15 Toxics
Monbiot
Many of the chemicals being spread as sewage sludge are untested or can’t be assessed.
In 2017, the Environment Agency produced a startling report (pdf) on the contamination of the sewage sludge being sold or given to farmers as fertiliser by water companies.
It’s an experiment with 8 billion test subjects, no controls and no endpoint. What happens when you release thousands of novel chemicals, most of which have not been tested for their impacts on human health or ecosystems, into a living planet? What are the effects on the development of foetuses, on human brains, other organs, immune systems, cancer rates, fertility? What are they doing to other species and to Earth systems? We seem determined to find out the hard way.
Of the 350,000 registered synthetic chemicals, about a third are impossible to assess, as their composition is either “confidential” or “ambiguously described”. For most of the rest, deployment comes first, testing later. For instance, the health and environmental impacts of 80% of the chemicals registered in the European Union have yet to be assessed.
Instead of taking their liquid waste to dedicated disposal facilities, chemical and cosmetics manufacturers now pay water companies for the right to dump their loads into sewage treatment works.
In other words, two completely different waste streams – human excrement and industrial effluent – are being deliberately and irremediably mixed. This filthy cocktail is augmented by runoff and drainage from roads, building sites, businesses and homes, laced with everything from tyre crumb to PFAS (“forever chemicals”). When this chemical shitstorm hits the sewage system, it’s either pumped directly into rivers through illegal discharges by the water companies or held back as sewage sludge, now a toxic and highly complex mess.
What then happens to it? Well, the next steps are as clear as sewage. There are, the report says, “a number of gaps in the Environment Agency’s understanding of what water companies are doing with tankered industrial wastes, how they handle them and … the destinations of sludge generated”. A proliferation of “waste brokers, contractors and subcontractors” ensures that the tracking of waste from source to sink is almost impossible. Transfer and consignment notes fail to list the industrial effluents the sludge contains or to explain where it is going. It is often “miscoded”, creating a false impression that it’s safe.
But from what the agency can tell, “much of the mixed sludge was destined for farmland”. That’s not surprising: about 87% of sewage sludge ends up as fertiliser. The manufacturers get cheap disposal for hazardous waste, the water companies get paid for accepting it, and farmers get cheap or free manure. But they are not informed about the added extras.
The testing rules for sewage sludge being sent to farmland have not been updated since 1989, and cover only heavy metals, fluoride and pathogens. But thanks to the mixing of waste streams and the proliferation of new synthetic chemicals, it now contains a vast range of toxins.
Agricultural land, in other words, has become a dumping ground for hazardous industrial waste – another gift to humanity from the privatised water industry.
A great acreage of both arable and pasture land is likely to have been contaminated with a vibrant cocktail of environmental toxins. What are the effects? We have no idea. Soils receiving this sludge are routinely tested only once every 20 years, if at all, and for none of the new contaminants. The report notes that their cumulative effects could render the soil “no longer … suitable for supporting crop growth”.