Will the Toxic Sludge Industry Be Held Accountable for Human Health Risks?

By Joel Bleifuss, In These Times. Posted June 1, 2008.

Nancy Holt, a retired nurse from Mebane, N.C., is beset by mysterious neurological problems. She blames the cause of her illness on the multiple unknown toxicities of the sewage sludge that has been spread since 1991 on the fields across from her house as "fertilizer."

And Holt says she isn't alone. People in her neighborhood have a high incidence of cancer and thyroid problems. Local creeks are no longer safe for kids to play in -- the danger of staph infection is too great.

In 2001, Holt began chronicling the health problems in her area of rural Alamance County -- 12 miles north of Chapel Hill. Soon she was tracking reports of sludge-related illnesses and deaths across the country.

"I put together the symptoms, the illnesses, the high cancer rates, the thyroid disorders in this community," she says. "It is non-scientific, of course."

"And we have precocious puberty, little girls developing breasts at 5 or 6 years old, little boys developing armpit hair. And that is something that people don't want to talk about," Holt says. "They will talk about their thyroid glands, their cancers, but they will not talk about early puberty. We are on a true toxic tilt."

For the first time since she became involved in the sludge issue, Holt is guardedly hopeful that her concerns will finally be addressed, and that the sulphurous alliance between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), municipal sewer authorities and Synagro Technologies (the nation's largest sludge disposal firm, which was recently bought by the Carlyle Group) -- will be exposed for the blight it is.

In April, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, announced that her committee will hold hearings on the issue this summer. The catalyst is a confluence of recent news reports about sludge-related scandals.

In the Potomac River, 60 miles upstream from Washington, D.C., scientists have discovered many small-mouth male bass with eggs inside their sex organs. The cause of these "intersexed" fish is almost certainly endocrine disruptors -- also known as estrogen mimickers -- in the water, chemical pollutants that disrupt an animal's natural hormonal system.

In February, the Washington Post reported that the concentration of intersexed fish is greatest near towns or near heavily farmed land. One major source of these endocrine disruptors is thought to be the post-treatment "cleaned" water from municipal sewage treatment centers that is discharged directly into the Potomac River system and runoff from fields "fertilized" with sludge.

In 2006, U.S. Geological Survey scientists surveyed chemical contaminants found in sludge "destined for land application" and concluded, "Potential concerns about the environmental presence of OWCs [Organic Wastewater Contaminants] include adverse physiological effects, increased rates of cancer, and reproductive impairment in humans and other animals, as well as antibiotic resistance among pathogenic bacteria."

In 2004 when the intersexed fish were first discovered in the Potomac, Gina Solomon, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) told the Associated Press, "It is not good news that there's something that feminizes fish in your water." Particularly when the Potomac is the source of drinking water for Washington, D.C.

Egg-bearing male fish had first been found in 2003 in the South Branch, a Potomac tributary in Hardy County, W.V., from which some locals get their water. A 2004 survey found that women in Hardy County have higher-than-normal rates of cancer of the ovaries and uterus.

This news of male fish bearing eggs was followed with an April report by the Associated Press that in 2000, nine Baltimore families -- all black residents of the city's east side -- received food coupons in exchange for permission to allow researchers to spread "Class A" Baltimore sewage sludge (brand name, Orgro High Organic Compost) on their yards, till it into the soil and then plant grass seed.

The rationale for this experiment was to find out whether municipal sewage sludge could lower the amount of lead that children who played in the nine experimental yards would absorb. Veolia Water, the corporation that markets Baltimore municipal sludge as Orgro, claims its "beneficial biosolids" are so safe they are even used on the White House lawn.

"Beneficial biosolids" is the term that Powell Tate, a D.C.-based public relations firm, invented in the early '90s, in an attempt to linguistically detoxify the 7 million tons of sludge -- industrial waste, hospital waste, pharmaceuticals in addition to feces -- that the nation's 16,000 municipal sewer systems produce each year.

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Joel Bleifuss is the editor of In These Times, where he has worked as an investigative reporter, columnist and editor since 1986.

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