Sludge Watch ==> Johns Hopkin's Sludge Study: Bad Science, Bad Policy

[Maureen Reilly]

http://www.riles.org/musings.htm


May 27, 2008

Johns Hopkins' Sludge Study: Bad Science, Bad Policy

On April 14, 2008, the Associated Press broke a story about a sewage sludge 
study in Baltimore, Maryland, that banked on kids eating the sludge. The 
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health defended its 
participation in the study in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun on April 
28, 2008.

The dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr. Michael Klag, is 
terribly wrong when he claims Johns Hopkins' researchers had spread 
"compost," not sludge, on poor, black kids' yards in Baltimore. The 
"compost" came from Baltimore's Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant. 
Composted or not, sewage sludge is poisonous.

The intended product of wastewater treatment is clean water. Sewage sludge 
is the inevitable byproduct that, by definition and intention, consists of 
every waste material a given wastewater treatment plant is capable of 
removing, or is incidentally removed, from the sewage in the process of 
treating the wastewater. This means that, besides human urine and feces, 
tens of thousands of chemicals -- organic and inorganic, teratogenic and 
carcinogenic, toxic and estrogen mimicking -- will be present in the sludge.

The wastewater treatment industry's -- and the EPA's -- preferred method of 
disposal of sewage sludge in the United States is "land application." To get 
the public to accept this has required a concerted effort from government 
and the sludge-industry to make the public think that sludge is "organic," 
"nutrient-rich," and otherwise "beneficial." Calling sludge "compost" is 
another trick. The idea of "composting" sludge is based on the dependable 
presence of human feces in sludge. Human feces do indeed consist largely of 
organic matter. But sludge consists only partly of human feces.

The idea, therefore, of "treating" sludge so that it can become "compost," a 
"soil amendment," a "fertilizer" -- is disingenuous. Once mixed together, 
the potential value of each and all of the materials concentrated in the 
sludge is lost. No "treatment" of sludge can "purify" the human excrement: 
once mixed with poisons, it too becomes a poison. Calling Baltimore sewage 
sludge "compost" is linguistic detoxification and nothing more.

What should be done? Put sludge in bags of neat looking pellets to sell as 
compost to unwary gardeners? Put it on Little League ball fields? Don't 
mention wastewater contaminants like pharmaceuticals and brominated flame 
retardants and instead see what happens when kids eat it? That will get rid 
of some of it -- and it will take a long time for people to come to 
understand what happened to them.

The sewage sludge haul-and-dump industry (haul it out of the wastewater 
treatment plan and dump it where ever the opposition is likely to be least) 
is an eleven billion dollar a year industry. The Carlyle Group, one of the 
world's largest private equity firms, recently bought the largest sludge 
hauler, Synagro. It is big business and risk free, since all liability is 
transferred to whomever owns the property where the stuff is dumped.

What can be done to protect public health and the environment from this 
onslaught? First, start telling the truth: sewage sludge is a toxic 
byproduct of wastewater treatment and there is no process or technology that 
will make it safe. Next, place an immediate moratorium on the land 
application of sewage sludge. And -- as if one needs to say this -- don't 
feed it to kids.

Laura Orlando
Executive Director
RILES


Resources:

"Sewage-Based Fertilizer Safety Doubted," March 7, 2008, by John Heilprin 
and Kevin S. Vineys, Associated Press
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/07/7533/

"National policy brought sludge to Augusta farms: Ruling for farmer disputes 
government data,"
March 9, 2008, Associated Press, 
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/030908/met_190330.shtml

"Sludge Tested As Lead-Poisoning Fix," April 14, 2008, John Heilprin and 
Kevin S. Vineys (AP)
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=4646032

"Hopkins' hands clean," April 28, 2008, by Gary W. Goldstein and Michael J. 
Klag, Op/Ed in the Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.compost28apr28,0,3165593.story

"No one knows what makes up sewage sludge," May 11, 2008, by Kevin S. 
Vineys, Associated Press 
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080511/ENVIRONMENT/805110379/1033/ENVIRONMENT

The journal Nature (May 15, 2008): "stuck in the mud," editorial, p 258, and 
"raking through sludge exposes stink: Environmental Protection Agency 
scientists accused of fabricating data about health effects of fertilizer," 
by Jeff Tollefson," p 262
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7193/

"Piling It High," May 21, 2008, by Joel Bliefuss, In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3688/piling_it_high/

Petition to stop the land application of sewage sludge (October 2003)
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/FinalPetitionSludge.pdf