Bush's EPA won't stop sludge fertilizer

[Atman]

WASHINGTON - Farmers and others who use sewage sludge as fertilizer will not face government restrictions over the possible cancer-causing dioxins it may contain.

The Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) said Friday it would not regulate dioxins in land-applied sludge because it believes there to be minimal danger from dioxins, a class of organic chemicals that the agency's studies have shown pose a possible cancer risk in humans.

"The risk of new cancer cases from this source is small, is substantially smaller than other chemicals we regulate," said Geoffrey Grubbs, who heads the EPA Office of Water's science and technology programs. "We just do not see a basis or justification for further regulation of this particular set of contaminants in sludge."

According to EPA's analysis, only 0.003 new cases of cancer could be expected each year — a statistic that means roughly one case every 300 years — from exposure to dioxins in sludge used on farms to fertilize crops and animal feed.

About 5.6 million tons of sewage sludge is used or disposed of each year in the United States, including more than 3 million tons used as fertilizer on farms, forests, parks, golf courses, lawns and home gardens.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=541&e=2&u=/ap/epa_sludge_dioxin

[diamond14]

1. now that there's no regulation at all....there will no longer be

any chemical analyses performed on sludge to even determine if there are any dioxins present....

sludge often contains industrial wastes, and many big cities process industrial waste routinely through their treatment systems, and do it well...and NOW, under the NEW shrub policy, there will be NO chemical analyses for dioxin in sludge...so shrub's big donors can now stuff their dioxins into their sludge and flush into their neighborhood city treatment plant totally undetected...I was in Detroit in 2000, when an industrial plant sent an illegal chemical down into the Detroit Sewage Treatment Plant...the CHEMIST found it in their analyses IMMEDIATELY, and the president of the industrial plant was rapidly on his way to jail...well, that won't happen anymore under shrub's NEW policies...

no analyses, no problem....that was easy....

the shrub is going to kill us all...and leave any and all children suffering from teratogenic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic toxins....just when we were starting to make some progress under Clinton...here comes the toxic shrub from Texas....a killer in so many ways...

[Dover]

2. Buy Organic. This fertilizer is not allowed under the organic label.

...

I think this calls for a class action lawsuit against the EPA.

[ameriphile]

3. Yep

This is the "shit geyser" that Al Franken talks about in "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them"

[this_side_up]

4. This junk was used either

in the 60s or early 70s on the San Franciso 49rs
football field.

Some of them came down with very rare, very odd cancers.

They stopped using it.