Did you just pay $8 or $10 for a bag of fertilizer at the garden store of Home Depot? Did you know you were probably buying a bag of processed human waste (which is actually good for the garden) along with PFAS, PCBs, flame retardants and God knows what else?
The Sierra Club tested 9 bags of commercial bags of fertilizer and 8 had toxic levels of PFAS. They did not test for most other toxic materials.
Sewage sludge is anything that families and factories choose to flush down their pipes. I had always assumed that sewage was carefully processed to remove toxic materials, but that is not the case at all. Instead, it is minimally processed, and then it has to be discarded. Somewhere.
Until the 1980s, New York City was dumping their waste into the ocean! and EPA had made them go further and further out till they were over 100 miles offshore. This reminded me of how the government had gotten rid of old stores of leaky bins filled with chemical weapons, by putting them on board old ships. The ships set out from Earle Naval base, just south of New York City, near Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and when the ships got out far enough out, the ships were scuttled and the chemical weapons – well we don't know what damage they did or what happened to them. Or how many remain intact, ready to be discovered by some other army. This practice was ended in 1972.
I just went to look up a citation for this chemical weapon story, and google's AI (the introductory AI, not its advanced AI) denied that it had happened. However, I found a Congressional Research Report that confirmed it really did happen, here. I am certain these AI's have been programmed to hide certain narratives and push others. Why would anyone trust them?
Back to sludge. EPA was sued for allowing this ocean dumping of whatever is in the sewage mix, and so a terrible "win-win" solution was found. What to do with all this waste? We couldn't tell companies to stop polluting the sewage with chemicals. Oh no.
So with minimal processing at the sewage treatment plant, which did not remove the vast majority of toxic products or necessarily break them down, sludge was renamed “BIOSOLIDS” and it magically became fertilizer. No kidding. They dried it, bagged it, and now you are buying a mix of human wastes and chemicals, microplastics, PFAS (forever chemicals that are endocrine inhibitors and carcinogens), flame retardants, etc. at the garden store to fertilize your garden. Many of the bags use terms like "organic." When the Sierra Club tested 9 bags of commercial fertilizers, it found all had PFAS and 8 had toxic levels.
Does this remind you of how industrial waste fluoride (expensive to dispose of) found its way into drinking water? It became a really inexpensive way of discarding these highly unwanted waste products.
EPA only limits the amount of a few heavy metals in the mix and ignores the rest of the mess that could be in the “biosolids.” [I was told a PR firm was paid $100,000 to come up with the name “biosolids” for this very effective makeover.]
So that is what might be in your organic garden. [While this stuff is technically not allowed on fields used to sell organic foodstuffs, the bags of fertilizer often contain the word “organic,” which in chemistry simply means a carbon-containing compound.]
What about your farmer's fields? It turns out that permits have been issued for spreading this stuff on 20% of US farmland. Over and over. A recipe for contaminated groundwater, waterways, soil and food. Dairy and meat are the most contaminated foodstuffs.
And this brilliant idea was not only approved by EPA but was hailed as a huge success in repurposing and sustainability. But maybe the tide will turn. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins' mother is fighting to ban sewage sludge applications in Texas, where she is a member of the legislature. Brooke mentioned this during her confirmation hearing. So I am hopeful.
Below is an article you might want to look at. It summarizes a >100 page draft report on sludge as fertilizer issued by the EPA on January 25. Buried in the report are some acknowledged, serious risks from this stuff. So now just might be when this crazy practice can change.
Problem is, where will they put our wastes next? We made some suggestions, but I won't go into the nitty gritty now. Do you think we can get industry to manage its own waste products? What would that take?
Harmful chemicals in sewage sludge that is spread on pasture land as fertilizer are causing cancer, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday. The risk is highest for people who regularly consume milk, beef and other products from farms where it is spread. The risk is “several orders of magnitude” above what it considers acceptable, the agency said.
When cities and towns treat sewage, they separate the liquids from the solids and treat the liquid. The solids need to be disposed of and can make a nutrient-rich sludge often spread on farm fields. The agency now says those solids often contain toxic, lasting PFAS that treatment plants cannot effectively remove.
When people eat or drink foods containing these “forever” chemicals, the compounds accumulate in the body and can cause kidney, prostate and testicular cancer. They also harm the immune system and childhood development….
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