National Sludge Alliance
Charlotte Hartman, National Coordinator
180 Boston Corners Road
Millerton, NY 12546
(518) 329-2120 (phone/fax)
email: chartmannsa@taconic.net
NSA Public Fact Sheet 135
Return to Sludge: Appomattox Beware!
Biosolids Collateral Damage – Ocean to Farm and Lawn
3/16/2003
A recent editorial (Sludge bill would have empowered town residents,
3-15-03) in the Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel states, “These
professionals many of whom are engineers, scientists and environmentalists
make a strong case that sludge spreading isn’t merely an inexpensive
approach to disposal, but one that leads to cleaner water, a cleaner
environment and an important source of income and fertilizer for farmers.”
On the other hand, Lori Burkhammer of the Water Environment Federation (WEF,
week of 3-3-03 Biosolids update ), blamed the continued use of sludge as a
fertilizer on farmers when she posted the following statement on the National
Biosolids Policy web site, “Some call it “sludge,” others call it “biosolids
fertilizer,” and a number of people in Franklin County are calling for action.
They are up in arms over a fertilizer manufactured from human waste, despite
farmers insistence that’s it’s harmless.”
However, dairy farmers who have had their farms and livelihoods destroyed by
biosolds/sludge, Rune of Vermont, McElmurray of Georgia, Roller of Missouri,
and Zander of Washington would disagree. Rune and McElmurry believed the
EPA/WEF public relations (PR) statements that biosolids/sludge was safe.
While Roller and Zander were part of the collateral damage from sludge site
runoff. Arthritis, abortions, muscular problems started showing up in cattle
following applications of sludge to land.
The EPA/WEF PR campaign to fool farmers and the public has not only infected
dairy farms, it has infected the National Academy of Science in its two
literature reviews of EPA furnished documents. It has also infected
environmental science writers. As an example, the Eighth Edition of
“Environmental Science” states that “Biosolids [is] organic material removed
from sewage effluent in the course of treatment.” It further confuses the
issue when the writers also state, that biosolids was “Formerly referred to
as sludge”
The EPA/WEF PR term, Biosolids, is used whether the sludge is 98% liquid,
composted or heat dried. Furthermore, this scientific definition of
“Biosolids” can not be reconciled with the part 503 which lists 9 toxic
heavy metals.
The “Environmental Science” writers explain that a “Heavy metal [is] any of
the high atomic-weight metals, such as lead, mercury, cadmium and zinc. All
may be serious pollutants in water or soil because they are toxic in
relatively low concentrations and they tend to bioaccumalate.” In effect,
they are a “Hazard [which is] anything that can cause (1) injury, disease,
or death to humans, (2) damage to property, or (3) degradation of the
environment.”
How safe is this product of EPA/WEF’s imagination known as biosolids? What
treatment process removes all of the chemicals, including heavy metals, as
well as the pathogenic disease causing agents?
By law, ocean dumping of toxic biosludge/sludge should have ceased December
31, 1981 in order to protect public health. Yet, ocean dumping continued for
another nine years in the United States. When ocean dumping was stopped, the
environmental laws required that sludge be properly disposed of in a
sanitary landfill to protect public health.
Only very limited research to stop ocean dumping was completed at New York
City dumping sites. Still, according to Senate Report No. 199-431, there
were serious problems with ocean dumping of sludge at the 12 mile site off
New York City and the same problems occurred when ocean dumping was moved to the
106 mile site. The adverse impacts at the site the report documented were:
Bacterial contamination and closure of shellfish areas; elevated levels of toxic metals
and organohalogens in bottom sediments in and near the site including known
fishing areas and within five nautical miles of coastal beaches; community
changes (decreases) in relative abundance and diversity of species; sublethal
toxicity effects in economically valuable species; bioaccumulation of certain
metals and organohalogens in fish and shellfish.
Furthermore, according to the Senate Report:
“With the onset of large scale dumping of sewage sludge at the 106 mile site
in 1987, fishermen began to complain of significant decreases in catches and
incidences of diseased fish which were previously not found at these depths.
Some of the diseased fish have a shell disease which is associated with
sewage sludge and pollution in coastal waters. This disease was found around
the 12 mile site. According to the Senate Report, “Scientists are just
beginning to explore the impacts that sludge dumping may be having on marine
resources in the area potentially effected by sludge dumping at the 12 mile
site.”
