From the same website under Site Selection, Land Use Restrictions:

"Farmer is willing to agree to crop restrictions following biosolids application as follows:

* Vegetable crops (non-root) 1 year
* Vegetable crops (root) 5 years

Land will not be used as pastureland for a period of 5 years following land application."

Bold is mine. You might want to read the whole document, it is interesting. Thanks for that link virginian.

Lloyd

Here is a link that might be useful: Ottawa Medical Oficer of Health

I read almost everything on that website. That is for non-pasturized cake biosoilds which I agree, might be a bit too risky to use in great quantity year in and year out in a cold climate like Canada's where the growing season is short. A conservative approach for root crops etc for a period that allows the stuff to break down is good. Heat pasturized biosolids such as Milorganite don't have this problem like the cake biosolids do. The big concern I keep hearing about heavy metals being a problem is "busted" with the report I was referencing.

Ah, I get ya now. Have never used the stuff one way or the other. The City of Winnipeg spreads this stuff on farmers fields as well, but I never really looked into the rules and regs before, it really is a good link.

Thx

Lloyd

From what I gather from the attached link, it used to be bad but it's been cleaned up considerably since the 80's.

From Philadelphia:
The authors noted that while concentrations of nutrients in the biosolids have remained stable, there have been large decreases in the concentration of cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc over the 20 year period.

Lloyd

Here is a link that might be useful: Metals in biosolids

Taken from an NRC paper:

Given that the scientific literature contains no reports of toxicity or disease due to sludge, why does the public still seem frightened? In some cases, it's probably due to regional resentment, a feeling that easterners, or New Yorkers, are dumping their waste on the rest of the country. There is also a fundamental feeling that biosolids are unclean. When those feelings are combined with fear that biosolids are--as, admittedly, was true 20 years ago--carrying unacceptable levels of heavy metals and toxic chemicals, it's easy to understand the "don't dump on me" sentiment. Rubin acknowledges that spills, smells, and slip-ups sabotage public confidence in land application. "If the public feels the aesthetics are bad, or a sloppy operation is going on and nobody cares, they will feel something is wrong with their health."

In trying to influence public opinion, leaders of the biosolids-to-land movement recognize that conducting tests and renaming sludge are not enough to convey a clean image. The Madison district, for example, washes its biosolids-hauling trucks daily, injects biosolids under the soil to prevent runoff and odors, and actively recruits school groups and other visitors to visit its spic-and-span treatment plant. This type of vigilance is evident in an increasing number of sewer districts, Rubin says. "There are cities that jealously guard the quality of their sludge, so as to minimize local resentment." Some, he says, are setting local pollutant limits that are more stringent than the federal rules.

This is true, the levels of those metals in the samples a friend of mine had tested were lower in Milorganite that the tap water and virgin soil samples being used as a control. The NRC, EPA and CAW Act plus many municipalities have set very high standards and very, very low upper limits for these heavy metals. Disposal regulations of them and their use in general have changed a lot in the last 20 years so they never get dumped into the sewer in the first place. The paper I referenced was talking about class B biosolids which are not treated as much as the class A biosolids that are found in Milorganite, plus Milorganite is pasturized with heat drying at 1200F. That will kill almost anything since the material itself reaches 278F. The risk of infectious disease with class A biosolids like Milorganite is none. This is a gross picture, but my dogs got some of it and yuck, but they were fine and were never in any danger. I have also heard of kids eating it too...ewweeeewwww! They too won't get sick, but I sure as the devil don't want to try eating the stuff out of the bag. I'll take their word for it!

Soylent Green...yummy

Marshallz10: People poo is in Milorganite not "people" themselves as in Soylent Green. Funny movie to watch today on the thoughts people had then about the future.

