| OTA’s Safe Fertilizer and Sustainable Soils Project - A Detailed Look
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
- Ban harmful and hazardous industrial waste used in the manufacturing of fertilizer.
- Articulate rigorous standards for fertilizers and soil amendments based on a precautionary principle that protects soils, the environment, and children’s health.
- Educate Oregonians about the overall health and safety concerns regarding the practice of applying fertilizers containing hazardous substances to our gardens and agricultural lands.
- 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.
- Offer alternatives to using hazardous waste in fertilizers.
- 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.
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