This is a horrible use of federal funds and is the type of government work that creates the very reason the environmental justice movement has a case to make.
Families were told sludge safe for kids
07:59 AM CDT on Monday, April 14, 2008
Associated Press
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 in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe.
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.
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. There is no evidence of any medical follow-up too see if there was any harm.
'Not in the realm of safe'
In the late 1990s the government began underwriting studies using poor neighborhoods as laboratories to make a case that sludge may directly benefit human health.
But there has been little research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.
"There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe," said Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "What's needed are more studies on what's going on with the pathogens in sludge – are we actually removing them?"
That's not what the subjects of the Baltimore research and subjects of a similar test in East St. Louis, Ill., were told.
What residents heard
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," Mr. Chaney said. "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."
