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Since the Beginning of the Industrialized Age, Many Sectors Of Safe Fields, Safe Food: Keeping Toxic Industrial Waste Off the Farm and Out of Our Food Since the beginning of the industrialized age, many sectors of the American economy have In a March 1998 report, Factory Farming: Toxic sought to deposit the detritus of their own Waste and Fertilizer in the United States, 1990- industries upon farmers, food producers and 1995, researchers found that during the five-year consumers. Two examples of this "dumping" period studied, more than 271 million pounds of which have recently garnered national attention toxic waste tracked by the EPA's Toxics Release are the use of toxic industrial wastes from steel Inventory (TRI) were sent to 450 fertilizer mills, cement kilns, paper mills and other manufacturers and businesses that appeared to industrial processes in fertilizers used to grow be farms. Sixty-nine toxic chemicals were food and garden crops; and the land application represented in those wastes [1]. of sewage sludge from sewage treatment plants that accept toxic wastewater discharges from Many of the wastes being put into fertilizers are polluting industries. taken from pollution control equipment at factories. In other words, industries dutifully FERTILIZER capture pollutants in scrubbers and other equipment, only to turn around and spread the Ironically, state and federal regulatory agencies captured wastes directly onto productive farm may have encouraged the use of these practices. land. The situation represents a major threat to Steel production, cement manufacturing and health and the environment. many other industrial techniques generate wastes that contain dioxin, lead, cadmium, arsenic and There are currently no federal regulations other pollutants. However, because these wastes requiring fertilizer manufacturers to test their also contain lime, calcium, phosphorus, zinc or products to determine the amounts of heavy other minerals that are beneficial to agriculture, metals, dioxin, or other pollutants they may the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and contain, nor are fertilizer companies required to other state and federal agencies have encouraged list anywhere the sources from which they the "recycling" of the wastes into fertilizers. In obtain minerals. In fact, hazardous steel mill the award-winning exposé "Fear in the Fields," waste has a special exemption under federal Seattle Times reporter Duff Wilson noted that at hazardous waste law that specifically removes least 26 states have programs in place to match all standards and requirements for disposal (i.e. hazardous waste generators with recyclers. testing, manifesting and tracking) if it is used for Industry consultant and chemist Ed Kleppinger fertilizer. Dick Camp, president of the Bay Zinc said, "The last refuge of the hazardous-waste Fertilizer Company of Moxee City, Washington, scoundrel is to call it a fertilizer or soil seemed mystified: "When it goes into our silo, amendment and dump it on farmland." it's a hazardous waste. When it comes out of the silo, it's no longer regulated. The exact same issued a complex amendment to the rules material. Don't ask me why. [2]" regarding hazardous waste recycling land disposal restrictions as those rules apply to "zinc The ramifications of this lack of regulatory micronutrient fertilizers" derived from oversight combined with EPA's endorsement of hazardous wastes. Within the complicated recycling have been demonstrated in very real regulatory jargon lurked a telling statement: economic terms on farms across the country. EPA's finding that today's standards are • Central Washington farmers have lost crops, not below a ''minimize threat'' level is cows and horses and traced the problem based on the Agency's inability at the back to fertilizers they used. present time to establish concentration • In Tifton, Georgia, a mixture of hazardous levels for hazardous constituents which waste sold as liming material killed more represent levels at which threats to than 1,000 acres of peanut crops. human health and the environment are • A uranium processing plant in Gore, minimized [emphasis added]. As the Oklahoma sprayed its radioactive waste on Agency has explained a number of grazing land and local residents believe that times, determining these levels on a the waste caused mutations in animals as national basis … has not yet proven well as devastating health problems in local possible. [7] residents. • Most recently, state officials in Washington In plain English, this means that the Agency has [3], and investigative journalists at the not yet determined what levels of toxins in Dallas Morning News [4] tested Ironite, a fertilizer might be safe, yet they continue to fertilizer made from mining waste and allow, even encourage, the products to be used which is sold in garden centers around the to grow America's food. EPA will hold country, and found industrial-cleanup levels "stakeholder" meetings in Seattle with members of lead and arsenic. of the fertilizer industry and environmental groups in the fall of 1998. These are but a few examples of this practice gone awry, costing innocent farmers and local The Governor of Washington has gotten a bill community members their livelihood and health. passed in Washington's short legislative session; that legislation adopts extremely weak Canadian There are urgent environmental and public soil standards for metals that will not stop toxic health concerns resulting from the use of toxic waste from being spread on farms and backyard waste in fertilizer. Farmers and farmworkers are gardens. The New York legislature has proposed exposed to it in the fields. Food crops can take an outright ban on the practice of using toxic it up. Wildlife as well as farm animals may waste in fertilizer. However, there are currently consume it. (Dairy cows actually ingest a lot of no federal plans to adopt a national prohibition soil as they graze, for example.) The toxic on this practice, and indeed, EPA continues to constituents run off into groundwater that feeds appear supportive of the process. into surface water bodies and can be blown with soil, where people and pets track the toxic dust SEWAGE SLUDGE into homes. House dust is a significant toxic exposure route for children; dust in farmworkers' "I am appalled at what I would term the 'total homes tends to have higher concentrations of disregard for human health' and the fact that the pollutants [5]. Environmental Protection Agency is actively promoting and is, in fact, lulling communities Initial political response by state and federal throughout the United States into initiating governments is a major concern. In August programs for the composting of sewage sludge," 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency said Melvin Kramer, an infectious disease epidemiologist who has been researching the issue since the late 1970s. He says the EPA's example, the Cornell Waste Management plan for sludge disposal poses "a significant Institute estimates that 90 percent of the dioxins health hazard to the population in general, but in wastewater entering a POTW will be retained especially to the elderly, children, and the in the sludge [11]. When that sludge is applied infirm, both in terms of nuisances as exemplified to farm fields, the crops may take up the toxic by excessive putrid odors and minor allergic constituents. reactions . to life-threatening diseases. [8]" Dr. Stanford Tackett, a chemist and expert on Sludge is the non-liquid portion of the waste that lead contamination, has warned, "The use of flows through a sewage treatment plant. As with sewage sludge as a fertilizer poses a more "recycling" of hazardous industrial wastes for significant lead threat to the land than did the their mineral content, the use of sewage sludge, use of leaded gasoline," he says. "All sewage or "biosolids," is being touted by many as a way sludges contain elevated concentrations of lead to recycle the nutrient potential of human waste. due to the nature of the treatment process. … In theory, this could be beneficial both to From the standpoint of lead alone, sludge is farmers and municipalities, if human waste and 'safe' only if you are willing to accept a lowered industrial waste were segregated. As the Cornell IQ for the young children living in the sludge Waste Management Institute at Cornell area. And what about the other toxins?" [12] It University notes, "While recycling sludges is a is important to note that in the U.S. desirable goal, caution is warranted since many Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "Part pollutants are persistent and agricultural soils are 503" rules "allow the application of sludges with irreplaceable [9]." Indeed, sewage sludge from metals up to the ceiling limits to be used in most major metropolitan areas does not contain home gardens." [13] only the wastewater from residential areas, but also the toxic effluent from industrial Many communities, including metropolitan dischargers deemed too small to require their areas, are already marketing their sewage sludge own National Pollution Discharge Elimination for agricultural uses, either through direct land System (NPDES) permit from the state application or through retail sales as fertilizer regulatory agency. These small industrial products. "Milorganite," which has been dischargers may include metal plating produced by the city of Milwaukee for 70 years, operations, dry cleaners, hospitals and dental is one such product. Milorganite production has clinics (which may discharge mercury, solvents, been fraught with problems, including
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