According to the Associated Press, the chief of Nepal's mountaineering association says that human sewage has become a critical problem on Mount Everest, urging his country's government to make visitors properly dispose of their shit and piss.

"Climbers usually dig holes in the snow for their toilet use and leave the human waste there," Ang Tshering Sherpa told reporters on Tuesday, saying that feces have been "piling up" for years.

Mountaineer Dawa Steven Sherpa—who leads cleanup expeditions on Everest—agreed, telling the news agency, "It is a health hazard and the issue needs to be addressed."

As the Washington Post notes, these concerns are hardly new, Outside editor Grayson Schaffer going so far as to call the peak a "fecal time bomb" last April. By one estimate, the mountain's hundreds of visitors drop up to 26,500 pounds of feces each year.

Last year, Nepal instituted a rule requiring each climber to bring 18 pounds of trash back to the base camp, but reportedly the government has yet to develop a plan addressing human waste.

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