The "public" has a problem with using sewage as a fertilizer because of the public health concerns that developed in the late 1800's and early 1900's and most of our current public health laws are from that era. People want to flush that waste down and never see it again, and most people care not where it goes as long as it is away from them. Far too many people living in area where sewage disposal involves the spetic tank have no idea what constitutes mainteneance of them, or even that they will need maintenance and many people will dump toxic stuff as well as stuff that will kill the bacteria that is needed to digest that sewage down their pipes requiring manitenance much sooner because they kill the bacteria that is needed to digest their sewage.
Same thing is happening with municipal systems, people using the antibacterial/antimicrobial soaps, that are no more effective that any other soap, and that type of soap kills the bacteria needed to digest the sewage, and the target pathogens are able, because of exposure to small doses of these bacteriastats, to develop immuniities to them meaning in just a few years what is in those soaps will no longer be effective just as many of the bacteriastats we used to have are no longer effective.

In reference to the virginian post that the Milorganite was lower in metals than tap water or virgin soil.......Was that Liter per liter? Several applications of Milorganite may or may not change that situation.

The zealots are long on "it might be a risk" or Europe's standards are lower,yet they still fail to produce real hard data. For example, what they leave out is the load limit of some of these metals, such as copper and lead in class A and even class B biosoilds. You would need to apply Milorganite EVERY year or some other biosolid like it for 345 years for lead and 278 years for copper for it to reach its EPA load limit. That doesn't even account for organic binding, mineralization and leaching/migration of the metals harmlessly in the soil. I don't know about you, but even with long life in my family, I doubt I will be around that long to worry about it. I use Milorganite on everything and I have even seen the independent report and have spoken with an independent scientist who tested it for a bioremediation project for the DoD. She indicated it was lower in metals and other contaminants than the tap water and virgin soil they were going to use in the project. Compare class A biosoilds to Scott's or Ironite sometime and decide which will be better to put down as fertilizer for your kids or pets to play around. BTW, the National Science Foundation did an independent study and risk assessment in 1995 of EPA biosolids regulations and found they were far below any levels that would possibly pose any threat to humans, wildlife, soil or water and agriculture. The zealots seem to overlook this fact as well in their quest to malign well managed practices of biosolid use. There has NEVER been a documented case of the regulated use of biosolids causing harm to people, animals or plants in over 35 years of use in our environment-yet the myth and junk science persists. I will continue to use and benefit from Milorganite on my lawn, veggies, ornamentals like temperate tropicals and palm trees.

It's not the heavy metals in the biosolids I object to, exactly, it's the heavy metals in the human bodies used to make the biosolids. Talk about 'yuck factor', and biosolids being in 'bad taste' to use.

Virginian,
You are wrong about the 35 year thing. There was a big to do down Augusta GA way this year about sludgee used on dairy farms and it making people and cows sick.
Google it and you will come up with it.
HOWEVER: that will not keep me from using Milorganite.

The plant screwed up.

1eyedJack and the Dawg

I put my "biosolids" directly into the compost. No transport (other than a short carry in a cardboard box) or water contamination issues..........

I never said it was bad Virginian!! LOL!

Let me clarify, the safe and regulated use of biosolids has never caused bad effects. If the plant or application has fault, it is human error. Also here is a citation from the NAS regarding the EPA's standards on biosolids:
The NAS review in 1995 concluded that "the use of biosolids in the production of crops for human consumption when practiced in accordance with existing federal guidelines and regulations, presents negligible risk to the consumer, to crop production and to the environment." The NAS reviewed the regulations again in 2002 and concluded, "There is no documented scientific evidence that the federal regulations have failed to protect public health."

None of the links at the top of this thread are working. Can you find new links?

A well run, relatively small municipal plant near here used to compost the sludge (i.e., the solids most resistant to biodegradation in the regular aerobic treatment). It composted the sludge with ground pine bark, a waste product in this region of paper mills and lumbering. The compost was aged for a pretty long time (>6 months I think) for viral inactivation and was tested for heavy metals. Now the plant uses some high-energy oxidation to degrade all of the sludge. The nutrients now go to the river. And fertilizer replaces them in yards and grounds and parks. So now no one has to worry about being exposed to these "biosolids." Was this really an improvement?

