Adam's "The World's Toilet Crisis" Tweets

+ This was a hard story to get myself psyched about doing. Hard to look forward to being surrounded by shit

+ Raw sewage = everything that you flush down your toilet. The toilet paper breaks down, shit breaks into tiny pieces, ends up here

+ Sewage goes through several treatment processes, and the ‘cleaned’ water is piped 5 miles into ocean

+ India has a population of 1.14 billion people; 600 million don’t have toilets. [Read more from producer Lisa Biagiotti here.]

+ India has the second highest toiletless population in the world, behind China

+ This river runs through the heart of the city. It’s not far removed from where many people live

+ The smell was completely overwhelming. Was hard to breathe.

+ I think i had bad food and bad water that morning, so I’m already feeling pretty shitty

+ I made the stupid mistake of making a protein shake using tap water..smart, I know.

+ It was like there was a layer of bubbling scum on the water

+ Not sure what was worse, staying on toxic river, or wandering onto shit-covered ground

+ There goes my chocolate protein shake! My producers were very happy as I threw up [Watch more from Adam about how he got sick.]

+ And an FYI, I did immediately deliver some articulate standups right after I threw up, and interviewed a couple folks

+ That was just day 2 of my trip!

+ Slums exist just underneath the shadow of massive construction across the cities

+ Met a man who was defecating up on the train tracks, ear nearly sliced off by oncoming train. The defacto slum toilet is the train tracks

+ We only saw one person in the public toilet, which people have to pay per use

+ Shooting in the slum was very difficult. Very chaotic, narrow spaces to navigate

+ This is what it means when people talk about lack of clean, fresh water. There’s shit in the water.

+ While filming, we saw a child fall into the sewer

+ That wall right behind this man is a home

+ Haryana state has started a program called ‘no toilet, no bride’ which encourages women to demand toilets when marriages are arranged

+ lack of toilets is not just an issue of poverty; money often gets diverted to other priorities

+ Dr Pathak runs a kitchen powered by methane (giant fart)

+ He gives these dried shit balls to school children to play with. The shitballs are dried/decomposed, so it’s not hazardous to touch

+ Jack Sim wants to make toilets “sexy.” He grew up in Singapore when it was very poor and toiletless. Today, cleanest place in the world.

+ Jack Sim named his org the WTO, in hopes he’d get sued, and bring publicity to toilets

+ These waterways are right in the heart of Surabaya, 2nd largest city in Indonesia

+ At sunrise and sunset, people come out to defecate

+ We’d often see people defecating in the river, see kids swimming, and men fishing 20 meters away

+ A preferred method of defecating is on suspended beams over rivers; downstream, people drink the same water

+ People like Sumadi are making cheap toilets and is trying to help jake create toilet shops as ubiquitous as 7-11s

+ In many villages, having a toilet has become something akin to having a Mercedes or an LV purse

+ This is where we get dirty

+ “Hey, lemme show you cesspool of feces in my backyard”

+ In case you’re wondering, they made me wear that ridiculous shirt – my uniform to work. And it smelled like shit

+ I dropped our microphone cover in the canister of shit

+ The moment I’d been waiting for this entire shoot: to play with shit

+ It took days to get all the crud out from underneath my fingernails

+ It was hard not to laugh at times, but this anti-defecation ceremony was a big deal, an important milestone

+ During the shoot, we went into dozens of homes to look at toilets. Most people beamed with pride when showing them

+ Villagers sometimes catalog and collect all the defecation in the village, transport to town square, to show how much shit is out there

+ Part of Ruli’s job is to make people feel uncomfortable, even embarrassed about openly defecating

+ Most of the people in this Indonesian village shit outside, or by waterways

+ Ruli demonstrates how flies collect on shit, shits gets onto food and water

+ I need to throw away the shoes I wore on this toilet shoot

+ Indonesia felt like a sauna/steam room. This was the first time I’d worked out in 2 weeks

+ Rumyati is the community health leader, but even she has problems getting her son to stop openly defecating

+ Rumyati had a Sid Vicious sticker, next to an Osama bin Laden sticker, on her cupboard

+ This was like home #30 whose toilet I inspected

+ It’s a major challenge to get people to respect their environment and stop polluting

+ For the record, Los Angeles is not open-defecation free

+ Homage to the toilet!

+ Jack Sim believes finding celebrity spokespeople to push toilets is key in raising awareness about this public health issue

+ Oh look, it's Russell Brand. Here's why I think his co-star Jonah Hill should be named World Toilet Spokesperson. [Read Adam's blog here.]

Watch more from Adam about shooting "The World's Toilet Crisis" -- including why he really threw up -- after the jump.