The White House Organic Garden Contaminated With High Levels of Lead and Other Sludge Wastes

The Environmental Pollution Agency needs to re-name themselves The Environmental Protection Agency and do just that... oh wait a minute, na, yeah, thats right...
(I'm not dislexic, I think)....

continuing...

"Farmers who care about what they grow know this, and -- despite the best efforts of government and the sludge industry -- growing food in sewage sludge is prohibited under the federal organic regulations. Still, sludge is still widely used as a cheap alternative to fertilizer, and unless you're buying organic produce, it's impossible to know if the food you eat was grown in it.

Remarkably, the EPA creators of the sludge program claim they didn't anticipate any health problems to be associated with spraying sludge near people's homes or on their food. They assumed that natural conditions would disperse the toxins, and that bad bacteria would die as they naturally do in rich, aerobic soil and in compost. But sewage sludge is not soil; no matter how you treat it, it will never have the characteristics, either physical or biological, that make good soil and good compost so effective at killing human pathogens. It's toxic, and it lays there for years, still toxic.

So when people living or working in the vicinity of sludged fields and when diary cows and other farm animals grazing on sludged land have gotten sick from heavy metal, chemical or pathogen based maladies, the EPA has either ignored, denied or, in some cases, even fraudulently covered it up. However it's getting harder for the agency to ignore the toll of sludged land as we see increasing reports in adjacent communities of elevated levels of cancer or deaths believed to be related to sludge exposure. In some areas where sludge has been heavily used, whole families are evincing the same symptoms: sores in their nasal passages, chronic staph infections, crippling headaches and sinus troubles. Yet -- despite the mounting evidence -- EPA wants to continue to promote sludge as a benign alternative to fertilizer.

The Obamas may be the newest sludge victims. Certainly Michelle Obama's hopes of having a truly organic garden and healthy vegetables for her own children and other children who visit the White House have been dashed. The impact on their lives is symbolic; it's not just the Obamas under threat, it's all of us. Municipalities around the country have jumped on the bandwagon to sell their "biosolids" to sludge companies, a convenient solution to profitably rid themselves of hazardous waste. Over the last several years, we have all become unwilling guinea pigs, testing the safety of foods raised on sewage-sludged land. We're also unknowing guinea pigs, since none of this produce is labeled to show how it was grown.

What can you do about this? Buying certified organic produce raised under rules that forbid this practice is a safe start. Next, let's urge the EPA to place a permanent ban on "land application" of sewage sludge; our foods should never be grown in hazardous waste. And in the best spirit of NIMBY, the Obamas, after removing that contaminated soil from their lawn, should be the first family to push the EPA to halt the sludging of our public lands and farmlands."

Wow. I think this "land application" technique may also be what has caused other salmonella outbreaks. The Epa: What is it really good for? Thanks for this, Seajade. I'm featuring this on the Sustainable Agriculture Channel.

http://current.com/topics/86293911_sustainable-agriculture/

And still a good lesson to us all!

Did anyone see a report on this in mainstream media? It is a good lesson kenny, but only if we can have the truth out there!

WOW! Thanks for this post, I had no idea! Can someone explain to me why the hell you would want to spread sewer sludge all over your lawn and if they can do anything about it?

Delia: Toxic industries have a great big enormous propaganda machine, otherwise known as Public Relations companies, that have done a great spinning job in order to make a lot of money without caring about the consequences.... Usually the same people that own these toxic industries or own large shares of them, own and or have large shares in mainstream media industries, Wall Street, Industrial Agriculture, Washington DC (that would be paying off politicians), etc and so it goes..
That would mean then that profit would be one reason... these people also apparently have a great desire to express their insanity and short sightedness, that would be another...

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand toxins=poisons, you put them in our food, we will feel it at some point... these same people that are disconnected from this concept are hell bent on the rest of us suffering from their lack of wisdom.

The Obamas were fortunate enough to have discovered this early on, many people don't have the luxury of being able to have their soil tested (or told why they shouldn't have an organic vegetable garden), can you imagine... there have to be millions of people potentially exposed to this same toxic waste....

Michelle Obama should switch immediately to Square Foot Gardening - far less work, far less water, totally organic, much greater yields, than in conventional gardening.

On the bright side, this brings to light many issues surrounding poisonous water and waste. Not really any way the average citizen would be aware of a toxic fertilizer being applied 10-15 years ago. This is exactly why, also, human waste should not be used on ground intended to grow food for human consumption. It is full of human-specific, dangerous organisms. You might as well fertilize your garden with rotting corpses.

You mentioned hemp as a crop that can bind toxic metals. Are there any other, legal crops that could be used until such time that hemp is legalized?

I like to think Michelle Obama is still someone who cares about healthy food. This is an opportunity for her, and resultantly a lot of us, to learn that healthy food isn't as straight forward as a lot of us think.

Washington, DC at one time was a swamp. Earth and other stuff was moved there to fill in the swamp and make the area 'safe' to hold large buildings. I wonder where all that fill came from?
And BTW some hemp material is legally obtainable. You can purchase cloth and yarn made with hemp.

When I lived in DC about 4 years ago, the water dpt gave everyone a Britta water pitcher and filters because the drinking water had such high levels of lead, due to lead seams and lead pipes in a lot of the water delivery lines.

They could be spraying lead on every time they water the lawn.

interesting post SeaJade.

@LizzChristed on twitter says "Huffpost - what we do to the Land, we do to ourselves."

Eat poop.....