OK, So a robbed and mangled Shakespear (SP) It should read
"Beware yon Casius, he has a lean and hungry look"
SEE THE FOLLOWING:

Sludge Fertilizer Program Spurs Concerns
April 13, 2008 11:15 AM EDT
BALTIMORE - Scientists using federal grants 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. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

The Associated Press reviewed grant documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewed researchers. No one involved with the $446,231 grant for the two-year study would identify the participants, citing privacy concerns. There is no evidence there was ever any medical follow-up.

Comparable research was conducted by the Agriculture Department and Environmental Protection Agency in a similarly poor, black neighborhood in East St. Louis, Ill.

The sludge, researchers said, put the children at less risk of brain or nerve damage from lead, a highly toxic element once widely used in gasoline and paint. Other studies have shown brain damage among children, often in poor neighborhoods, who ate paint lead-based based that had flaked off their homes.

The idea that sludge - the leftover semisolid wastes filtered from water pollution at 16,500 treatment plants - can be turned into something harmless, even if swallowed, has been a tenet of federal policy for three decades.

In a 1978 memo, the EPA said sludge "contains nutrients and organic matter which have considerable benefit for land and crops" despite the presence of "low levels of toxic substances."

But in the late 1990s the government began underwriting studies such as those in Baltimore and East St. Louis using poor neighborhoods as laboratories to make a case that sludge may also directly benefit human health.

Meanwhile, there has been a paucity of research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.

A series of reports by the EPA's inspector general and the National Academy of Sciences between 1996 and 2002 faulted the adequacy of the science behind the EPA's 1993 regulations on sludge.

The chairman of the 2002 academy panel, 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," Burke told the AP. "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."

That's not what the subjects of the Baltimore and East St. Louis research were told.

Rufus Chaney, an Agriculture Department research agronomist who co-wrote the Baltimore study, said the researchers provided the families with brochures about lead hazards, tested the soil in their yards and gave assurances that the Orgro fertilizer was store-bought and perfectly safe.

"They were told that their lawn, as it stood, before it was treated, was a lead danger to their children," said Chaney. "So that even if they ate some of the soil, there would not be as much of a risk as there was before. And that's what the science shows."

Chaney said the Baltimore neighborhoods were chosen because they were within an economically depressed area qualifying for tax incentives. He acknowledged the families were not told there have been some safety disputes and health complaints over sludge.

"They were told that it was composted biosolids that are available for sale commercially in the state of Maryland. I don't think there's any other further disclosure required," Chaney said. "There was danger before. There wasn't danger because of the biosolids compost. Composting, of course, kills pathogens."

The Baltimore study concluded that phosphate and iron in sludge can increase the ability of soil to trap more harmful metals including lead, cadmium and zinc, causing the combination to pass safely through a child's body if eaten.

It called the fertilizer "a simple low-cost" technology for parents and communities "to reduce risk to their children" who are in danger of lead contamination. The results were published in Science of the Total Environment, an international research journal, in 2005.

Another study investigating whether sludge might inhibit the "bioavailability" of lead - the rate it enters the bloodstream and circulates to organs and tissues - was conducted on a vacant lot in East St. Louis next to an elementary school, all of whose 300 students were black and almost entirely from low-income families.

In a newsletter, the EPA-funded Community Environmental Resource Program assured local residents it was all safe.

"Though the lot will be closed off to the public, if people - particularly children - get some of the lead contaminated dirt in their mouths, the lead will just pass through their bodies and not be absorbed," the newsletter said. "Without this iron-phosphorus mix, lead poisoning would occur."

Soil chemist Murray McBride, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute, said he doesn't doubt that sludge can bind lead in soil.

