The Cranky Consumer
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May/June 1999
Features
Bike Friendly Cities
by Lucinda Means
Undermining the Dunes
Auto Industry Greed is Destroying Our Most Scenic Treasures
Motor City Challenge
Ecology Center Demands Cleaner Cars from Auto Industry
by Jeff Gearhart and Charles Griffith
Columns
Great Lawns
A Great Lawn with No Toxic Chemicals, by Nancy Franklin
Great Lawns without Grass, by Bret Rappaport
Welfare for Waste
National Coalition Calls for End to Anti-Recycling Subsidies
Healthy Home and Garden
Growing Herbs in Your Backyard, by Mimi Mather
The Cranky Consumer
Toxic Waste "Recycling?" by Mary Beth Doyle
Capitol Watch
New from Lansing: PR for Toothless DEQ
At the Ecology Center
Reuben Chapman, Hospitals Pledge Mercury-Free, Help Wanted, Wish List
Toxic Waste "Recycling?" Not in My Backyard!
by Mary Beth Doyle
You know what gets me cranky? Spending my hard-earned cash for the privilege of spreading industrial waste in my garden. Picture this...
It's springtime! I hurry home from work, pull out the fertilizer I bought for my garden. I'm feeling pretty good about myself as I work the Ironite Natural Fertilizer into the soil and start planting my tomatoes. I am blissfully unaware that the fertilizer I am using is formulated using mine tailings, and contains more than 22,000 parts per million of arsenic, 30 parts per million of cadmium, and a whopping 2700 ppm of lead.
So why wasn't I informed about these contaminants before I spread the fertilizer on my vegetable garden? Why are these fertilizers allowed to be sold without a warning? And just how did these contaminants get into my fertilizer in the first place?
The answer lies in a loophole that allows hazardous waste to be 'recycled' into fertilizer. "When it goes into our silo, it's hazardous waste. When it comes out of the silo, it's no longer regulated. The exact same material. That's the wisdom of the EPA," Dick Camp, President of Bay Zinc Fertilizer Company, told the Seattle Times.
Most of the 'recycled' waste comes from the steel industry, the electronics industry and chemical companies, according to a report by the Environmental Working Group. It is estimated that more than 270 million pounds of toxic byproducts were sent to farms and fertilizer companies between 1990 and 1996.
This number does not include the sale of fertilizers derived from municipal sewage sludge, like Milorganite, made from Milwaukee's wastewater treatment plant sludge. Along with wastes from household and breweries, Milwaukee receives waste water from a number of industrial dischargers. And Milwaukee is not the only municipal waste water treatment plant to package its sludge. Chicago ("Nu-Earth") Los Angeles ("Nitrohumus") and Houston ("Hou-actinite") have also gotten into the act.
How can you make sure that the fertilizer you buy is safe? Not by looking at the label, that's for sure. Fertilizer companies are not required to disclose the contaminants in their products. And the product names can be misleading. Terrene-Greens Natural Organic Fertilizer was found to contain 153 ppm of lead, and NuLife Trace Elements had 36 ppm of cadmium.
Ironite Natural Fertilizer has such high levels of toxic heavy metals that it has been banned for sale in Canada. But here in the U.S., it continues to be sold in all fifty states, legally, because there are no federal limits set for allowable levels of metals in commercial fertilizers. Washington is the only state which has set limits for metals in fertilizers. There, the state has threatened to pull Ironite off store shelves if the manufacturer does not reduce its fertilizer's heavy metal content before June of this year.
So what's a gardener to do? Avoid zinc, phosphate and iron products, since these are most likely to contain toxic metals. Better yet, use compost and manure to amend your soil.
And GET CRANKY. Call fertilizer companies and ask them to send you information on metal levels in their products. No bag of fertilizer should contain any metals at concentrations higher than the background levels in Michigan soil. Period.
Mary Beth Doyle is the Ecology Center's Environmental Health Campaign Director.