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This sewage sludge sitch is worse than I thought, which is just another reason to eat organic. For now at least, organic standards prohibit the use of sewage-sludge-based fertilizers for crops. (In 2000, facing a huge public backlash, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) abandoned plans to allow the use of sewage sludge in organic agriculture.)
Selling sewage sludge to farmers has been touted since the early ’90s as a favorable way of disposing of the unwanted byproducts from municipal wastewater-treatment plants, which collect waste from myriad sources, including homes, businesses, chemical industries, and hospitals. After physical, chemical, and biological contaminants are removed from the wastewater, all the disposed-of material—much of which is toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative—concentrates into a thick, poisonous goop.
The sludge is heat-dried to form pellets, which are then hawked as commercial-use fertilizer by companies such as Synagro. In the mid-’90s, the waste-management industry lobbied to redub sewage sludge with the slicker moniker “biosolids,” citing the negative connotations the original term held in the hearts and minds of the public, regardless of how many times the sludge was treated and reprocessed. (Can you blame ‘em? Imagine the Gardener of Tomorrow: “Well Neighbor Bob, I’m feeding my prize genetically augmented spinach a healthy side of Class A biosolids, thanks to those hardworking scientists who are opening the doors to a better age! Wanna take a ride on my monorail?”)
From The Center for Food Safety:
The sludge being spread on our crop fields is a dangerous stew of heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive material. In fact, hundreds of people have fallen ill after being exposed to sewage sludge fertilizer—suffering such symptoms as respiratory distress, headaches, nausea, rashes, reproductive complications, cysts, and tumors.
A common but controversial flame retardant, penta bromo diphenyl ether (pentaBDE), along with the industrial carcinogen polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), asbestos, synthetic hormones, and some 60,000 toxic chemicals have also been identified in sewage sludge spread over agricultural land. Infectious pathogens such as Salmonella and increasingly drug-resistant strains of E. coli have also been detected.
In 2003, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists David Gattie and David Lewis1 questioned the efficacy of methods used to treat sewage sludge and determine their pathogen levels, and that chemical-pathogen interactions on land application sites could exacerbate infections and illnesses—even death. (At least 3 human deaths have been attributed to exposure to land-applied sewage sludge.) In June 2003, a Georgia Superior Court ruled that the deaths of 300 dairy cows on the Boyceland Dairy farm were caused by feeding on hay that had been grown on land where Class B sludge had been applied according to EPA directions.
According to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, approximately 60 percent of an estimated 5.6 million tons of dry sludge is used for land application. To give you an idea of how deficient existing sewage-sludge regulations are (which is to say, very): An industrial business is permitted to discharge up to 15 kilograms (or 33 pounds) of hazardous waste into sewers without reporting it each month.
Many major players in the agriculture and food industry have taken a stand against produce grown on land treated with sewage sludge, including Heinz, Dole, Del Monte, and Nestlé. J. M. Dryer, General Manager of Heinz’s Food & Technology Systems, wrote: “[The] risk of utilizing municipal sludge, which is known to be high in heavy metals, such as cadmium and lead, is not a health risk which we need to take. This is not a publicity statement since it is rigorously enforced and we have at times dropped suppliers who have used sludge on their crop land.”
And you know when a company like Nestlé goes all ethical on us like this, it’s like the Joker saying that Ra’s Al Ghul is just too evil for him.
For further details, check out the National Sludge Alliance’s extensive material on the subject.
1 Lewis was later fired from the EPA, allegedly after continuing to criticize the agency in the journal Nature.