But when eaten, "it's not at all clear that the sludge binding the lead will be preserved in the acidity of the stomach," he said. "Actually thinking about a child ingesting this, there's a very good chance that it's not safe."

McBride and others also questioned the choice of neighborhoods for the studies and why residents were not told about other, possibly harmful ingredients in sludge.

"If you're not telling them what kinds of chemicals could be in there, how could they even make an informed decision. If you're telling them it's absolutely safe, then it's not ethical," McBride said. "In many relatively wealthy people's neighborhoods, I would think that people would research this a little and see a problem and raise a red flag."

The Baltimore study used a compost of sludge mixed with sawdust and wood chips packaged as "biosolids," the term for sludge preferred by government and the waste industry.

"What we did was make the yards greener," said Pat Tracey, a Johns Hopkins University community relations coordinator who recalled helping with the lawn work. "They were bald, bad yards. It was considered sterile fertilizer."

Baltimore environmental activist Glenn Ross says choosing poor neighborhoods destined for demolition makes it hard to track a study's participants. "If you wanted to do something very questionable, you would do it in a neighborhood that's not going to be there in a few years," he said.

HUD documents show the study's lead author, Mark Farfel, has pursued several other studies of lead contamination including the risks of exposure from urban housing demolitions and the vacant lots left behind.

Farfel has since moved to New York, where he directs the World Trade Center Health Registry surveying tens of thousands of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. He denied repeated requests for interviews and referred questions to Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute, the children's research facility that was the recipient of HUD grants with Farfel as project manager.

The institute referred questions to Joann Rodgers, a spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins. She said a review board within its medical school approved the study and the consent forms provided to families that participated. "The study did not test children or other family members living in the homes," she said.

Some of Farfel's previous research has been controversial.

In 2001, Maryland's highest court chastised him, Kennedy Krieger and Johns Hopkins over a study bankrolled by EPA in which researchers testing low-cost ways to control lead hazards exposed more than 75 poor children to lead-based paint in partially renovated houses.

Families of two children alleged to have suffered elevated blood-lead levels and brain damage sued the institute and later settled for an undisclosed amount.

The Maryland Court of Appeals likened the study to Nazi medical research on concentration camp prisoners, the U.S. government's 40-year Tuskegee study that denied treatment for syphilis to black men in order to study the illness and Japan's use of "plague bombs" in World War II to infect and study entire villages.

"These programs were somewhat alike in the vulnerability of the subjects: uneducated African-American men, debilitated patients in a charity hospital, prisoners of war, inmates of concentration camps and others falling within the custody and control of the agencies conducting or approving the experiments," the court said.

---

Speaking of zealots. If one were to make multiple post promoting a product, would they be considered a zealot? Just asking.

WSDA is the only place that records heavy metals in fertilizer

http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilizers/FertDB/Product1.asp?action=ViewTable&ltr=M

Please observe the heavy metals in Milgornite

OK for lawns and flowers, but not for veggies

New link to Ottawa document.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ottawa Medical Officer of Health

Thanks for that new link. Even I think those time restrictions are ridiculous. I am distinguishing between biosolids and heavy metals and making the assumption the biosolids are not "contaminated" with anything other than clean sewage. Even if you applied biosolids onto ice, once the ice thaws and the underlying ground warms up (no permafrost), it should decompose with the soil microbes.

I am not a fecaphobe but I do not like the idea of adding more heavy metals than my yard needs as trace. On a related subject, there are probably more heavy metals in a daily vitamin pill than from eating a handful of Milorganite, but still I have other options with no metals that I like as much as y'all like Milorganite.

Yeh, it's the heavy metals Dave. That's the real worry with that stuff IMHO.

They tried using biosolids from the Detroit area sewage treatment plants a number of years ago, but there were too many heavy metals. Never made it to market for that reason IIRC.

It was industry and runoff from the streets that caused too much heavy metals in the sewage IIRC.