Ten years ago EPA outlined what we could expect as a result of ocean
disposal. EPA wrote that, “In ocean disposal, certain pollutants often associated with
municipal sludge, including mercury, cadmium, and polychlorinated biphenyls,
can bioaccumulate. High levels of these pollutants can interfere with the
reproductive systems of certain marine organisms, may produce toxic effects in
aquatic life, or may present public health problems if individuals eat
contaminated fish and shellfish.” (FR. 58, 9259)
Mercury, Cadmium and PCBs as well as the rest of the heavy metals are listed
by NIOSH as poisons as well as cancer causing chemicals. Mercury and Cadmium
as well as the rest of the heavy metals listed in part 503 also causes
genetic mutations. PCBs have also been shown to cause a number of serious
non-cancer health effects in humans and animals, including effects on the nervous
system of the developing fetus, the immune system, and the reproductive system.
Results of exposure may include developmental abnormalities.
The damage to our oceans reflect what we can expect to continue on land over
the next 10 to 15 years even if we stopped biosolids/sludge dumping today. As
the toxic pollutants continue to build up on our farmland as well as on our
lawns and gardens, the epidemic of plagues will expand dramatically.
Recent published research reported by the Environmental News Service (ENS)
show that all North Atlantic coastal shark populations have declined by 50
percent in the last 15 years. The greatest loss was for hammerheads, 89 percent
have disappeared.
In 2003, New Jersey issued an advisory that “Infants, children, pregnant
women, nursing mothers and women of childbearing age are considered to be at
higher risk from contaminants in fish than members of the general public.” The
advisory warned that most fish in New Jersey should not be eaten at all by this
high risk group and the general public should only eat one meal containing fish
per year.
It’s not any better on the west coast. The Environmental News Service
recently reported that “California’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against
five grocery store chains, aiming to require the stores to post warnings about
the dangers of methyl mercury in fish” Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. “But
consumers deserve to know when they are being exposed to chemicals that can
cause cancer, birth defects and reproductive harm.” “Dangerous levels of Methyl
mercury have been found in swordfish, tile fish,shark or mackerel. Methyl
mercury also causes nerve, heart and neurological systems damage and can lead to
death.”
EPA, USDA, CDC and FDA started promoting toxic heat dried sludge (which
made some pathogens nondetectable) as a fertilizer on food crops over 20
years ago as Congress was enacting laws to protect us from the chemicals and
disease causing organisms. This was a quick cheap fix for big cities who had to stop
ocean dumping.. EPA wasn’t worried about chemical contamination of farmers
and the public. According to a recent quote by, “Bernard Goldstein, dean of
the University Pittsburgh’s Public Health School and former research chief
for the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1980s. “It’s a chemical era that we
live in and there are trade-offs.”
Tracing the cause and effect of health effects from toxic pollutants,
especially chemicals and disease agents, spread through food, air and water can be
almost impossible and a very expensive situation for the medical and scientific
community. For many toxic pollutants there are no testing procedures and no
safe levels. It would appear that the medical community has attempted to
forestall a panic. Why else would “Abraham Mongantaler — associate clinical
professor at Harvard Medical School and director of men’s health clinic in
Boston — (state) “Cancer is natural. Heart disease is natural. Arthritis is
natural.”
Congress enacted the environmental laws because these diseases caused by
chemicals and pathogens were not natural. Yet, in 1985 EPA decided to take
toxic levels of hazardous waste out from under the law and allow it to be
spread on farmland as a fertilizer without warning farmers. That worked so
well that by 1993, EPA allowed companies to dump toxic levels of hazardous
substances into sewers, then promoted the use of this toxic soup generated
by treatment plants as a safe, cheap fertilizer for farmers. EPA also
promoted the marketing of this toxic soup as a fertilizer for lawns and gardens.
In 1989, due to the extreme amount of sludge generated, EPA specifically
targeted farmers as hosts for the toxic pollutant contaminated waste
(biosolids/sewage sludge) that had been destroying the ocean environment. Once EPA started
promoting the use of composted and wet sludge as fertilizer, food poisoning
incidents quickly reached 6.5 million cases annually in 1990. Still, at that
time only about 4 percent of the dairy herds were contaminated with Salmonella.
E.coli was not even an imagined threat.
Government agencies like EPA and USDA play the courts like a fine instrument.
When the agencies want to continue a policy that is detrimental to your
health, they tend to lose critical lawsuits, which result in strange opinions that
puts your life in jeopardy. As an example, that wonderful Mouth of the South, Molly
Ivins, says, “Unless you have reason to suspect that your nearest and dearest are
putting arsenic in your food, your bad stomach was likely caused by tainted
meat.” She said, “In December 2001, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided
with the industry in a case that gutted meat and poultry inspection laws.
