EPA Sued Over Forever Chemicals in Human Sewage Dumped on Food Farms

This article originally appeared on Infowars and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Sean Miller

A substance known as ‘biosolids’ or ‘biosludge‘ is sewage by a different name. Made out of everything flushed down the toilet or washed down the drain, it is regularly dumped on American farmland in the name of ‘fertilization’.

The ‘product’ is heavily contaminated with forever chemicals such as polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Now a family is suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for allowing the spreading of sewage with forever chemicals which caused them health problems.

The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed the lawsuit on behalf of the injured parties.

“Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) faces a federal lawsuit over its failure to prevent toxic per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in biosolid fertilizers from contaminating farmlands, livestock, crops, and water supplies. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed the lawsuit on behalf of a group of farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods and health were decimated after PFAS-laden biosolids from neighboring properties leached onto their land,” a press release by PEER said Thursday.

The lawsuit alleges that the EPA violated the Clean Water Act by failing to identify at least 18 PFAS in the sewage.

“Plaintiffs James Farmer, Robin Alessi, Patsy Schultz, Karen Coleman, and Tony Coleman (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) are farmers and ranchers in Grandview, Texas whose property, livelihoods, and health have been harmed by PFAS contamination in sewage sludge spread on a neighbor’s property. They bring this complaint against the United States Environmental Protection Agency and its Administrator (collectively “EPA”) under the citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act (CWA), 33 U.S.C. § 1365(a)(2), for failing to perform its non-discretionary duty to identify and regulate toxic pollutants in sewage sludge as required by 33 U.S.C. § 1345(d). Specifically, EPA has failed to identify as existing in sewage sludge at least eighteen toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that scientific evidence shows are present in sewage sludge in concentrations which may adversely affect public health or the environment, in violation of 33 U.S.C. § 1345(d)(2),” the lawsuit said in the ‘Introduction’ section.

Stephen Stevick wrote about the contaminated sewage that is put on farmland in an article for Environmental Health News in The Defender.

“In addition to a list of assumed contaminants — such as heavy metals, microplastics, radioactive waste and pathogens — the agency requires evidence of toxicity of any given sample of sewage sludge before deeming it harmful to human health or the environment,” The Defender said. “Each sample may vary widely. In effect, aside from that list and limited treatment protocols, the EPA, while labeling it a pollutant, assumes sewage sludge to be harmless until proven otherwise. It is labeled by the EPA as “biosolids” and is provided free of charge to farmers to fertilize their farmland. For agricultural communities, the offer of free fertilizer is difficult to refuse. For urban and industrial regions, the disposal of sewage sludge on agricultural land as fertilizer is a relatively convenient and cheap solution.”

The EPA is not preforming it’s stated objective, according to those involved in the organization which filed suit, according to their Thursday press release.

“EPA is avoiding its longstanding legal responsibility to protect our health and environment from PFAS in biosolids,” stated PEER Science Policy Director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with EPA. “It is unconscionable that EPA has allowed these toxic chemicals to threaten our nation’s food and water supply.”

PEER issued an earlier press release in February which stated their intention of suing the EPA as well as listing specific findings of the contamination.

https://peer.org/texas-farms-poisoned-pfas-laden-biosolid-fertilizers/

“To put these levels in perspective, one 8-ounce serving of these fish would exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) reference dose, or the estimate of ingested dose of a chemical that is unlikely to result in noncancer health effects, for PFOS exposure by 30,000 times, and consumption of one serving of the calf liver would exceed EPA’s reference dose by 250,000 times,” the press release said.

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