A Response To Chris Peot
In contrast to Chris Peot who is paid to promote biosolids and can afford GAP clothes, I live on a retirement income and have no conflict of interest when commenting and researching the use of sewage sludge.
I have a Harvard Ph.D. designed, administered, and taught environmental science courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and chaired the Department of Science, Technology, and Society, before retiring. For the last 12 years I have worked full-time and gratis with top scientists, attorneys, activists, and sludge victims, researching the risks of land application.
Peot's comment contains a number of unsubstantiated statements and a lot of misleading information. Let me just point out a few of them.
First, sludge quality is not much improved because of the pretreatment program. Pretreatment only reduces, not eliminates, a very SMALL proportion of the contaminants that end up in the waste stream. The majority of industries don't even need to pre treat their waste water. Those that do, are often in significant non-compliance. EPA has warned that the current pretreatment system is not working and in a critical state.
Second: Peot implies that the toxic material in sludge is in such small quantities that it can not do harm. He ignores that chemical compounds can react with each other, and that breakdown products are often more harmful than the parent chemical. He gets hung up on triclosan, but ignores a much more serious problem caused by alkaline-based detergents used by every industy and every household in the country. Breakdown products of these detergents are powerful hormone disrupting agents. This brings me to
Third: Hormone disrupting compounds do their damage in very small amounts: parts per trillion. It is not the dose that matters, but when a developing organisms is exposed to these gender-bending agents, that matters.
Four: current US sludge standards permit amounts of the so-called micronutients in much higher quantities than are essential for plants. In fact, when used according to the permitted levels, this metals become poisons. Note also that Peot does not mention lead, mercury, cadmium, or arsenic. All powerful poisons, and all permitted in sludge.
Five:
The "conservative" risk assessment that Peot refers to has been debunked by the 2002 National Academy of Sciences.
Six: I am surprised that Peot can claim that his researchers are independent. Many of them get paid by WEF and "the shit capitalists" to publish only findings that support land application. Often even fraudulent studies are published in peer reviewed journals to defend the practice (see the recent Qui Tem case posted on www.sludgefacts.org)
Seven: Finally, I am surprised that Peot, who is a Biosolids Manager, believes that molybdenum and chromium are regulated by the EPA. They are not.
Caroline Accusing Chris of a conflict of interest because he is a professional in the field working in a public agency is very weak. Makes you sound very defensive even saying this.
You have an impressive list of credentials but that does not immunize you from becoming an irrational toxicsphobe. I have seen over the course of my career this affecting some impressively titled people working in the EPA. This is a problem that transcends rational discourse. My own professional background is in, among other areas, toxicology. There is a saying among pharmacology professionals: the three rules of pharmacology are its the dose, the dose, the dose. Your flat out assertion that there are heavy metal contaminants in biosolids is extremely misleading if the concentrations are in trace amounts as Chris is suggesting. Given that he actually works in the field and has access to the data, I think we should go with his judgment.
The potential problem with hormone disrupting agents are just that -- theoretical possibilities based on observations of contaminated effluents from waste water treatment plants extrapolated to biosolids. There does not seem to be any observed problem here.
January 9, 2009 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hormone disrupting compounds do their damage in very small amounts: parts per trillion. It is not the dose that matters, but when a developing organisms is exposed to these gender-bending agents, that matters.
This seems to me to be a bad way of putting it - of course the dose matters. Now, it may be possible that the dose doesn't need to be very high to cause damage, but obviously there is going to be some dose-response, unless you are claiming that one molecule of a contaminant in the ocean is as bad as an ocean made completely of contaminants (to do a reductio ad absurdum).
Obviously, I am being a little pedantic here, but I think that it would be good to phrase things a little more precisely.
January 9, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are not at all being pedantic here. Among the toxicsphobic ideologues dose response curves have a different meaning. It is illustrated with the following example. Say we do a study on X, a potential carcinogen, with mice. Mice are treated with say 1 part per hundred of X and further say that 5% of the mice develop tumors. That result will be exptapolated to human exposure by claiming that 1 part per 10 million will cause tumors in 5 out of 10 million people. It doesn't make scientific sense but that is how these people think.
January 9, 2009 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is precisely at that sentence -- your very first -- that I knew I would not waste any time reading much further.
Do tell... are you shopping at Goodwill these days? Really! Does that fact the Mr. Peot is still young enough to draw a paycheck irk you? Really??!!! Should we presume you do your research as an unpaid hobby? Really!!!!!
Sewage sludge? Really???? You're going all snarky right off the bat over sewage sludge? Really.
January 9, 2009 8:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ouch.
I've been on the receiving end of Jade snark before... (and I love it)
But...
Ouchtown, population you C-Snyd.
January 9, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink