Say what you want about the activists' tactics, but sludge is on the front page of today's SF paper. With a funny pun ("Groups make stink over S.F. 'biosolid' compost").
The hullabaloo is over a program by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which once a month distributes biosolid compost to gardeners, school groups and homeowners for free. The commission claims the compost is heat-treated fertilizer that is as good as the stuff sold in gardening stores.
But the Organic Consumers Association insists that the sacks given out to San Franciscans contain a stew of excrement and toxic chemicals from the sewer.
Talk about some tricky wording. Yes, the sludge is as good as stuff sold in gardening stores. And as bad. That's because gardening stores ALSO sell sludge under misleading premises. Like Milorganite, made from Milwaukee's sewage sludge, which claims it is "For better results. Naturally." That marketing claim would only be true if you consider industrial waste to be "natural."
What surprises me most about this article is that the SFPUC is STILL claiming that its sludge is safe.
"We are giving away highly treated, heat-pasteurized biosolids," said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the Public Utilities Commission. "It has been tested for metals and pathogens and is basically sterile."
Sterile, maybe. But what about heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, flame retardants, and dioxins? Some of that stuff doesn't go away when you apply heat.
The article adds two new elements to the story. First, SFPUC is now conducting rigorous tests of its sludge. I've been asking them for a few days now to give me details on the testing they are doing but haven't heard anything back yet. Second, SFPUC is complaining that the Center for Food Safety did independent testing of the sludge but refuses to share the results. This is true. The Center for Food Safety did inexpensive testing that was not sensitive enough to find small concentrations of substances and STILL found some bad stuff in the sludge. They refused to hand over their results to SFPUC because they want SFPUC to do real, more comprehensive, testing instead of relying on what CFS found.
There's a bit of controversy about testing in general because there are literally THOUSANDS of hazardous contaminants that might be found in sludge, and you can easily test sludge for just a few of them, find nothing, and declare it clean. Also, some hazardous chemicals are harmful in tiny concentrations but tests may not be sensitive enough to find those chemicals in small enough concentrations. (This is, ironically, how many people who smoke pot pass drug tests in our country... you drink a lot of water the day of your test and even though your urine contains THC, it's at a low enough concentration that it won't be detected.) Another factor is how many sludge samples are tested. Sludge isn't necessarily uniform, so one batch of the goop may yield a harmful chemical that isn't present in another batch. The fewer samples you test, the less you may find.
I will follow up on this issue as it plays out. |
