Just because we don’t talk about something, or hear about it in the news, does not mean it does not exist, or is not a danger to you, me, our children and all of society. The point of contention here is it may be just the opposite in today’s corrupt and complicit world.
In the late 1960’s a cry went up concerning environmental pollution from industrial toxic dumping such as Love Canal and many other massive sites, poisoning not only the environment but the local populations as well. This facilitated the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Super Fund sites designated for massive efforts of cleanup. As of February 27, 2014, there were well over 1,300 Superfund sites designated for cleanup in America, with many more proposed. But that is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg, with some researchers claiming as many as 140,000 toxic sites existing in the USA alone.
The levels of poisons we are exposed to in our environment today far exceed what activists could ever have imagined in the 1970’s. Today we live with local concentrations of biosolid toxins, neurotoxins and carcinogens “MILLIONS” of times more concentrated than what existed when the EPA was born. Yet unlike in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, we hear nothing about this. It is not on the news, there is no massive public outcry, and the very concept itself seems to have left the national consciousness altogether.
Massive increases in cancers, autoimmune disease, cognitive dysfunctions and many other disorders are suffered in America today. Is it a stretch of the imagination in any sense to correlate some of this with the massive increase of extremely toxic biosolids dumped as fertilizers (with EPA blessings) on our farms, yards, gardens, schoolyards, parks, golf courses, etc… Today the USA is the sickest society in the industrial world. We suffer the highest levels of Alzheimer, Dementia, ADHD, ADD, Autism as well as all mentioned above (and more) on the planet … So where does coincidence leave off and it’s a fact step in?
But I will not ask you to take my word for anything I have stated above, let’s talk to an eminently qualified and renowned expert on this topic …
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TLB once again has the privileged to discuss this blight on American society with Dr. David Lewis:
Dr. David Lewis is a Ph.D. Microbiologist & former senior-level research scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research & Development. He currently serves as Research Director for the Focus for Health Foundation in Wachtung, NJ.
Dr. Lewis has written of his research and the ensuing change in policies at the EPA and other federal agencies (corruption, complicity and the revolving door) in the last 30 years that have led to a mass exodus of microbiologists, engineers, and scientists from government agencies. Dr. Lewis has chronicled this in his book, Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profit.
His scientific research has been covered by National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Time magazine, ABC’s Good Morning America, BBC Panorama and other major national and international news outlets. Dr. Lewis was the only EPA scientist to be lead author on papers published in Lancet, Nature, and Nature Medicine. He spent the majority of his career looking at environmental and public health issues from soil contaminated by sludge from water treatment plants. The topic of our discussion today.
Please listen to this informative discussion and read The additional information provided by Dr. Lewis below. This is a topic that needs to be brought back into our mindset, or we and our children will suffer the dire consequences of our ignorance …
Click on the image below to hear this discussion.
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Biosolids—The Elephant in the Womb
By TLB Science Contributor: David L. Lewis, Ph.D.
To protect research funding, managers working in government, industry and academia sometimes pressure scientists to support government policies and industry practices. Such pressure can lead to projects with predetermined outcomes, data fabrication, and suppression of valid results. Institutionally-driven scientific misconduct has taken a particularly heavy toll on investigating adverse health effects associated with highly complex mixtures of pathogens and chemical pollutants in land-applied sewage sludges (a.k.a. biosolids). Here, pollutants linked to autism exist in far higher concentrations than in air or water; and microbial communities play a key role in both the causes and clinical treatment of this neurodevelopmental disorder─from biodegradation at wastewater treatment plants, and in terrestrial and aquatic environments, to managing gut microflora in children with autism.
The Clean Water Act requires industries to pre-treat hazardous wastes before discharging them into sewer systems. In 2014, EPA’s Inspector General concluded “EPA regulates hazardous chemical discharges to and from sewage treatment plants, but these regulations are not effective…”. Biosolids are applied to farms, forests, parks, school playgrounds and other public and private lands at rates measured in tons-per-acre; and heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals in sewage sludges have remained at high (ppm) levels. Moreover, EPA places no limits on the amounts of biosolids applied to land so long as nitrogen levels do not exceed agricultural requirements for plant growth, i.e., agronomic rates.
Rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, biosolids contain high ppm levels of all of the leading groups of chemical pollutants linked to autism at far higher concentrations than other sources of environmental pollution. Sewage sludges produced in any highly industrialized country likely contain virtually every fat-soluble pollutant found in industrial and municipal wastes, plus all of their biodegradation products which can be even more harmful. This includes heavy metals, insecticides, phthalates, bisphenol A, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, perfluorinated compounds and many other potent neurotoxins and immunosuppressants.
Although immunotoxic and neurotoxic chemical pollutants are present in most sewage sludges at ppm levels–far exceeding the maximum levels EPA allows for these same pollutants to be discharged into air and water–any role land application of biosolids may play in triggering neurological disorders is being overlooked. Mixed with sewage sludges, even high-priority organic chemical pollutants, from acenaphthene to 2,3,7,8-TCDD, can be applied to farms and sold in “organic” compost fertilizers at local garden centers for growing vegetables. When biosolids are applied to land, therefore, even the most harmful pollutants known are free to blow about in soil dusts, seep into private wells, wash back into streams and rivers, and empty out into coastal marine environments.
The EPA has taken a fairly simple problem, municipal and industrial wastes pouring into streams and rivers, and turned it into a shell game. We have no idea where these pollutants are going and how they may be affecting public health and the environment. Since the late 1970s, EPA has administered a five-step approach to water pollution, which entails concentrating heavy metals and organic chemical pollutants in sewage sludges, applying them to land, regulating only a few selected heavy metals, creating a body of “sludge magic” literature to support the practice, and suppressing independent research. Now, thanks to EPA, complex mixtures of neurotoxic, immunotoxic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic chemicals that were once swept into the ocean by rivers and streams are now steadily accumulating at far higher concentrations in soils where we all live, work, play and grow our food.
Dr. Lewis can be reached at:
Focus for Health Foundation, Inc.
776 Mountain Blvd., Suite 202
Watchung, NJ 07069
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