03/03/2017 / By Isabelle Z.
When we think of environmental crimes, practices such as logging and fracking might come to mind, but some of the more sinister crimes are the ones many people don’t even realize are occurring.
In an eye-opening new documentary, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, is bravely blowing the lid off what he calls the greatest environmental crime you’ve never known: biosludge. If that word doesn’t ring a bell for you, you are not alone. In fact, the government has gone out of its way to ensure that the concept is not familiar to most people.
When people flush their toilets, raw sewage goes to wastewater treatment plants, where it is treated to decrease the levels of pathogens it contains and reduce its bad smell. The resulting product, biosolids or biosludge, is then sold to local municipalities, who use it as fertilizer in parks and even on local farms. In fact, the EPA says that every state in the nation uses this material as fertilizer. Cities are permitted to sell it to farmers to spread on their fields, and it is also being spread across school playgrounds.
If the human feces is treated with chemicals, it must be safe, right? Not according to EPA whistleblower, Dr. David Lewis, who says that these biosolids contain a host of heavy metals and toxins. When he started to ask questions about this deeply disturbing practice, he was terminated from his position as a senior level microbiologist for the agency. Prior to his termination, he managed to publish two articles about the shortcomings of the EPA’s Part 503 sludge rule in the journal Nature.
This rule monitors only a handful of the 27 metals that are found in biosludge, and completely ignores other concerning contaminants, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics and birth control pills – just the type of thing you want to be exposed to if you are hoping to come down with Alzheimer’s, autism or Parkinson’s disease.
How exactly are they getting away with this? The EPA published an agreement with wastewater trade association Water Environment Federation to fund a public acceptance campaign for biosolids. Dr. Lewis says that scientists who drew attention to the connection between biosolids and negative health effects were blacklisted or even accused of misconduct.
Adams’ film, Biosludged, explores how the EPA silenced all of the environmental scientists who tried to tell the truth about the situation and the fake science used to support the practice.
In an interview with Mother Earth News, Dr. Lewis pointed to a study funded by the EPA from the University of Georgia that concluded the deaths of cattle on two dairy farms using biosludge from the city of Augusta, Georgia, were not related to the biosolids. However, it was later discovered that the City of Augusta fabricated the environmental monitoring data used in that study.
It is clear that there is a lot about this situation that the EPA does not want the public to know. In his book, Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits, Dr. Lewis exposes the dangers of this sewage sludge, and Adams’ film presents a compelling case for why everyone should be outraged by this.
Thanks to the efforts of people like Dr. Lewis and Mike Adams, people are starting to find out just how widespread this dangerous practice is, and hopefully something will be done to put an end to it. In the meantime, those of us who would rather not eat anything that has been fertilized with our neighbors’ feces have little choice but to grow our own food.
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Tagged Under: Biosludge, EPA, fertilizer