Cited by 190Child Nutrition and Water AccessWastewater Treatment and ReuseFecal contamination and water quality

Sanitation: A Global Estimate of Sewerage Connections without Treatment and the Resulting Impact on MDG Progress

Baum, Rachel, Luh, Jeanne, Bartram, Jamie·2013·Environmental Science & Technology

Abstract

Progress toward the sanitation component of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Target 7c was reassessed to account for the need to protect communities and the wider population from exposure to human excreta. We classified connections to sewerage as "improved sanitation" only if the sewage was treated before discharge to the environment. Sewerage connection data was available for 167 countries in 2010; of these, 77 had published data on sewage treatment prevalence. We developed an empirical model to estimate sewage treatment prevalence for 47 additional countries. We estimate that in 2010, 40% of the global population (2.8 billion people) used improved sanitation, as opposed to the estimate of 62% (4.3 billion people) from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP), and that 4.1 billion people lacked access to an improved sanitation facility. Redefining sewerage-without-treatment as "unimproved sanitation" in MDG monitoring would raise the 1990 baseline population using unimproved sanitation from 53% to 64% and the corresponding 2015 target from 27% to 32%. At the current rate of progress, we estimate a shortfall of 28 percentage points (1.9 billion people) in 2010 and a projected 27 percentage point shortfall in 2015.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1021/es304284f

Cites

6 of 6 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Baum, R., Luh, J., & Bartram, J.
Affiliations
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
Corresponding author
Bartram, Jamie
Venue
Environmental Science & Technology
Published
2013-02-01
Volume
47
Issue
4
Pages
1994-2000
ISSN
  • 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
  • 1520-5851
OpenAlex
W2313711895
Cited by
190
References
6
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 23 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 10
FWCI
22.79
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Environmental Science & Technology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • UNICEF
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Child Nutrition and Water Access
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Waste Management and Disposal › Wastewater Treatment and Reuse
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Fecal contamination and water quality
Keywords
sanitation, wastewater treatment, improved sanitation, unimproved sanitation
MeSH terms
Sanitation, Sewage, Models, Statistical, Waste Management, Internationality

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review