I remember reading a while back about food that had been fertilized with human waste. The folks that ate the produce got sick. Don't know much more than that.
That accusation has been made, but it’s a bit more likely that it was field workers that didn’t sanitize their hands after using the portables.
In my opinion.
Steve's opinion is part of the reason why this myth gets perpetuated. The bigger part of the picture is that human waste takes longer to 'season' than does that of many other animals, but it's excellent when properly dealt with.
The third house I bought in my life was a wonderful two-story, three-bedroom loft cabin in Nacogdoches with mostly stained-glass windows and an all-tile kitchen situated on 2 acres with a small barn that had formerly been the studio for the artist I purchased it all from who had moved to Austin to be a museum curator. Why am I telling y'all all this? Well, I just like telling stories, but there is a point to it. The house had running water and a fine clawfoot tub, but it also had no indoor toilet. Instead, just northwest of the western side door (there's a reason for this) was a large two-seater outhouse, with a raised walkway back to the house (my eventual plan was to enclose the walkway, because, even in Nacogdoches, some winter days and nights can be brutal when one is awoken in the middle of the night by a strong urge to recycle one's diet caffeine-free chocolate soda). Anyway, the seats were both located over a massive round drum closed on all sides that was divided into four quadrants, each of which had a large door that could be opened to the outside. Every 3 months, the ritual was to dump a quart of lime down one of the open holes inside, then go outside to the back to turn a large crank 90 degrees clockwise. Next, one went to the north side, opened the wooden door on the side of the outhouse, where one opened the locked metal door on the side of the drum. Once opened, it was time to shovel the contents out, all of which effectively had been seasoned for 6-9 months. The property itself was part of a former free-range chicken farm and had two active gardens on it, the first of which I had an agreement with the guy who sold me the place to leave to its own devices and which was located where chickens had previously deposited their gifts other than eggs. Everything planted or volunteered there grew so fast I couldn't keep up with it. Okra was especially problematic, because within a couple weeks of breaking the ground the plants got too tall for me to harvest from and would produce okra shoots in excess of four feet long, probably each one enough to produce not only enough daily gumbo for a New Orleans restaurant but sufficient strands to braid indestructible rope. None of this mattered, because the primary purpose of the ex-owner's garden was to hide the large crop of marijuana plants both the garden and the scattered overhead pine canopy hid from anyone's spying eyes.
But again I have veered from the point.
The human manure was used in the other garden I planted on the site of a defunct utility building where the chickens had never scratched. Nothing there grew quite like the pot patch, but it was still one of the easiest gardens I've ever had. The soil was just rich, and digging in the dirt felt something like getting back to myself -- or maybe an experience reminiscent of childhood times playing with mud pies.
And no one ever complained about the food I served them or mentioned any unpleasant after-effects.
A lot of pharmaceuticals make their way into the sewage Industrial wastes including heavy metals might also enter the waste stream.