Our sewage often becomes fertilizer. Problem is, it's tainted with PFAS


Fertilizer containing sludge being applied to farmland. (Courtesy North East Biosolids and Residuals Association)

The Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant is a pollution success story. Over the last several decades, it transformed Boston Harbor from a nationally embarrassing cesspool into a swimmable bay.

The treatment plant takes everything the people of Greater Boston send down their sinks, toilets, showers and washing machines — plus industrial waste — and treats it. The treated water is clean enough to let out into the ocean. The remaining sludge gets recycled into fertilizer that’s used in nearly 20 states.

But now that fertilizer is raising fresh concerns. That’s because wastewater treatment plants like Deer Island were not built to handle the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.
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SOILED

Lettuce takes up toxic additives from tire wear

by University of Vienna

Credit: University of Vienna

Wind, sewage sludge, and waste water carry tire wear particles from roads onto farmland. A new lab study shows that the pollutants contained in the particles could get into the vegetables grown there. Researchers at the Center for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CMESS) at the University of Vienna have investigated whether chemicals released from tires find their way into lettuce plants and could ultimately end up on our plates.

Their analyses showed that the lettuce took up all the compounds studied—some of them highly toxic. Further investigations will focus on showing how this process actually takes place in arable soils. The study has now been published in the international journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Driving a car produces tire wear particles, which are blown into the environment by the wind and washed into rivers and sewage by the rain—in total around 1 kg per citizen per year. Through the atmosphere and with the waste water or the sewage sludge used as fertilizer in agriculture, the tire particles can reach agricultural soils. There, potentially harmful chemicals might be released from the tire into the environment.

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U.S. federal rule 503 is responsible for the mass distribution of sewage sludge onto America’s farmland & into our lives

The 503 Rule is the U.S. federal rule responsible for the mass distribution of sewage sludge onto America’s farmland and into our lives. Get Informed.

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA, USA, February 14, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- MOM’S RESEARCH REVEALS INCREASED RISK OF DISEASE IN HER COMMUNITY WHERE BIOSOLIDS HAVE BEEN APPLIED TO FARMLAND FOR 40+ YEARS, AND DNA THAT LINKS BIOSOLIDS TO ILLNESS. ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF NONPROFIT TO DISMANTLE AND REPLACE THE FEDERAL BIOSOLIDS RULE.

Today, February 14th, 2023, during public comments at the Oklahoma City City Council meeting, Mission503 announces their formation, as well as their pursuit to change the federal rule governing the “standards for the use and disposal of sewage sludge”, 40 CFR Part 503.

Concerned that biosolids (sewage sludge) being used on farmland near her home in northeast Oklahoma City, near Jones, OK, were making her family sick, in 2016 Paula Yockel and her young son left home to escape their illnesses from biosolids. Paula went in pursuit of facts, not knowing that 6+ years of testing and research would uncover DNA evidence linking biosolids to her illness, as well as reveal increased risk of infectious disease, cancer, respiratory disease, heart disease, mental disorders, birth defects, and other diseases in her community where Oklahoma City has land applied their biosolids for over 40 years.

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Toxic Heavy Metals in Our Food

Dark chocolate Blanxart
A recent story came out in the popular press about the heavy metals lead and cadmium being found in certain dark chocolate products. As this article points out, one of the ways these heavy metals enter our food supply is via sewage sludge applied on land as so-called 'fertilizer' where food is grown for human consumption. Here, read it yourself: What are the sources of lead and cadmium?