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Published online 14 May 2008 |
453,
262-263
(2008)
| doi:10.1038/453262a
Corrected online: 28 May 2008
News
Raking through sludge exposes a stink
Environmental Protection Agency scientists accused of fabricating data about health effects of fertilizer.
A former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist is suing the agency's officials and researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens, alleging that they manufactured and published false data to support the use of potentially harmful sewage sludges as fertilizers. The sludges have been linked to health problems in humans and cattle — and even deaths.
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The way these sewage sludge is generated, there is no "quality control". It would be a good idea that any produce from farms that use these sewage sludge be forced to put a "sewage sludge used" label so that the consumers have a chance to know and decide whether they want to take the risk.
Sewage sludge is known to contain a.o.heavy metals, PAH's and other organic micropollutants, and pathogens like spores of Cryptosporidium and Giardia. Apart from substantial health risks for humans sewage, sludge application also results in contamination of the environment. The practice of the application of "biosolids" as fertilizer on agricultural land has therefore since long been abandoned in many European countries. Gijs Oskam, The Netherlands
Although data and claims on both sides need further investigation in these particular cases, it would not surprise me to learn that sewage sludge application leads to heavy metal contamination of soil. More than 30 years ago, I worked on a project evaluating the use of phytoplankton-based aquaculture systems as tertiary treatment for residential sewage. Our facility, based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s Environmental Systems Laboratory, had sewage trucked in (at significant expense) from a substantial distance. Why? Because senior researchers wanted only sewage that was strictly residential – with no contribution from either light or heavy industrial sources. Our organisms (various marine phytoplankton, oysters, detrital feeders, lobsters) grew very well. But three steps along the artificial food chain we established, our organisms were accumulating significant quantities of heavy metals. We were shocked. Where had those contaminants come from? Household solvents/cleaners/detergents interacting with old plumbing? Food for thought.
Editor, Nature Contrary to the impression readers may have gotten from Nature’s editorial and news article on sewage sludge (Nature May 14), the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) actually removed all of Lewis’s articles and presentations from their report after receiving allegations of scientific misconduct. In an anonymous white paper submitted to the NAS, the sewage sludge industry alleged that Lewis’s research was not peer-reviewed or approved by EPA and was based on faulty science. EPA’s Inspector General found that the allegations were not based in any facts and EPA’s national biosolids spokesperson was punished for distributing them. An advance electronic version of the NAS report did cite one of Lewis’ peer-reviewed papers ; however, the citation was quickly removed after Wisconsin biosolids coordinator Greg Kester complained to the panel’s chair about EPA receiving bad press. According to Kester, the panel, which was heavily weighted with individuals supported by EPA and industry, did not wish to elevate Lewis’ work or criticize the EPA. Congress, he asserted, would use the criticisms against the agency. Ironically, the NAS study was prompted by congressional hearings into retaliations by senior EPA officials against Lewis. Nature mentioned that the NAS cited unreliable and fabricated data in the Gaskin et al. paper to dismiss the cattle deaths in Augusta, Georgia. EPA’s Robert Bastian provided these data to the NAS, and also gave the panel equally unreliable and fabricated information to dismiss the three human deaths examined by Lewis and coworkers. , In a case in New Hampshire, for example, Bastian’s information that the death was unrelated to sewage sludge came from a medical examiner who was misinformed by a state official that the sludge had been tested and did not contain any pathogens or toxic chemicals and that no one else became ill. Lewis’s research team included a pediatrician treating children exposed to sewage sludge, a medical microbiologist, and other highly qualified experts. Using dose-response curves of health complaints, including from residents with no symptoms, Lewis’s team demonstrated that respiratory, gastrointestinal and skin-related conditions associated with windblown dusts were inversely related to the distances people lived from treated land and directly related to the amounts of time winds blew across the land toward their homes. Based on DNA fingerprinting and culturing techniques, Lewis and coworkers also discovered, for example, that a pathogen known to cause respiratory failure when inhaled, Brevundimonas diminuta, had proliferated in sewage sludge spread in the New Hampshire neighborhood where many residents experienced respiratory problems and a previously healthy young man died of respiratory failure. Shamefully, many key findings and recommendations in the NAS report were based upon Lewis’s unique published works that the NAS cited in draft versions of their report and then later removed all of the citations in the final version. All of this work was later summarized in Lewis’s final article, which was published shortly after senior EPA officials associated with the agency’s sludge regulations terminated him in 2003. NAS panel member Ellen Harrison of Cornell University testified to the Department of Labor that Lewis’s work “framed†the panel’s discussions and that he was the “most important player†during the whole process. Purging all of the groundbreaking research by Lewis and coworkers from the NAS report served only one purpose, which was to clear the way for the NAS panel to claim, misleadingly, if not outright falsely, that there was no evidence linking sewage sludge to adverse health effects. Caroline Snyder, Ph.D.
The wrong-headed criticism of sewage sludge is getting very tiresome. In this article, we have the same whistle-blower, ex-EPA scientist exposing his lame version of TRUTH, and his allegations are immediately supported by a flurry of people who have also seen the truth. The stories of harm involve allegations many year's old with no verifiable by evidence. The reason why sewage sludge, a/k/a biosolids, is used by thousands of farmers is that it WORKS and it is SAFE. This fact has been supported by thousands of peer-reviewed articles over the past 30 years, conducted by hundreds of scientist at every major land grant university in the USA. Biosolids are produced by some 40,000 environmental professionals at the many thousands of this nation's wastewater treatment plants. The regulation of biosolids is permitted and reviewed by hundreds of State and Federal regulators across the country. This writer and his primary source of TRUTH would have the reader believe that some vast, malicious conspiracy among scientists, farmers, regulators and plant operators exists to hide TRUTH from the public. This is absolute NONSENSE.