With sum­mer approach­ing, home gar­den enthu­si­asts are look­ing for an effi­cient way to increase their har­vest. And out in the Bay Area, Francesca Vietor is there to help.

Most national and local gardening shops around the country sell sludge-based fertilizers. One option is Milorganite, a fertilizer advertised as “organic biosolids.” Say what?

Vietor is exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Chez Panisse Foun­da­tion, the non­prof­it arm of celebri­ty chef Alice Waters’ nat­ur­al foods restau­rant Chez Panisse. The foundation’s mis­sion is to cre­ate ​“edi­ble school­yards” where kids grow, pre­pare and eat food from their own organ­ic gardens.

Vietor is also vice pres­i­dent of the San Fran­cis­co Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion (SFPUC), which dis­trib­utes to local schools, busi­ness­es and home­own­ers what it describes as ​“organ­ic com­post.” The dirty secret is that Vietor’s much-tout­ed com­post is made from sewage sludge.

In an inves­tiga­tive report by Anna Wern­er of San Francisco’s CBS affil­i­ate, the SFPUC defend­ed the prac­tice of dis­trib­ut­ing the sludge-based fer­til­iz­er to schools by cit­ing the fact that it passed EPA stan­dards. But as EPA Senior Ana­lyst and whistle­blow­er Hugh Kauf­man points out, ​“Only 1 per­cent of the haz­ardous mate­ri­als in sludge are regulated.”

Most nation­al and local gar­den­ing shops around the coun­try sell sludge-based fer­til­iz­ers. One option is Milor­gan­ite, a fer­til­iz­er adver­tised as ​“organ­ic biosolids.” Say what?

“Biosolids” is a euphemism for sewage sludge. It was cre­at­ed in the ear­ly 1990s by the ​“Name Change Task Force” of the Water Envi­ron­ment Fed­er­a­tion (WEF). Once known as the Fed­er­a­tion of Sewage and Indus­tri­al Wastes Asso­ci­a­tions, WEF is the sewage industry’s main lob­by­ing and pub­lic-rela­tions organization.

The decep­tive word­ing has not changed one star­tling fact: Sewage sludge con­tains haz­ardous mate­ri­als, such as diox­ins, PCBs, phtha­lates, bromi­nat­ed flame retar­dants and tox­ic heavy met­als. But ​“biosolids” cer­tain­ly sounds nicer than ​“tox­ic waste.” The pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign was a suc­cess: ​“Biosolids” now appears in the Mer­ri­am-Web­ster dictionary.

In Tox­ic Sludge Is Good for You, John Stauber and Shel­don Ramp­ton argue that Amer­i­ca would have ben­e­fit­ed from com­plete­ly rethink­ing waste treat­ment. Begin­ning in the mid-1800s and con­tin­u­ing today, com­bined sew­er sys­tems – where storm water, house­hold sewage and indus­tri­al waste are mixed togeth­er – dis­charge mas­sive amounts of pol­lut­ed water, most of it ​“treat­ed,” into rivers, lakes and oceans. When the waste­water is ​“treat­ed,” tox­ic sludge – a prod­uct of waste­water treat­ment – is pro­duced. Not putting human waste into the sew­er in the first place would have allowed its use as a fer­til­iz­er to enrich agri­cul­tur­al soil.

In 1972, rid­ing the wave of new envi­ron­men­tal activism, Con­gress passed the Clean Water Act. The law man­dat­ed ​“upgrades” in sewage treat­ment. This result­ed in expen­di­tures of over $70 bil­lion between 1973 and 1999, but an unfore­seen prod­uct of the ​“upgrade” was the near dou­bling of the pro­duc­tion of sewage sludge. The ques­tion quick­ly became: What to do with sludge?

In addi­tion to human exc­re­ta, sewage sludge is the byprod­uct of what­ev­er is put down the drain in hos­pi­tals, busi­ness­es and fac­to­ries. Con­se­quent­ly it includes tox­ic heavy met­als, flame retar­dants, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs, hor­mones, endocrine dis­rup­tors, car­cino­gens and steroids (to name a few pos­si­ble ingredients).

Rather than rec­og­niz­ing sewage sludge as a dan­ger­ous waste prod­uct pro­duced by the ton every day in treat­ment plants, WEF and the EPA sought a quick­er solu­tion: re-brand the stuff. Re-brand­ing allowed sewage treat­ment facil­i­ties – like the Mil­wau­kee Met­ro­pol­i­tan Sew­er­age Dis­trict, which pro­duces Milor­gan­ite – to hood­wink the pub­lic into think­ing haz­ardous sewage sludge is fertilizer.

The fer­til­iz­er dis­trib­uted in San Fran­cis­co by the SFPUC was test­ed by the Cen­ter for Food Safe­ty. It was found to con­tain, among oth­er haz­ardous mate­ri­als, an endocrine dis­rup­tor com­mon­ly known as DEHP (which has been linked to decreased penis size, decreased semen qual­i­ty, obe­si­ty and tes­tic­u­lar tumors). The SFPUC’s own test­ing revealed tox­ic chem­i­cals like bisphe­nol A (BPA), naph­tha­lene and diox­ins in its sewage sludge.

But lawn and gar­den enthu­si­asts need not trav­el to San Fran­cis­co to dis­rupt their children’s endocrine lev­els. Com­mer­cial­ly brand­ed sewage sludge is being sold across Amer­i­ca, with brands like All-Gro, Gro­Co, and WeCare Com­post join­ing Milor­gan­ite in the sewage scam.

Milor­gan­ite is safe for ​“veg­eta­bles and oth­er edi­ble crops,” accord­ing to the product’s web­site. ​“Chil­dren and pets can safe­ly go onto areas that have been fer­til­ized with Milor­gan­ite. Milor­gan­ite meets the most strin­gent cri­te­ria imposed on any fer­til­iz­er prod­uct for health, safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal concerns.”

For what it’s worth, Milor­gan­ite does meet EPA ​“excep­tion­al qual­i­ty” cri­te­ria for heavy met­als, but since the EPA reg­u­lates only heavy met­als in sludge, any num­ber of oth­er tox­ic chem­i­cal pol­lu­tants could also be in the sludge – and, should you buy it, your garden.

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