- KING 5 TV (Seattle) reported Nov. 20, 2000, that thousands
of tons of sewage sludge (processed human waste) that has been renamed
'biosolids' are being spread on farms across the state and other states
throughout the country.
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- The practice is cause for concern in three specific areas
with regard to contamination of the food chain.
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- Last month in The Observer we reported that traces of
unmetabolized synthetic pharmaceutical drugs such as Prosac, antibiotics
and hormones are turning up in the groundwater of Europe and North America.
Levels of these substances are being detected because as much as 95 percent
of synthetic drugs ingested are not metabolized and leave the body in their
original forms through the urine and the feces. If prescription drugs are
being detected in the water after it has been treated, we can infer that
they will also be present in the ìbiosolidsî being spread
all over the crops of this nation.
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- The presence of metals in 'biosolids' is also a concern.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Washington's Department of
Ecology claim the metal content of ìbiosolidsî processed at
the state-of-the-art West Point Treatment Plant in Seattle is minimal.
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- West Point Manager Dick Finger explains that raw sewage
is digested, heated and spun at his facility until it's just right for
shipment to the fields. "We make sure the products that we produce
are of a very high quality," said Finger.
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- Government agencies also claim that the potential for
the spread of transmissible disease is low because the soil upon which
it is deposited will kill any remaining pathogens. "Am I concerned
about significant impacts to human health and the environment? No, not
based on the information I've seen so far," says state Biosolids Coordinator
Kyle Dorsey.
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- It is well known that fully decomposed material, even
if it is human waste, is beneficial to the soil as organic matter and provides
plants with the nutrients needed to grow healthy and yield abundantly.
Treated sewage is not fully decomposed. For government agencies to claim
that ìbiosolidsî are safe is to ignore a tremendously important
body of published science.
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- State of Washington 'biosolids' policy is likely contributing
to the most ominous food supply disaster looming on the human horizon:
Prions.
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- Prions are protein crystals that grow in grain fungi.
Prions are nearly indestructible. We are being exposed to prions by eating
animals such as cows that eat prion-contaminated grains. We are also being
exposed to prions when we eat prion-contaminated grains.
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- Prions are crystals; crystals are attracted to electromagnetic
energy; our brains produce electromagnetic energy; prions attracted to
our brains cause lesions called encephalopathies; encephalopathies cause
swelling of the brain; swelling of the brain causes dementia. Having prions
in your brain also makes a person more open to suggestions that may be
encoded through the transmission of TV and radio waves.
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- Prion disease, which was called 'kuru' when it was discovered
in the in New Guinea in the early 1960s, is called 'mad cow disease' in
cattle, 'whirling disease' in fish, 'scrapie' in pigs and sheep, 'wasting
disease' in wild game and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in people (there is
data to show that as many as 200,000 Americans who have been misdiagnosed
with Alzheimer's disease may actually be suffering the ravages of prion
disease).
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- If our food supply is already contaminated with prions,
which there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that it is, then 'fertilizing'
crops with human waste is going to exacerbate the situation.
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- 'Every organism has a food supply that it depends upon
for life. If the food supply is changed or contaminated, the organism must
either adapt or become extinct,' Clyde Reynolds, ND, explained.
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- Scientists at Cornell University have serious concerns
about the use of 'biosolids' as fertilizer. A team from Cornell tore apart
the EPA's assumptions about the safety of the sludge.
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- Cornell found EPA's Cancer Risk Assessment is 'not protective,'
and its enforcement and oversight is ìinadequate.î It also
found that pathogens may survive in soil, especially in cool, wet conditions.
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- The team from Cornell believes that there is no way to
protect the public from leaching and flooding that may spread live pathogens.
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- Despite these justifiable concerns, Washington state
allows sludge to be dumped in every county. There are no state-mandated
testing procedures for pathogens once 'biosolids' are dumped.
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- KING 5 test results
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- "Bob Thode spreads 22,000 wet tons of sludge over
600 acres at his Fire Mountain Farms in Lewis County. For that, he is paid
more than $400,000 a year," reported KING 5 News.
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- Thode's neighbors are not impressed with his farming
practices and equate living downstream from him to living downstream from
a flushing toilet.
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- KING 5 Investigators decided to compare a sample of the
sediment in one of Thode's ditches taken in 1994 (before 'biosolids') to
one taken in the exact same place after six years of being licensed by
the state to spread the sludge on his crops above the ditch.
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- Levels of all metals have increased drastically. KING
5 Investigators reportedly gave test results to Dorsey, who thought that
pure 'biosolids' -- not ditch sediment -- was what KING 5 tested. Levels
of pharmaceutical drugs were not tested, nor were the presence of prions
tested.
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- "While our test is not conclusive, it has raised
serious questions, and the state says more comprehensive testing may be
needed," KING 5 concluded.
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- Plants absorb metals and other soil components so long
as the particles are small enough. Therefore we have no idea how much metal
may be ingested upon consumption of food grown in ìbiosolidî
enriched soil.
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- "The government does not require food grown in sludge
to be labeled," KING 5 concluded.
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- Metal Parts Per Million in 1994 v 2000:
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