Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
EPA Opts Not to Regulate Dioxins in Sewage
Sludge
By J.R. Pegg
WASHINGTON, DC, October 21, 2003 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) has decided not regulate dioxins in sewage sludge that is applied
as fertilizer. The agency says the presence of dioxins in the sludge does not
pose a significant risk to human health or the environment, but critics say the
decision is irresponsible. "The EPA is required by law to protect the public
from toxic pollutants like dioxins," said Nancy Stoner, director of the Natural
Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) Clean Water Project. "This decision shows the
agency under this administration has forgotten its mission."
It was a lawsuit filed more than a decade ago by the NRDC and Oregon
environmentalists that prompted the EPA's action on the issue. Part of the
settlement agreement ordered the agency to announce a final regulation by
October 18, 2003.
There is little doubt that dioxins, which are persistent organic pollutants
produced by waste incineration and other industrial processes, can present
serious health and environmental concerns.
These toxics are known to cause cancer and diabetes, damage neurological, immune
and endocrine systems - Americans generally have a cancer risk of one in 10,000
from the dioxins they already have in their bodies.
Dioxins accumulate in the body fat of animals and people - and in sewage sludge.
This sludge, which is the byproduct of the treatment processes that purifies
wastewater, is the second largest source of dioxin exposure in the United States
after backyard burning of garbage.
Under a 1993 Clean Water Act rule, sewage sludge can be applied to land if it is
sufficiently treated to limit concentrations of certain chemicals and reduce
disease causing pathogens.
Some 5.6 million tons of sewage sludge are used or disposed of annually in the
United States, with some 60 percent applied as fertilizer to farms, parks, golf
courses, lawns and forests.
In its decision issued Friday, the agency said new analysis shows the risks from
dioxins in sewage sludge are too low to justify regulation, in particular amid
data that indicates dioxin levels in treated sewage sludge are declining.
The move abandons a 1999 proposal by the agency to add dioxin limits to the
standards governing the chemical concentrations of land applied sewage sludge.
The EPA's decision drew support from the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage
Agencies (AMSA), which says the agency's analysis reflects its own.
"This final rule reaffirms that sound science remains the bedrock on which solid
environmental policy is made," said AMSA's Executive Director Ken Kirk. "The
science behind EPA's decision is compelling."
The agency cited a statistical model for individuals they consider the most
highly exposed, defined as "people who apply sewage sludge as a fertilizer to
their crops and animal feed, and consume their own crops and meat products over
their entire lifetimes."
The EPA's analysis showed that for this theoretical population, "only 0.0003 new
cases of cancer could be expected each year or only 0.22 new cases of cancer
over a span of 70 years."
"The risk to people in the general population of new cancer cases resulting from
sewage sludge containing dioxin is even smaller due to lower exposures to dioxin
in land-applied sewage sludge than the highly exposed farm family which EPA
modeled," according to the agency.
But there is more to the issue than the cancer risk, Stoner says.
"The EPA itself has said that the non cancer risks of dioxins are so high that
it can not even calculate a 'safe' or acceptable level of exposure," she said.
"To us that says EPA should keep dioxins out of our food, and that means, among
other things, regulating sewage sludge."
Critics add that a 2002 report by the National Research Council found a lack of
health related information about populations exposed to treated sewage sludge.
The report described the EPA's standards that govern land application of the
material as based on outdated science.