News » September 24, 2009

Michelle Obama, How Does Your Garden Grow?

Critics say EPA standards allowing sewage sludge to become fertilizer are outdated.

By Sisi Tang

First Lady Michelle Obama harvests vegetables from the White House Kitchen Garden with students from Bancroft Elementary School on the South Lawn of the White House on June 16. (Photo by: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The potential public health threat posed by the application of sewage sludge as fertilizer made news in June when lead levels of 93 parts per million (ppm) were reported in Michelle Obama’s garden.

According to a February National Park Service soil analysis, the levels of arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead on the White House South Lawn were all at levels deemed safe by the EPA.

Yet some public health experts maintain the EPA’s current heavy-metal safety standards are outdated. What’s more, the EPA sludge standards don’t include other dangerous contaminants that lurk in sewage. A stew of new pharmaceuticals, personal care products and cleaning agents gush down drains daily, and are later processed through municipal treatment plants. The resulting sewage sludge, known euphemistically as “biosolids,” is then applied as fertilizer to land.

Sewage sludge, under the brand name ComPRO, was last applied to the White House South Lawn in the mid ’80s, according to D.C. Waste and Sewer Authority (DC WASA) Biosolids Manager Chris Peot.

More recently, the George W. Bush administration encouraged federal agencies and contractors to purchase recycled products, and in 2003 added “compost from biosolids” as a recommended product of the federal green purchasing program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Subsequently, much to the sludge industry’s delight, 1,500 cubic yards of sludge was used in the 2004 conversion of Pennsylvania Avenue into a pedestrian mall.

The EPA sets the bar for heavy metal levels considered safe for gardens and contact with children. Yet the current one-size-fits-all lead standard doesn’t account for the different bioavailability of various chemical forms of lead. According to David L. Johnson, a professor at the school of Environmental Science and Forestry at the State University of New York in Syracuse, 93 ppm of lead acetate is very different from 93 ppm of lead chloropyromorphite, as the latter is more likely to be absorbed into an organism’s circulation system. Neither the Park Service’s White House South Lawn report nor EPA regulations account for these variables.

A number of potentially harmful non-metallic toxins commonly found in sewage sludge are not regulated by the EPA. The typical soil report tests only for some biological pathogens and heavy metals. “It’s fair to say that EPA rules in general are out of date,” says Murray McBride, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute. What’s more, EPA rules have failed to take into account the surface water runoff from sludge application sites. That runoff is thought to contribute to the sudden appearance of intersexed fish in the Potomac River.

EPA regulations on sewage sludge have collected dust since 1993, when current standards for sewage sludge disposal were first implemented. In 2001, the EPA revisited the standards for a biennial review required by the Clean Water Act, and concluded that no additional pollutants should be included. In 2002, the National Research Council’s Committee on Toxicants and Pathogens in Biosolids Applied to Land report gingerly broached the subject of local outbreaks of sewage-sludge-induced illnesses, but fell shy of an actual judgment on the safety of biosolids usage. The report also found the EPA did not have a systematic way of documenting local complaints.

In response to the EPA’s failure to take any action, in 2007 the Cornell Waste Management Institute compiled a matrix of reported incidents of illnesses near sewage sludge application sites, documenting a slew of symptoms ranging from nosebleeds and thyroid disorders to vomiting and cancer.

The EPA finally responded to the 2002 National Research Council’s report and in January published the Targeted National Sewage Sludge Survey Report (TNSSSR), which covered sludge from 74 publicly-owned treatment works in 35 states. The EPA tested for and discovered in all samples additional metals, disinfectants, steroids and flame retardants never before scrutinized as pollutants.

But recognition of potential risks on paper does not translate to action. “At this point, there’s not enough known about each one of these microconstituents that are in there to allow major efforts right now in developing standards,” says Alan Rubin, the EPA’s retired senior scientist and Chief of the Sludge Risk Assessment Branch in 1993, when the EPA first redefined sewage sludge as fertilizer.

The EPA refuses to release information about the progress of its deliberations and no decisions have been made on whether sludge will be more strictly regulated. For the rest of the year, the EPA will study the risks of certain sludge pollutants and their toxicity to humans and wildlife. Maybe standards will be written for some of those toxins. Maybe sewage plants will be required to implement extra treatments to bring down levels of certain pollutants. But what is certain is that the elimination of sewage sludge use as a “tried and true” fertilizer is not on the table at the EPA.

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• Reader Comments

  The article by Sisi Tang on Mrs. Obama’s garden warrants further elaboration on the issues with sewage sludge. Sewage sludge may well be a source of antibiotic resistant bacteria and other pathogens. Current standards from EPA do not control for these issues. Below is part of a memo that is going to high-level government officials. It will be interesting to see how they respond to the memo.

  
  In this memo, I raise a number of questions impinging not only upon EPA, but also upon the jurisdictions of FDA, H&HS; and CDC.

