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"Fertilizers Endanger Us with Toxins"  by David Monk
Opinion  published in the Register Guard, August 9, 2002
 
 

The Pope and Talbot Paper and Pulp Mill, located in Halsey, Oregon dumps its pulp waste residue on local farmland as pictured here. 

This pulp waste could contain dioxins, a highly persistent toxin found in chlorinated products. Dioxin is a Class One carcinogen and causes reproductive and developmental problems, immune system damage, and hormonal disruption.
 

GET THE  FACTS ABOUT AN INDUSTRIAL SECRET . . .

TOXIC WASTE IN FERTILIZERS!
 

Fact 1:	Industries around the country are disposing of toxic waste by giving it to fertilizer manufacturers.
Fact 2:	Some fertilizer has been found to contain dioxin, one of the most dangerous environmental chemicals ever identified, and heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury.
Fact 3:	Some plants such as lettuce, corn and potatoes uptake metals.
Fact 4:	Common fertilizers used by families on gardens or by farmers on fields of edible crops may contain toxic metals in amounts greater than what the law defines as “hazardous waste.”
Fact 5:	The law does not require fertilizer manufacturers to label which fertilizers contain toxic metals or where the hazardous wastes were obtained.
Fact 6:	Toxic metals known to have serious health effects are present in fertilizers, yet there is no assessment of the cumulative danger to children, animals and soils resulting from the persistent application of fertilizers containing hazardous waste.

What is the Immediate Concern for Oregonians?
     The Oregon Department of Agriculture is soon to adopt new rules that ignore the overall health and environmental concerns of applying hazardous materials to our land AND obstructs the public’s right to know what is in the fertilizers they use. Oregon Toxics Alliance hopes to educate the public and join in citizen coalitions to act quickly to insure that our state adopts comprehensive legislation governing toxicity in fertilizer.
 
 
 

OTA’s Safe Fertilizer and Sustainable Soils Project Synopsis
     Oregon Toxics Alliance’s ultimate goal is to eliminate the use of hazardous waste in all fertilizer manufactured and sold in Oregon.  This project advances our mission statement to eliminate unnecessary contamination and toxics use through fundamental changes in the practices and policies surrounding toxics.  State agencies are being pressured into writing regulations that permit “re-cycling” hazardous waste in fertilizer because industries have found a cheap means of avoiding the costs of storing and properly disposing of toxic waste. The States of Washington and California have already adopted fertilizer regulations that unfortunately reflect industry interests over public interests.  The timing is right to avert this wave of lax rule-writing here in our state.  Oregon Toxics Alliance advocates for comprehensive legislation that will govern toxicity in fertilizer and emphasize protection of environmental and human health. 
 
 
 

The Objectives of OTA’s Safe Fertilizer and 
Sustainable Soils Campaign 

1.  Ban harmful and hazardous industrial waste used in the manufacturing of fertilizer.
2.  Articulate rigorous standards for fertilizers and soil amendments based on a precautionary principle that protects soils, the environment, and children’s health.
3.  Educate Oregonians about the overall health and safety concerns regarding the practice of applying fertilizers containing hazardous substances to our gardens and agricultural lands. 
4.  Achieve the adoption of rules that require labeling of types and levels of both nutrients and non-nutritive products in fertilizer based on the consumer’s right-to-know for commercial fertilizer, and farmers’ right-to-know for custom mixed fertilizers.
5.  Offer alternatives to using hazardous waste in fertilizers.
6.  Develop standards to regulate industrial waste that will be proven safe before its use in fertilizers.

Background
     More than six hundred companies from 44 states mix over 270 million pounds of toxic waste with fertilizer as a cheap and unregulated means of disposing of toxic waste.  Hazardous waste used in fertilizer comes from steel mills, paper and pulp mills, mining, tire recyclers, chemical companies, and a number of other industries.  To take one example, the law currently allows toxic ash from steel mill furnaces that is high in lead content to be sent to zinc fertilizer manufacturers.

     Fertilizers applied to farm fields should be subject to the same toxic chemical contamination standards as those applied to waste headed for toxic chemical dump sites. In reality, however, there is no monitoring of fertilizer or soil contamination levels.  Reports by the Environmental Working Group and CALPIRG have found some contamination levels to be much higher than allowed by federally enforced standards for hazardous waste! The Environmental Working Group’s report states, “Highly contaminated fertilizer can render cropland sterile, harm the health of farmers and their families, and even threaten the food supply.” 

     Farmers are unknowingly using these adulterated fertilizer products.  Fertilizers sold in Oregon are required to list only the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium content of their products because these are the nutritive ingredients.  However there are no requirements to list the levels of toxic metals and hazardous waste, or disclose the industrial source of the hazardous waste.  Furthermore, the public has no means of tracking where hazardous waste is being spread on Oregon soils.  To put it simply, “recycling” toxic waste into fertilizer is happening legally with virtually no consideration given to the long-term implications of exposing the citizens of Oregon to ever-increasing levels of heavy metals. 

