Sludge Watch ==> Nature: Editorial and "Raking Through Sludge Exposes a Stink"

[Maureen Reilly]

Editorial
Nature 453, 258
14 May 2008
Stuck in the mud

Abstract

The Environmental Protection Agency must gather data on the toxicity of 
spreading sewage sludge.
Some 30 years ago, as the United States began to tighten its environmental 
regulations on residential and industrial wastewater, operators of 
sewage-treatment plants embraced what seemed an eminently sensible idea. 
They decided to take the rich organic sludge left over after clean water is 
extracted and sell it to farmers as fertilizer.
The practice proved popular, and has become increasingly common 
internationally. Today, some 60% of sludges, innocuously dubbed 'biosolids' 
by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are used as fertilizer in 
the United States.
The programme might well be as sensible as it seems. It is possible that the 
millions of tonnes of sludge being spread across the rural landscape contain 
no significant levels of toxic chemicals, heavy metals or disease-causing 
organisms. It may all be perfectly benign. The disturbing fact is that no 
one knows.


In what can only be called an institutional failure spanning more than three 
decades — and presidential administrations of both parties — there has been 
no systematic monitoring programme to test what is in the sludge. Nor has 
there been much analysis of the potential health effects among local 
residents — even though anecdotal evidence suggests ample cause for concern.
In fact, one of the studies used to refute potential dangers, published in 
the Journal of Environmental Quality in 2003 by researchers at the 
University of Georgia in Athens, has been called into question (see page 
262).


Even the National Academy of Sciences seems to have been taken in. A 2002 
report from the academy cited the then unpublished Georgia work as evidence 
that the EPA had investigated and dismissed claims that sewage sludge had 
killed cattle, but the study had not looked at the dairy farms in question. 
And although it may be technically true that there was no documented 
evidence of sludge applications causing human illness or death, the academy 
also cited work by an EPA whistleblower, David Lewis, suggesting at least an 
association between these factors. If anything, recent research underscores 
those findings.

The Georgia citation notwithstanding, the academy did outline a sound plan 
for moving forward. It recommended among other things that the EPA improve 
its risk-analysis techniques; survey the sludges for potential contaminants; 
begin tracking health complaints; and conduct some epidemiological analyses 
to determine whether these reports merit concern.
The EPA has completed none of those tasks. Six years later, the agency is 
only now trying to finish its evaluation of potential contaminants and has 
yet to establish a system for monitoring reports of health problems. Agency 
officials say that they are working on risk-analysis tools, but have yet to 
undertake any kind of epidemiological studies.

The EPA certainly has other competing priorities, and the fault here does 
not lie only with the current administration or any single researcher. 
Regardless, these safety questions deserve answers, and the EPA should be 
able to deliver them. It is time to get the data.
\\////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


14 May 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/453262a


Raking through sludge exposes a stink
Environmental Protection Agency scientists accused of fabricating data about 
health effects of fertilizer.

Jeff Tollefson


Farmer Andy McElmurray won his court case against the US Department of 
Agriculture over land poisoned by sludge fertilizr.

A former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist is suing the 
agency's officials and researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens, 
alleging that they manufactured and published false data to support the use 
of potentially harmful sewage sludges as fertilizers. The sludges have been 
linked to health problems in humans and cattle — and even deaths.

The False Claims Act lawsuit brought by microbiologist David Lewis, who says 
he was forced out of the agency, alleges that EPA officials and University 
of Georgia researchers fraudulently orchestrated a grant and then fabricated 
data to ensure that the EPA's 'biosolids' programme would come out smelling 
pretty. If the charges stick, the scientists and EPA officials could be held 
personally liable and may be forced to pay back the original grant as well 
as some US$4.6 million in subsequent grants, plus penalties.

“This is one of the few ways that you can hold people accountable for bad 
science and indeed for using false information to create that science,” says 
attorney Ed Hallman of Decker, Hallman, Barber & Briggs in Atlanta, who 
filed the lawsuit on behalf of Lewis and two Georgia dairy farmers.

At the heart of the case is a study by agricultural engineer Julia Gaskin of 
the University of Georgia and her colleagues, which concluded that using 
sludge as a fertilizer “should not pose a risk to animal health”. It was 
used in a 2002 report by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which 
brushed aside allegations that livestock had been killed by the toxic 
biosolids. The report states, with explicit reference to the Gaskin study, 
that the EPA had investigated these cases and found “no substantiation” to 
the allegations. Gaskin and her colleagues published their study a year 
later in the Journal of Environmental Quality1.