  I have found through non-EPA sources, a published EPA paper written by Meckes in 1982. ( www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?;arti=2418348pageindex=1) It discusses and demonstrates the production and dissemination of antibiotic resistance by sewage processing. Thus it is evident that EPA has known about the production and entrainment of antibiotic resistance in sewage and its byproducts since at least the early 1980’s.

  EPA must begin addressing the public health issues created by antibiotic resistance arising from sewage and its byproducts. Thus the Obama garden is suspect.

  
  The current silence by the EPA on the subject laps across agency lines because other federal, state, and local agencies depend upon adequate and accurate data from EPA. As it is, the current tests and indicator organisms within the standards are not reflective of these risks. This missing information from EPA has and will continue to have a profound adverse impact on this nation’s health, health care costs, and food security.

  To give some idea of how advanced this paper by EPA was, it will be instructive to look at some of its text. In addition, note that Meckes and thus the Agency were well aware that the literature and findings of others indicated that sewer plants were generators of resistance and its release into the environment at large. This included treated effluent and sludge.

  
  The Meckes paper notes:————“It is evident from this work as well as the work of others (10,13-15,29) that antibiotic resistant coliforms are entering the aquatic environment via treated municipal wastewater effluence. When bacteria which carry transmissible R-factors (R+ bacteria) (R=resistance) are ingested by a human host, the R-factors may transfer into commonly occurring bacteria of the gastrointestinal tract (32).”

  
  Meckes, then makes this far-reaching statement—- “These organisms may subsequently transfer this resistance to pathogenic organisms, resulting in reduced efficacy of antimicrobial chemotherapy in the event of an infection. In vivo studies have shown that when individuals carrying R+bacteria are subjected to antibiotic therapy, these organisms flourish and transfer their resistance to other bacteria (25).”

  Because his paper was generally sequestered by EPA, other regulatory agencies at the state and local level would be deprived of these key findings. Absent this critical information the, non-federal regulatory community assume that that if EPA has no information, they also have no information, hence these non-federal agencies fail to appreciate the situation. As an example, the state of California’s various regulatory agencies were queried on this subject and each merely punted the issue back to EPA which saw a dead end. Thus approximately three decades would pass before the issue of antibiotic resistance and sewage reached sufficient attention within the public, mainly through the lay press, to bring the topic forward. The lay press, however would not likely discuss the more complex issue of genetic transfer of sewage generated antibiotic resistance into the gut flora. Thus by the removal of Meckes paper from its websites and data bases, the agency was apparently able to carry out a subterfuge.

  Posted by DrEdoMcGowan on Sep 25, 2009 at 12:19 AM

  Well we have brought the Obama garden back again, in spite of the fact that biosolids were not the likely source of the lead found in the soil samples. The most recent analysis found lead at 14 ppm, very low for an urban soil. We have tried to address this issue and would suggest a look at http://www.mabiosolids.org for our thoughts and research on this matter.

  The question of lead species, which I have not seen raised before, is one which I will need to research.  A couple of abstracts discussing lead chloropyromorphite seem to suggest this is a less soluble form, and the issue of lead mineralogy would seem to relate more to direct ingestion than plant uptake.  Again, the lead levels in the soil are very low, and likely not caused by biosolids addition.  If you would like to see what Dr. Johnson has to say about the Obama garden lead, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eddie-gehman-kohan/the-only-thing-toxic-abou_b_224 4854.html. 

  
  Why is Cornell the only university polled about the current state of the regulations?  Cornell has a long-standing opposition to biosolids land application, however the majority of the research done on biosolids shows it to be a beneficial soil amendment which does not pose a danger to health or the environment.  I also find it interesting that the reporter connected intersexed fish in the Potomac and biosolids runoff. I have not seen this research and would be interested in how she came to this conclusion. Biosolids land application, when done according to the federal and state requirements, will generate little or no runoff, and the work I have seen so far on estrogenic compounds in biosolids suggest they are retained in the soil and subject to degradation by the soil environment.

  Regarding the reference to health effects, I would direct the reader to the very recent report by the Virginia Expert Panel on biosolids which found no credible evidence of health impacts from biosolids land application.  You can find this report at
  http://www.deq.state.va.us/info/biosolidspanel.html

  Posted by Michael Wardell on Oct 4, 2009 at 12:47 AM

  http://www.medindia.net/news/US-Judge-Orders-Compensation-of-Farmer-Ruined-by y-Sludge-Used-as-Fertilizer-33915-1.htm

  I am concerned about S 510
  2749 passed the house
  Michael Taylor is food safety czar
  He was a vice president of Monsanto
  politics co-opts science.
  In the name of making food safe
  a law will be passed to ruin small farmers
  and make food less safe.

  Posted by henry buehler on Oct 14, 2009 at 5:51 AM

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