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Fri Oct 12 15:41:10 EDT 2007
"By overtilling and using too much chemical fertilizer, we keep losing the soils," Beck said. "The quality of soil determines the quality of life on earth."<P>
But Beck questions the wisdom of using Class B sludge — which is what SAWS is providing to Synagro — near houses. <P>
"It gives it a bad name and it does smell," he said. <P>
Unlike the more rigorously treated Class A sludge, Class B sludge contains detectable levels of living organisms. There is no evidence that Class B sludge poses a health risk, but recent studies have raised the question. <P>
The controversy, meanwhile, has left some in outlying counties resenting SAWS.<P>
"Would they want to live by it?" Palmer asked. "Would they subject their immediate families to this?"<P>
Besides the occasional odious odors and concerns about the threat of groundwater contamination, some who live near existing SAWS sludge-treated fields suspect the medical problems they and their livestock are experiencing are linked to the material. <P>
Penny Rankin, a Wilson County resident who has complained that her family and her home have endured awful smells and an inordinate number of flies, wonders about her husband Leslie's rash, three calves born severely underweight and two cows that miscarried.<P>
"I understand this stuff has to go somewhere but they need to clean it up and make sure it's safe or take it where there's not so much population," she said. <P>
David Lewis, an Environmental Protection Agency microbiologist, said his research has shown that residents who live within half a mile of farms where Class B sludge has been applied have claimed illnesses due to dust blowing onto their properties. <P>
"Typically what we found are residents living close to sludge fields who, when they went out in their yards, were hit by dust blowing off the fields," he said. "They inhale the dust and get asthma-like symptoms, difficulty breathing, burning lungs, burning eyes and burning throats."<P>
Lewis also said Texas rules are inadequate in providing enough buffers between sites where treated sewage sludge is used and their neighbors. <P>
Most of the incidents in which people claim sludge has made them sick involved material treated with lime to reduce odors or kill biological pathogens, Lewis said.<P>
Tad Eaton, SAWS contractor administrator for treatment technical services, said the city does not use lime to treat its sewage sludge. <P>
The National Academies of Science panel earlier this year released a report stating "there is uncertainty about the potential for adverse human health effects from exposure to biosolids" but that "public health concerns regarding the use of biosolids are growing."<P>
Ellen Harrison, a member of that panel who also is director of Cornell Waste Management Institute in the Center for the Environment in Ithaca, N.Y., said while there are no documented cases of illnesses due to sludge, "nobody's looked."<P>
"There have been no serious investigations of health issues," said Harrison, who has compiled her own list of 39 incidents across the nation in which at least 325 people have complained of illnesses they attribute to the use of treated sewage sludge. <P>
Ben Grumbles, deputy assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Water, said the agency believes existing federal regulations "are protective of human health and the environment."<P>
The agency is nonetheless working on an "action plan" that could be released next year that will include new studies to "get a larger, more complete, more accurate picture" of sludge sites and whether such material can affect public health, Grumbles said. <P>
<I>canderson at express-news.net<P>
</I>
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