{"id":1556814,"date":"2022-07-15T16:34:55","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T20:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1556814"},"modified":"2022-07-15T16:35:02","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T20:35:02","slug":"experts-raise-alarm-on-harmful-chemicals-in-fertilizer-water-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/experts-raise-alarm-on-harmful-chemicals-in-fertilizer-water-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts Raise Alarm On Harmful Chemicals In Fertilizer, Water Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fexperts-raise-alarm-on-harmful-chemicals-in-fertilizer-water-systems%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1556814&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>You\u2019ve probably never heard of them, but a group of \u201cforever\u201d chemicals once seen as miraculous but now believed to cause cancer are everywhere \u2014 from the Arctic to Mount Everest \u2014 and almost certainly in your body. And one way they are spread will turn your stomach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly referred to as PFAS chemicals, are getting renewed scrutiny after the\u00a0Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dramatically\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ewg.org\/news-insights\/news-release\/2022\/06\/epa-toxic-forever-chemicals-levels-drinking-water-should-be-much\">scaled back<\/a> the levels it considers acceptable in drinking water, leading to more awareness about how dangerous exposure to these compounds truly is.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve actually poisoned the world with them,\u201d Andria Ventura, legislative and policy director at Clean Water Action\/Clean Water Fund, told The Daily Wire.<\/p>\n<p>Ventura isn\u2019t just sounding the alarm about another imagined environmental nightmare. PFAS chemicals enter our bodies via the food we eat and the water we drink, then return to the environment through human waste, forming a potentially dangerous cycle of human and environmental contamination. One way they go back into the environment is through fertilizer made from sewage.<\/p>\n<p>A report from The Guardian recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2022\/jul\/12\/north-carolina-pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-cancer\">highlighted<\/a> several families whose loved ones battled cancer after being exposed to PFAS chemicals in the Cape Fear River basin in North Carolina, an area where companies have been manufacturing the chemicals for years.<\/p>\n<p>Amy Nordberg, a wife and mother, passed away after being diagnosed with cancer following multiple sclerosis, which recent studies have connected to PFAS contamination.<\/p>\n<p>The chemicals have been linked to an array of cancers, hypertension, low birth rates, and issues with immunity, such as the ability of children to be helped by vaccines. The EPA recently decided they were so dangerous that it lowered the acceptable levels from 70 parts per trillion to as little as 0.004 parts per trillion, a drop of more than 99.9%.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.3m.com\/3M\/en_US\/pfas-stewardship-us\/pfas-history\/#:~:text=Processes%20to%20commercially%20produce%20PFAS,on%20PFAS,%20including%20Scotchgard%E2%84%A2.\">Created<\/a> in the 1940s and used in products ranging from food packaging to carpet to firefighting foam, the compounds \u201cseemed like wonder chemicals.\u201d What wasn\u2019t know then was that unlike other chemicals, they don\u2019t break down and move easily through water, air, and the food chain. Hence their now ominous descriptor: \u201cforever chemicals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">PFAS molecules,\u00a0once in a human body, cling to fats or oils and remain, Scott Wilson, CEO of Regenesis, told The Daily Wire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Erick Orellana, a policy advocate at Community Water Center, said one key source of PFAS chemicals\u00a0is sewage plants. Although now banned in some places, sewage sludge has long been used as a fertilizer, meaning chemicals passed from the body were then reinserted into the food chain.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cSo it\u2019s not only threatening the food that we eat, but also the groundwater aquifers communities [are] largely dependent on as their primary drinking water source,\u201d Orellana said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Farmers have currently been facing a crisis as supply chain issues and the increased price of fertilizer have put a strain on farms.\u00a0Bill Diedrich of Diedrich Farms, and president of the California Farm Water Coalition, told The Daily Wire that he isn\u2019t aware of anyone using sludge as fertilizer in the area. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cWe use commercial fertilizer products, and are not organic producers,\u201d he said. \u201cOur main source of fertilizer is UN 32.\u00a0 Of course we use other blends to supplement other macro and micro nutrients, but nitrogen is our most widely used nutrient.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Darree Sicher at the United Sludge Free Alliance said there\u2019s no way to stop PFAS chemicals from ending up in wastewater systems.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cEverything that goes down the drain of every home, business, hospital or industry gets \u201ctreated\u2019 at some form of wastewater treatment plant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Sewage plants screen out solids, which are then heated and chemically treated. What is left over is sludge which Sicher notes can either be incinerated, sent to a landfill or, given its high nitrogen and phosphorus content, be marketed as fertilizer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cEverything that went down the drain that you wouldn\u2019t take from your under your kitchen sink and pour on your food supply, that\u2019s what goes into sewage sludge,\u201d Sicher told The Daily Wire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">To be used as fertilizer sludge must pass EPA testing requirements. But passing muster does not mean it is free of PFAS chemicals, and if it is sold as fertilizer, it can end up on agricultural land where food grows and livestock grazes, on playgrounds, in parks, or even household gardens.<\/p>\n<p>Although the EPA has radically tightened restrictions on PFAS in water,\u00a0regulations on the use of toxic, municipal or private sewage sludge wastes have not changed in over 30 years, Sicher said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[The regulations] do not provide protection to our food, families or future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations bar\u00a0sewage sludge and biosolids from being used to grow organic foods, but even those rules don\u2019t offer protection from food grown on land previously treated with the toxic fertilizer.<\/p>\n<p>With so much farmland and water already contaminated with PFAS chemicals, Ventura said the first step is to end the use of the chemicals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cWe have to stop the bleeding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019ve probably never heard of them, but a group of \u201cforever\u201d chemicals once seen as miraculous but now believed to cause cancer are everywhere \u2014 from the Arctic to Mount Everest \u2014 and almost certainly in your body. And one way they are spread will turn your stomach. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly referred to &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1573908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1556814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1556814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1573908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}