In the Supreme Beef (I’m not responsible for the irony), the court ruled
“because cooking kills Salmonella organisms, the presence in meat products does not
render them injurious to health.” Ivins says, “Industry officials have argued
for years that food poisoning bacteria are natural constituents of raw meat and
poultry and that they have no obligation to control them.”
The reality is that cooking does not kill all pathogens or destroy the toxins
they create which can cause your death. The numbers are not good. Out of
approximately 180 million people in the United States, CDC says there are now 76
million cases of food poisoning annually, 325 thousand hospitalizations, and 5
thousand deaths annually from contaminated food. The 5,000 deaths annually are
probably an extremely low estimate because CDC does not want to start a
panic.
Salmonella is not the major problem anymore. In September 2002, the USDA
research showed that 28 percent of the beef entering slaughterhouses is now
contaminated with the untreatable deadly E. coli 157. That is an epidemic
producing plague in anyone’s book. But it gets worse. When doctors use
antibiotics to kill E.coli, an even more deadly toxin is created. The treatment is a
success, but the patient may die from E. coli produced toxins.
Writer Michael Weiss found meat is not the major culprit in food poisoning.
He said, “A recent congressional study by the General Accounting Office
(GAO) found that food poisonings in schools were growing at about 10 percent
a year.” Not only that, but “— an estimated 85 percent of food poisoning
comes from fruits, vegetables, seafood and cheese, according to the GAO.”
According to Dr. David Swerdlow, a CDC epidemiologist, there were 15 reported
deaths from E. coli between 1982 and 1992. By 1997, that figure had climbed
to an estimated 200 to 250 deaths; 20,000 cases of E. coli-induced disease are
reported every year in the United States. “It’s one of the leading causes of
kidney failure in kids,” says Swerdlow.”
In 1993, EPA pointed out that “Sludge disposed of in a sanitary landfill will
not harm anyone, nor will it contaminate the food or water supply.”
(Federal Register (FR.) 58, 32, p. 9375).
Furthermore, EPA knew that when drugs, hormones, toxic chemicals, bacteria,
viruses, parasitic worms and fungi are mixed and run through a treatment
plant you get a deadly condensed soup known as sludge. You also get
non-detectable drug resistant germs such as heat-resistant Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli
spores in the treatment plant water and condensed residue (sludge) leaving
the plant. Now Staph and Strep need to be considered.
In 1973, EPA was warned by USDA’s John Walker that in the field, it takes
about 30 days for the bacterial spores to dissolve and the germs become active
again. There is no way to keep this toxic soup spread on crops out of our food
chain. Even if corn was the only crop grown and it was used for ethanol
production– gluten is a byproduct of ethanol used in animal feed and human food.
Yet, EPA’s Office of Water used the Clean Water Act (CWA) to put farmers
and consumers health at risk under a policy for land disposal even though
“The jurisdictional scope of the CWA is “navigable waters,” At EPA Office of
Water’s insistence, many states changed their solid waste laws to conform to
the EPA’s open dumping policy. This effectively transferred liability to the
states because ” Congress recognized “the primary responsibilities and
rights of States to prevent, reduce, and eliminate pollution, to plan the
development and use (including restoration, preservation, and enhancement)
of land and water resources ” In effect, the EPA has encouraged the states
to change their laws to promote food and waterborne epidemics through
pollution.-LSI-
Burkhammer, Lori, week of 3-3-03 Biosolids update (WORD):
http://biosolids.policy.net/relatives/25462.doc
Environment Science, Eighth Edition, Wright, Richard T. , Nebel, Bernard J.,
2002, Prentice Hall
ENS, Lawsuit Warns of Methylmercury in Fish, Environmental News Service,
January 27, 2003,
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-27-09.asp#anchor2
ENS, Engineered Corn Blamed for Pig Problems, Environmental News Service
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-23-09.asp#anchor4
ENS, Shark Fishing Quota Increases Called Illegal, Environmental News
Service, January 27, 2003,
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-27-09.asp#anchor3
Ivins, Molly, Chicken about bad meat, The Kansas City Star, October 19,
2002, (p. B7) Opinion
Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel
http://www.centralmaine.com/view/editorials/030315sat_slud.shtml
Lazaroff, Cat , Shark Populations Plunge in North Atlantic, Environmental
News Service, January 21, 2003,
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-21-06.asp
USDA, E. coli in meat, http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/background/ec0902.htm
Weiss, Michael J., The new danger in the grocery aisle, Ladies Home Journal, November 2002, (p. 112–)