First, EPA warns of ‘Forever Chemicals’ in fertilizers

For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency has warned that “perpetual chemicals” present in sewage sludge used as fertilizer may pose risks to human health, saying in a study Tuesday that, in some cases, the risks could exceed the agency’s safety thresholds. sometimes by several orders of magnitude.” However, the agency claimed that the general food supply was not threatened.

A growing body of research has shown that sludge can be contaminated with man-made chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which are widely used in everyday items like non-stick cookware and stain-resistant carpets. The chemicals, which are linked to a range of diseases including an increased risk of cancer, do not break down in the environment, and when contaminated sludge is used as fertilizer on agricultural land, it can contaminate soil, groundwater, crops and livestock.

Last year, The New York Times reported that 3M, which has been producing PFAS for decades, discovered as early as 2000 that the chemicals were showing up in sludge samples from municipal wastewater plants across the country. In 2003, 3M notified the EPA of its findings.

For decades, the EPA has encouraged the use of treated sewage sludge as a low-cost fertilizer with no limits on the amount of PFAS. But the agency’s new draft of the risk assessment sets a potential new direction. If completed, it could mark what could be the first step toward regulating PFAS in sludge used as fertilizer, which the industry calls biosolids. The agency currently regulates certain heavy metals and pathogens in sewage sludge used as fertilizer, but not PFAS.

The Biden administration has addressed PFAS contamination elsewhere, setting PFAS limits in drinking water for the first time and designating two types of PFAS as hazardous under the national Superfund cleanup law. Those rules came after the agency said in 2023 that there was no safe level of exposure to the two PFASs.

The EPA’s new assessment “provides important information to inform future actions by federal and state agencies,” as well as wastewater treatment plants and farmers, “to protect people from exposure to PFAS,” said Jane Nishida, Acting duties of the EPA Administrator. .

It is not clear what further steps the new Trump administration might take. President-elect Trump has been hostile to regulations; however, he campaigned on “getting dangerous chemicals out of our environment,” and concerns about PFAS contamination in fertilizers have reached some deep-red states.

The EPA’s risk study comes as farmers across the country are discovering PFAS on their land.

In Maine, the first and only state to systematically test its farmland for PFAS, dozens of dairy farms have been contaminated. In Texas, a group of ranchers sued a slurry fertilizer supplier last year after a neighboring farm used the fertilizer on its fields. County investigators found several types of PFAS in the ranchers’ soil, water, crops and livestock, and the ranchers have since sued the EPA, accusing the agency of failing to regulate PFAS in biosolids. In Michigan, state officials shut down a farm where tests revealed particularly high concentrations in the soil and in cattle grazing on the land.

The EPA said its analysis does not indicate the general food supply is at risk. Sewage sludge is applied annually to less than 1 percent of fertilized agricultural land, a figure that roughly matches industry data. And not all farms that used fertilizer from wastewater would pose a risk.

However, studies have found that because PFAS are so persistent in the environment, contaminated sludge applied years or even decades ago can still be a source of contamination. More than 2 million dry tons were used on 4.6 million acres of farmland in 2018, according to the biosolids industry. Farmers have received permits to use sewage sludge on nearly 70 million acres, or about a fifth of all U.S. farmland, the industry said.

The EPA has not changed its policy of promoting sludge fertilizers, which have benefits as well as risks. It is rich in nutrients, and spreading it on the fields reduces the need for burning or landfilling, which would have other environmental costs. The use of sludge fertilizer also reduces the use of synthetic fertilizers that are based on fossil fuels.

The agency said in its new assessment that on farms that used contaminated sludge, the biggest human risks included drinking milk from pasture-raised cows raised on the contaminated farm, drinking contaminated water, eating eggs from pasture-raised chickens or beef raised on contaminated soil, or eating fish from lakes and ponds contaminated by water runoff.

Particularly at risk are households that live near or rely on products from a contaminated source, such as milk or beef from a family farm contaminated with PFAS from sewage sludge, the agency said. It said that under certain conditions the risks exceeded the EPA’s acceptable thresholds by several orders of magnitude.

The general public, which is more likely to buy milk from a grocery store that sources its products from many farms, was at lower risk, the agency said. For its assessment, the EPA focused on the two most commonly detected types of chemicals ever, called PFOA and PFOS, although there are many others.

The Food and Drug Administration does not set limits on PFAS levels in food. However, since 2019, the agency has tested nearly 1,300 samples and said the vast majority did not contain the types of PFAS the agency can test for.

Some public health experts and advocacy groups have questioned the testing methodology, and the agency itself says that “food exposure to PFAS is a new scientific field and there remains much that we do not yet know.” Last year, Consumer Reports said it had detected PFAS in some milk, including organic brands. Packaging is another source of PFAS in food.

The National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which represents wastewater treatment plants across the country, said the results confirm that sludge fertilizer is not a risk to the public food supply. Sludge suppliers argued that they should not be liable for PFAS contamination, saying the chemicals were simply transferred to them.

“Ultimately, the producers of these chemicals have to bear the responsibility and cost of removing these chemicals” from their products and the environment, said Adam Krantz, the group’s executive director.

In the absence of federal action, states began to take action of their own. Maine banned the use of sewage sludge on agricultural fields in 2022, remaining the only state to do so. In December, a Texas lawmaker introduced a bill that would limit the levels of certain types of PFAS in sewage sludge applied to farmland. Oklahoma lawmakers also introduced a bill that would put a moratorium on the use of sludge on agricultural land.

A complete ban on the use of sludge as fertilizer would bring its own problems. Sludge from waste water still needs to be taken somewhere. Since Maine’s ban, some wastewater treatment plants say they have been forced to ship sewage sludge out of state.

Environmental experts say it’s important to limit the amount of PFAS that ends up in wastewater and sewage. This could come from phasing out the use of PFAS in everyday products or requiring manufacturers to treat contaminated wastewater before sending it to city wastewater treatment plants.