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Journal Gazette, The (Fort Wayne, IN)
July 3, 2002
Section: METRO
Edition: Final Edition
Page: 7C

Panel frowns at fertilizer risks
Associated Press

The government is using outdated science in assessing the health risks of more than 3 million tons of sewage sludge used as fertilizer each year, a panel of scientists said Tuesday.

When the Environmental Protection Agency set standards in 1993 on the use of "biosolids" for treating soil, it used an unreliable 1988 survey to identify hazardous chemicals in sewage sludge from wastewater treatment plants, said the National Research Council panel.
Since then, the panel said, the technology for detecting pathogens and the methods for assessing health risks posed by exposure to chemicals in the sludge have developed significantly.

"There is a serious lack of health-related information about populations exposed to treated sewage sludge," said the panel's chairman, Thomas A. Burke, a health policy and management professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

The panel's 270-page report, which had been requested by EPA, found no documented scientific evidence of the EPA's standards failing to protect public health. But it said the agency needs to do more scientific work so it can "reduce persistent uncertainty" about the risks to people from exposure to chemicals and disease-causing pathogens in sludge used as fertilizer.

The EPA hasn't done a substantial reassessment to determine if its standards are supported by current scientific data and risk assessment methods, the panel said.The agency also was faulted for continuing to rely heavily on a 1990 survey that contained sampling "inconsistencies" and used reporting methods that "undermined the reliability of the data" instead of conducting new scientific studies.

EPA officials had no immediate comment. Adam Krantz, a spokesman for the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, a trade group, said "each step has indicated a lack of health risk" as the EPA studies and regulates sewage sludge.

"Everyone wants to make this into some gigantic crisis situation when there's not a sufficient degree of specific evidence" that sewage sludge poses a danger, Krantz said. "A crisis simply doesn't exist."

After sewage sludge is treated to limit concentrations of some chemicals and reduce pathogens, it is commonly known as biosolids, which can be applied as fertilizer to farms, forests, parks, golf courses, lawns and home gardens.