Dear PoopReport,

I am in the middle of a two-year sponsored research project -- "Waste Transport in Pipe Systems Served by Ultra-Low Flush Water Closets" -- and one of our project deliverables is the development and testing of a solid waste substitute. We have a test rig at our lab with four different pipes (cast iron and PVC) that can be set at different slopes and are 100 feet long. We are mounting tank-type water closets to these pipes and will be flushing "waste substitutes."

So that the tests are consistent and repeatable, we are not using anything that can easily break apart or degrade. This means none of the "real poop." Our sponsor had a chemist develop some silicon samples, but they had such a tacky surface that they stuck to the walls of the pipe so securely that we had to take the pipes apart to retrieve the samples.

It quickly became apparent that to model the real stuff, we needed to know something about volume and mass. This is proving to be much more difficult than we ever thought. My grad student has been over in our med school library for over two weeks, and we can tell you all kinds of stuff about healthy poo, chemical analysis of poo, what health poo should look like, etc.

We have just recently (last week) come across some European work that says the "average" poop is 125 grams and about 500 ml in volume. That is the kind of data that we can use to develop our lab poop. We can make some assumptions about number of pieces, and the density, volume, mass data tell us how 'heavy" the pieces need to be.

It also occurred to us that, for modern, developed countries, it is normal to have paper going down the WC with the poop. That is the reason I was looking for some kind of reference out there for paper data.

So now, any help/ideas from Dave at PoopReport? I am still trying to verify, within a range, the 125-gram and 0.5-liter poop. And I have just started on the hunt for paper use data. There are some humor sites out there, but I am in need of some good data and not made up. Thought I would give you a try!!

Thanks for any help,