“Data on sewage sludge were unreliable, incomplete, and in some cases, 
fudged.”
The lawsuit alleges that the researchers concealed their own evidence that 
sewage sludge applications contaminated land and probably contributed to 
cattle deaths on two dairy farms in Georgia, according to recently unsealed 
court documents. They then conducted a new study on different land — using 
sewage-sludge data that were known to be “fudged”, in the words of one 
federal judge — to show that the use of biosolids is safe, according to the 
lawsuit.

Gaskin would not talk about specifics but says she stands by her work. She 
also says that the paper was never intended to study problems with biosolids 
on the dairy farms. “The purpose of this paper was not the focus that has 
been alleged,” she says. “That was not part of this effort.” University 
officials and the EPA declined to comment on the lawsuit or discuss the 
biosolids programme.

The US biosolids programme, which dates back to the 1970s, relies on 
residential and industrial wastes routed through thousands of 
water-treatment plants. Some 60% of the residual sludges from the process — 
several million dry tonnes annually — are now used as fertilizers rather 
than being buried or incinerated. But questions remain about the sludges' 
impact on human and animal health — the programme has been the subject of 
multiple lawsuits for more than a decade.

Court ruling
In February, a district court in Augusta, Georgia, ruled in favour of the 
McElmurray family, which had sued the Department of Agriculture for farm 
subsidies on land they could not plant because of various contaminants from 
sludge, including cadmium, molybdenum, arsenic and thallium. Judge Anthony 
Alaimo described a “broad consensus” that data on the city of Augusta's 
sewage sludge toxicity and its application were “unreliable, incomplete, and 
in some cases, fudged”.

These were the same records that were used in the Gaskin study to calculate 
application rates on the farms that they analysed, and documents suggest 
that the researchers knew there were problems with the data. In one draft of 
the study, University of Georgia soil scientist William Miller scrawled a 
note with a smiley face saying: “We should fess up here that we don't know 
exact rates of application or specific characteristics of sludges applied.”

Miller did not respond to e-mails or phone calls from Nature. In a recent 
interview with Associated Press, however, he acknowledged these doubts but 
maintained that the study “does not include fake data”.

“I'm at a total loss to look at anything in the Gaskin paper or its 
conclusions that are not based on fabricated data or the concealment of 
their own data,” says Lewis, who claims he was forced out of the EPA in 
retaliation for his research into the health impacts of sewage sludge.

In 2002, Lewis and his colleagues published a study in the journal BMC 
Public Health documenting reported health problems among more than 48 people 
who lived near fields where 'Class B' sludges — the most common and least 
sanitized — were applied2. Some 25% of those surveyed were infected by 
Staphylococcus aureus, which contributed to two people's deaths. This 
research was cited in the 2002 NAS report as well, although the report 
stated that there was no “documented scientific evidence” to substantiate 
reports of human illnesses or death. The academy said that it was not 
charged with evaluating human health claims but went on to acknowledge a 
“persistent uncertainty” about health impacts.

The NAS report recommended that the EPA conduct a new survey of chemicals 
and pathogens in sewage sludge, begin systematically tracking health 
complaints, and conduct epidemiological studies to assess the impacts of 
biosolids. The EPA has yet to implement these recommendations, although 
officals say a new survey of toxic chemicals found in sludges is due out 
later this year.


Last year, a team led by epidemiologist Sadik Khuder of the University of 
Toledo in Ohio published similar findings to those of Lewis's team. Their 
larger study found that the risk of various health problems correlated with 
the proximity to farms where Class B sludges had been applied3.

“We have no idea what's going into the waste-stream,” says Murray McBride, 
director of Cornell Waste Management Institute in Ithaca, New York. He says 
that there are unknown risks from cleaner 'Class A' sludges as well, because 
the sterilization process doesn't kill all the pathogens and doesn't affect 
a host of other chemicals used in modern industry. McBride says that the 
scientific community and regulatory agencies have been slow to address these 
questions because of the huge economic and institutional investment in the 
biosolids programme. “There's a vested interest now in keeping this land 
application going,” he says.

See Editorial, page 258

References
Gaskin, J. W. , Brobst, R. B. , Miller, W. P. & Tollner, E. W. J. Environ. 
Qual. 32, 146–152 (2003).
Lewis, D. L. , Gattie, D. K. , Novak, M. E. , Sanchez, S. & Pumphrey, C. BMC 
Public Health 2, 11 (2002).
Khuder, S. et al . Arch. Environ. Occup. Health 62, 5–11 (2007).