘age of filth’

The age of filth

During the Middle Ages. Only a few cities, like Paris, preserved some structures of the Roman
sewage system.

Walled cities installed cesspits as their only sanitation structure and they were soon saturated.
The population started throwing the excreta onto the streets or outside the city walls.

Rats thrived among excreta and epidemics of cholera and plague broke out, killing 25% of the
European medieval population. But no advances were made in sanitation.

Cities were putrid and the maximum hygiene level was reached in rural areas, where peasants
buried their faeces in a hole.  

The Renaissance period (14th-17th century (transitional movement in Europe between

The revolution of arts and science during the Renaissance period did not go hand in hand with
the advances in sanitation, which came to a halt while cities kept growing. The filth and odour in
nearly all European cities during the seventeenth century were unbearable. Open air defecation
was common in many neighbourhoods and cesspits were saturated; meanwhile, citizens
continued throwing their excreta onto the streets where sewers, which were open ditches,
partially discharged them into the rivers.

19th century and beyond

In the 19th century : The situation in London became unbearable by 1830.The tremendous stench
that emanated from the city (the famous Great Stink) was joined by various cholera epidemics
with a very high death toll. During one of them, in 1847, an English doctor, John Snow,who had
devoted his life to the study of epidemics, reached the conclusion that cholera was caused by
drinking water that had been contaminated with waste water. He proved his theory when the
epidemics ceased in those areas where pumps had been closed.

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 

Print from 1887 that shows the danger of the filtering of waste water into the drinking
water wells due to the unsealed joints of the pipes.

A few years later, the research carried out by Louis Pasteur provided the scientific confirmation
to Snow´s intuition: the microorganisms present in waste water caused infectious diseases such
as cholera or typhoid fever. As a result of this knowledge, legislation was changed. From the
nineteenth century onwards, the laws in different countries put a limit to the construction of
cesspits, which were restricted to areas with no sewers and transformed into septic tanks, which
were much safer.  

Other treatments methods for the organic matter were progressively developed. For instance the
use of microorganisms to treat sewage etc.

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However, the industrial revolution brought another problem for water: chemical pollution, which
joined the fecal pollution of waste water. In this way, paradoxically, while we were progressing
in the treatment of organic pollution, the industrial discharges started polluting rivers and oceans
unconsciously with products whose harmfulness was later discovered: heavy metals, pesticides,
DDT, nitrates…

Currently (21st century) it has been reported that 90% of the discharged waste water in
developing countries has not been treated. Due to this, according to the WHO, 1.8 million
children under 5 die every year, one every 20 seconds. We still have not won a battle that started
more than 10,000 years ago…..So much remains to be done!

1.3 Importance of Public Health Engineering

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