Fifteen years ago, CMD's book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! first exposed the hidden government and industry PR campaign greenwashing toxic sewage sludge as "biosolids," an invented PR euphemism used to cynically re-brand toxic waste as "fertilizer" given free to farmers. Today, unfortunately, the biosolids scam is bigger than ever. The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) reports that "San Francisco has come up with an ingenious plot to trick city residents into taking their toxic sewage sludge back and disposing of it in their own gardens. San Francisco is having Synagro, the corporate giant of the toxic sludge industry, 'compost' some of the toxic sewage sludge. Then they give it away to San Francisco's gardeners telling us it's 'high-quality, nutrient-rich, organic Biosolids Compost.' " OCA has launched a grassroots campaign calling on San Francisco's mayor to stop the practice, noting "municipal sewage sludge routinely contains thousands of dangerous pathogens, toxic heavy metals, flame retardants, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, pharmaceutical drugs and other hazardous chemicals coming from residential drains, storm water runoff, hospitals, and industrial plants."

For decades, government agencies and polluters have cynically and dangerously used the magic of PR to reclassify toxic sludge as "beneficial fertilizer," and thus haul it to rural farmlands where it is spread on fields out of sight, out of mind. CMD's John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote the first major expose of this practice in their 1995 book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You. Now the Kansas Star reports on a Missouri lawsuit claiming "that a St. Joseph tannery had allowed sludge containing a carcinogen to be used as fertilizer on fields in four counties, causing brain tumors in at least two patients. Because of a state law, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has not been sampling the contents of the sludge -- the waste from the tanning process. That is because the law allowed officials years ago to declare the sludge a fertilizer. As a result, that left most of the responsibility for regulating the sludge to the University of Missouri -- but only as a fertilizer, not as a hazardous waste."

In our 1995 book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, we examined how the Environmental Protection Agency and the sewage industry turned toxic sewage sludge into a "safe" fertilizer through PR, political bullying and weakened government regulations. Fourteen years later, Mother Jones revisits the issue, noting that "more than half the 15 trillion gallons of sewage Americans flush annually is biologically scrubbed, 'dewatered,' and processed into products with names like BioEdge, Nitrohumus, and Vital Cycle and spread on farmland, lawns, and home vegetable gardens. ... Sludge could be the ultimate growth industry; as one trade publication observes dryly, 'There will continue to be more wastewater solids to manage with every passing year.' ... [A]s sludge has spread across the country, so have concerns that it may cause as many environmental problems as it solves. In communities where sludge has been used, residents have reported ailments ranging from migraines to pneumonia to mysterious deaths."

David Lewis, a University of Georgia professor and former Environmental Protection Agency scientist, is suing officials at his university for publishing allegedly fraudulent research funded by the federal government. In court documents, Lewis claims that university researchers, who were paid more than $1.5 million in federal grants, intentionally distorted toxic substance amounts in the sludge from wastewater treatment plants in Augusta, Georgia, by collecting samples only during droughts, when levels would be "misleadingly low." Last month U.S. District Court judge Anthony Alaimo ruled that sludge treated in Augusta's facilities had metals concentrations thousands of times over allowed toxicity levels, noting that the University of Georgia's report on those facilities was "faulty and incomplete." Lewis has investigated the harmful side effects linked with the sludge since 1998 and argued in 2005 that his research led to his firing from the EPA. (We examined the sludge issue in our 1995 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You.)

Sludge keeps rearing its ugly head. Scientists used federal grant money to "spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil." The residents were not alerted to any harmful ingredients in the sludge, and were assured that it posed no health risks for their families. In exchange for participating in the 2005 study, nine families were given food coupons and a free lawn by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Freedom of Information Act requests by the Associated Press produced grant documents, but none showed any medical follow-up with the homeowners. The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted similar research in East St. Louis, Illinois, another impoverished and predominantly African American community. "Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe. 'There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe. What's needed are more studies on what's going on with the pathogens in sludge - are we actually removing them? The commitment to connecting the dots hasn't been there.'"

The American Chemistry Council wants you to know that you're safer than you may think when toxic chemicals end up in your local groundwater and air. ACC has announced the hire of ex-Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson Lisa Harrison as its new vice president of communications. Says Ms. Harrison, in celebrating her new position: "I am excited at the challenge of educating and informing opinion leaders about the benefits of American chemistry in our every day lives, and the value that the industry and the ACC bring to Washington D.C." Among her Administration appearances: defending the EPA's "Clear Skies" program that exaggerated cuts in airborne sulfur dioxide emissions and defending toxic sludge. A few days before Harrison joined ACC, the organization released a new defense of the Bush Administration's proposed rollback of the Toxics Release Inventory. The Environmental Working Group has led a blistering critique of the proposed rollbacks.