     In a study by CALPIRG, an environmental interest group in California, toxic waste was detected in the twenty commercial fertilizers that were tested.  All twenty contained nine toxic heavy metals in amounts greater than what is accepted as a level of concern for human health. 
 

Human Health and Environmental Concerns
     Fertilizers made from toxic waste that have been tested for content were shown to contain high levels of dioxin, mercury, chromium, lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, beryllium, titanium, and radioactive waste.  Three of these substances, lead, cadmium and mercury, are Persistent Bioacculumulative Toxins (PBT’s) that cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive problems.  PBT’s are known to persist for a long time in the environment and can acculumalte in human tissue.  This increases the long-term health risks from these chemicals because, once in our bodies, PBT’s have the documented potential to cause permanent harm.  Children are particularly vulnerable to chemical contamination and the results, such as damage to the central nervous system or reproductive systems, can be devastating for a lifetime. 

     Studies have shown that various food crops uptake these metals so that, when consumed by farm animals and humans, the metals are absorbed into their bodies.  Human exposure to these chemicals also occurs when they become airborne (through wind), contaminate surface water (through run-off), and leach into our ground water (through filtration). 
 
 

     Few if any environmental studies have been conducted on the long term effects of lacing soils with toxins and heavy metals.  The introduction to farm soils of toxic substances like lead and cadmium can adversely affect growing conditions and result in increased toxic accumulation as these metals are highly persistent in soils.  Furthermore, according to a 1999 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, there is justified concern that fertilizers may contain wastes that introduce potentially hazardous constituents into the greater ecosystem. 
 

Legislative Efforts in the West
     Industries have found an inexpensive way to dispose of their hazardous wastes, and state agencies are under increasing pressure to authorize the practicing of spreading hazardous waste on agricultural land to reduce the overall amounts of waste that must be stored in landfills. In 2001, three Western states, Oregon, Washington and California, adopted regulations establishing “acceptable levels” of heavy metals in fertilizer.  However, all three states fell far short of protecting the environment and the public’s health.  Instead of addressing this growing problem, they refrained from banning toxic heavy metals in fertilizer, and hence failed to close the loophole whereby these hazardous substances are introduced to the environment.  They also failed to require labeling of ingredients derived from hazardous waste.  Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that, once hazardous wastes are made into fertilizers, they are exempted from the tracking manifests ordinarily required by state authorities. 

     A year ago, Governor Kitzhaber signed into law House Bill 3815, Oregon’s first comprehensive revision to its fertilizer law in 50 years. The legislation proposes to allow “acceptable” concentrations of five heavy metals in fertilizer products. In a nutshell, what HB 3815 does is permit and encourage adding hazardous waste to fertilizer under the rubric of “recycling.”  However, it fails to protect human and environmental health by permitting high levels of persistent toxins in fertilizer products. Presently, the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) is convening a committee of stakeholders to advise them on the writing of rules pertaining to HB 3815 to establish labeling guidelines and presumed “safe” levels for heavy metals in fertilizer based on risk assessment.   The committee will issue its report this summer. 
 
 
 

Why Take on this Project Now?
    Strategic planning is necessary now in order to circumvent the promulgation of new rules on fertilizers in Oregon that weaken the public’s right to protect their health and guarantee the sustainability of our agricultural soils. 

     Oregon Toxics Alliance proposes our campaign, Safe Fertilizer and Sustainable Soils, to bring about fundamental changes in fertilizer regulations in Oregon.  The primary objective of the project is to lead committed constituencies in grassroots action calling for a comprehensive law that eliminates toxic industrial waste from fertilizer. The project is additionally significant because it applies the principle of right-to-know through accurate labeling, and promotes precautionary guidelines that will ultimately protect our food supplies and soil integrity.  Our neighbor states, Washington and California, have established some limits for toxic metals in fertilizer, and we hope to build on this partial success in our role as a key northwest state. 
 
 
 

References

To find out about the heavy metal content in fertilizer brands sold in the Northwest, 
CLICK HERE
for Washington State's  Fertilizer Product Database

 Coming Soon! 
"Eating It! Ten Years of Toxics Waste and Fertilizers in Oregon” 
Oregon Toxics Alliance's 2002 Report on Toxic Fertilizers in Oregon 1995-2000

"Heavy Metal Harvest" by Nick Budnick of the Willamette Weekly 10/30/02

 Factory Farming: Toxic Waste and Fertilizer In Oregon 1990-1995, published by the Environmental Working Group (1998)

 Waste Lands: The Threat of Toxic Fertilizer, A Report by CALPIRG (May, 2001)