Big Buisness is cashing in on the urine.
“Utica, Michigan - Realising it is flushing potential profits down the drain, an enterprising young company has come up with a way to trap medically powerful proteins from urine. Enzymes of America has designed a special filter that collects important urine proteins, and these filters have been installed in all of the men’s urinals in the 10,000 portable outhouses owned by the Porta-John company, a subsidiary of Enzymes of America.
“Urine is known to contain minute amounts of proteins made by the body, including medically important ones such as growth hormone and insulin. There is a $500-million-a-year market for these kinds of urine ingredients.
“This summer, Enzymes of America plans to market its first major urine product called urokinase, an enzyme that dissolves blood clots and is used to treat victims of heart attacks. The company has contracts to supply the urine enzyme to Sandoz, Merrell Dow and other major pharmaceutical companies. Ironically, this enterprise evolved from Porta-John’s attempt to get rid of urine proteins-a major source of odour in portable toilets.
“When the president of Porta-John began consulting with scientists about a urine filtration system, one told him he was sitting on a gold mine.
“The idea of recycling urine is not new, however. ‘We thought about this,’ says Ian Whitcome of Amgen, a Los Angeles biotechnology firm, ‘but realised we’d need thousands and thousands of litres of urine.’
“Porta-John and Enzymes of America solved that problem. The 14 million gallons flowing annually into Porta-John’s privies contain about four-and-a-half pounds of urokinase alone. That’s enough to unclog 260,000 coronary arteries.” (Hippocrates magazine, May/June 1988)