Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
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The government is using outdated science in assessing the health risks of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.