sanitation

It is easy to be grossed out by fungi or worry about its impact on our health. While both are valid concerns, fungi and mold are actually important to our everyday lives. Like bacteria, fungi exist almost everywhere on the planet. They are hardy organisms the thrive in places you might not expect. Also like bacteria, they are essential in the breakdown of dead and decaying matter. One important group of fungi that does this is known as saprophytes. These fungi use decaying matter for nourishment, and without them breaking down organic matter throughout the environment, life on Earth would be quite different. Without fungi, the world we know could not exist.

Did you know that garbage trucks drive through towns and cities to pick up trash? One garbage truck can hold garbage from more than 800 houses. Find out more about these mighty machines in this book.

"In Latika's village in rural India, there are no toilets. No toilets mean that the women have to wait until night to do their business in a field. There are scorpions and snakes in the field, and germs that make people sick. For the girls in the village, no toilets mean leaving school when they reach puberty. No one in the village wants to talk about this shameful problem. But Latika has had enough. When a government representative visits their village, she sees her chance to make one of her dreams come true: the construction of public toilets, which would be safer for everybody in her village. Burying the Moon shines a light on how a lack of access to sanitation facilities affects girls and women in many parts of the world"--From the publisher's web site.

"Catherine Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that's been called "Bloody Lowndes" because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it's Ground Zero for a new movement that is Flowers's life's work. It's a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets, and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America's dirty secret. In this powerful book she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions, not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West. Flowers's book is the inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative. It shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards, and not only those of poor minorities"--.

A look at the history of bathing customs, including details about bizarre and deadly trends.

"Even the cleanest house is a habitat for micromonsters. But don't worry, most are harmless. This...volume takes readers on a meet-and-greet tour of the tiniest organisms that live in people's homes"--Amazon.com.

Prickles the cat, who likes to keep a spotless home, insists that Squeeky the mouse oust the dust bunnies he has befriended before The Big Cheese returns and finds them.

"When the mayor of the Tidiest Town notices a single flower out of place, Fussy Great Ape offers to help. Unfortunately, he causes a bigger mess in the process. He calls on his other ape friends to help, but their good intentions lead the town into even greater chaos! Can they put this town back together?"--Provided by publisher.

The World Health Organization is a very important international agency. Around the world this group's volunteers and staff are working to treat disease outbreaks, provide immunizations and medicine, and improve worldwide health care.

Not one member of a group of friends admits to having made a big mess, or offers to pitch in to clean it up.