In Global Development of Organic Agriculture: Challenges and Prospects the authors hint at the potential for the use of composted human wastes claiming the tremendous benefits to the soil. This topic is also hinted at in the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) Growing Organic Web Pages. Reclaiming these lost of nutrients in the urban sewage treatment systems could easily be enough to renew the fertility of the world's agricultural soils.
Most people do not agree. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) strongly recommends that sewage sludge NOT be allowed in organic systems claiming the content of dangerous chemicals, detergents etc. In Eco Living Solutions the authors are strongly against the use of human wastes in agricultural systems claiming high chemical and heavy metal content. In many places around the world, including Nova Scotia, farmers, activists and political parties are fighting against the use of sewage sludge on farmland.
The primary problem with this discussion is that much of the data is from 1988 or older. Urban sewage treatment systems have changed significantly in much of the world since then. Opening up this debate could help re-design the way sewage is treated and recycled. The benefits to farm systems, food production and the poisoned and over-nutrified aquatic eco-systems could be significant.
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Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes
The US EPA and waste industry are promoting the landspreading of Class B sewage sludge containing infectious human and animal prions on grazing lands, hay fields, and dairy pastures. This puts livestock and wildlife at risk of infection. They ingest large quantities of dirt and top dressed sludge with their fodder.
ReplyDeletePrion infected Class A sludge "biosolids" compost is spread in parks, playgrounds, home lawns, flower and vegetable gardens - putting humans, family pets, and children with their undeveloped immune systems and hand-to-mouth "eat dirt" behavior at risk. University of Wisconsin prion researchers, working with $100,000 EPA grant and a $5 million Dept. of Defense grant, have found that prions become 680 times more infectious in certain types of soil. Prions can survive for over 3 years in soils. And human prions are 100,000 times more difficult to inactivate than animal prions
Recently, researchers at UC Santa Cruz, and elsewhere, announced that Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a prion disease. "Prion" = proteinaceous infectious particle which causes always fatal TSEs (Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) in humans and animals including BSE (Mad Cow Disease), scrapie in sheep and goats, and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer, elk and moose. Human prion diseases are AD and CJD (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease,) and other rarer maladies. Infectious prions have been found in human and animal muscle tissue including heart, saliva, blood, urine, feces and many other organs.
Alzheimer's rates are soaring as Babyboomers age - there are now over 5.3 million AD victims in US shedding infectious prions in their blood, urine and feces, into public sewers. This Alzheimer's epidemic has almost 500,000 new victims each year. No sewage treatment process inactivates prions - they are practically indestructible. The wastewater treatment process reconcentrates the infectious prions in the sewage sludge.
Quotes from Dr. Joel Pedersen, Univ. of Wisconsin, on his prion research:
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Our results suggest that if prions were to enter municipal waste water treatment systems, most of the agent would partition to activated sludge solids, survive mesophilic anaerobic digestion, and be present in
treated biosolids. Land application of biosolids containing prions could represent a route for their unintentional introduction into the environment. Our results argue for excluding inputs of prions to municipal wastewater treatment."
"Prions could end up in wastewater treatment plants via slaughterhouse drains, hunted game cleaned in a sink, or humans with vCJD shedding prions in their urine or faeces, Pedersen says"
(Note - This UW research was conducted BEFORE UCSC scientists determined that Alzheimer's Disease is another prion disease which may be shedding infectious prions into public sewers and Class B and Class A sludge "biosolids.)
Helane Shields, Alton, NH 03809
www.sludgevictims.com/pathgens/prions-composting.html
www.sludgevictims.com/pathogens/prion.html
Good to be hearing about the various stages and types of manure and sludge. It is important to keep in mind the kind of returns we give to the soil but it does seem we ought to consider composted human sewage.
ReplyDeleteI found two studies that support the notion that composting the wate can kill the prions: canhttp://www.cababstractsplus.org/abstracts/Abstract.aspx?AcNo=20073028863
http://books.google.de/books?hl=en&lr=&id=F6VeWD5ewK4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA361&dq=%22Epstein%22+%22Human+pathogens:+hazards,+controls,+and+precautions+in+...%22+&ots=QcREk7CgeM&sig=E0w1fiBiG79hkODfocvH4GoDfFM#v=onepage&q=%22Epstein%22%20%22Human%20pathogens%3A%20hazards%2C%20controls%2C%20and%20precautions%20in%20...%22&f=false
Organic Activists Will Dump Sewage on the Steps of San Francisco City Hall March 4 at Noon
ReplyDeleteBay Area Gardeners Will Give Back Toxic Sewage Sludge that City Distributed Using the Ruse of "Organic Compost"
RVSP on Facebook
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Community gardeners who were misled into accepting toxic sewage sludge from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) are giving the sludge back to the Mayor's office at 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place on March 4th at Noon.
Twice a year since 2007, the SFPUC has hosted "Compost Giveaway Events" in locations throughout the city. Although the city has marketed the material as "organic compost" or "organic fertilizer," it turns out that it is really toxic sludge generated by San Francisco and seven other counties' industrial, hospital, commercial and residential sewage. Residents who had lined up at the giveaways were outraged to learn of SFPUC's bait-and-switch.
"I had no idea that the free sludge was toxic. I am just shocked that this has happened for so long," says one such gardener, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by the city. "I have some stuff left in the shed but I won't use it. I am very unhappy about the entire situation; I have used biosolids [a made-up euphemism for sewage sludge] for two straight years only to find out that it doesn't adhere to the community garden's strict rules on organic practices."
In fact, the USDA explicitly prohibits food grown in sewage sludge, or in any "product" derived from sewage sludge, to be labeled organic. Sewage sludge is a noxious stew derived from all the industrial, hospital, commercial, residential and radioactive wastes and storm water runoff that end up in municipal sewer systems.
San Francisco wants you to believe that their sewage sludge is greener and safer than most cities because SF is less industrialized. Their website falsely claims that the "free compost" being given away comes from SF's sludge alone.
In fact SF's "free organic fertilizer" comes from eight counties besides SF, some of them--like Fresno and Solano--heavily industrialized with giant oil refineries, metals industries and chemical plants that generate enormous quantities of hazardous and toxic materials. This sludge containing hazardous materials from all eight counties are blended at Synagro's waste management facility in Dos Palos and then shipped back to SF to be "given away" to the unsuspecting public as "organic biosolids compost."
Spearheaded by the Organic Consumers Association and joined by representatives of dozens of local environmental groups, citizens will dump the sludge on the steps of City Hall and hand deliver a letter calling for Mayor Newsom to 1) end the give-aways and 2) clean up the school yards and backyard gardens that have been contaminated.