From The Ground Up. What is it?
It’s a local initiative to stop the harmful practice of spreading toxic sludge on our farmland. What is toxic sludge? We’ll get to that. But first, why do I care about this?
I was born and raised in the beautiful farmlands of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My grandparents worked the earth and made their living by farming and gardening, as did their parents before them. I grew up with my hands and feet in the rich earth of this land and I never gave it a thought. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized what a gift soil is. What a gift our soil is.
The soil here is some of the richest soil in the eastern US, and the way the land lies between the hills brings good rainfall. For many years, our dirt has given us lush crops of corn, soybeans, tobacco, and some of the best produce you’ll ever smell and taste.
In the early spring, along with the first buds on the cherry trees there is always the smell of manure being spread on the waiting fields. It is a sign of the coming summer, a harbinger of the bounty to come. It is often a sign of rain in the forecast. It can be a strong smell at times, yes, and perhaps it isn’t always appreciated, but it is always a clean smell. A living smell. I often roll my windows down and tell my boys to smell the growing cycle.
But today, something is different. There’s a new smell in the air. It smells heavy and foreign. It smells of death. It’s called toxic sludge. Sewage sludge. Industrial waste.
These are all names for something that is changing our farmland.
What is toxic sludge?
The United Sludge-Free Alliance defines it this way: Sludge is a toxic stew of not only human, waste, but everything else that goes down every drain.
Think the wastewater from the wash-downs of slaughter houses and restaurant floors. Think sewage residue that won’t break down in water treatment plants. Think waste from hospitals and funeral homes.
Now think of it being loaded onto trucks and brought here, to the verdant farmland of Pennsylvania, and dumped on our fields.
The powers that be and the business owners that profit from spreading this poison like to say that these chemicals have been safely broken down. They call it fertilizer.
It’s not fertilizer.
As the United Sludge-Free Alliance points out, “Sewage treatment plants were never designed to produce fertilizer. They were designed to treat and condense whatever goes down the drain from homes, businesses, industry, hospitals, laboratories and funeral homes, where it collects at municipal waste water treatment plants.”
Industrial and sewage sludge has heavy metals, antibiotics, disinfectants, drugs, steroids, hormones, bacteria, and pathogens. You will also find semi-volatile organics such as 4-Chloroaniline, which is used in the production of agricultural chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, medical products and drugs. It is toxic if swallowed, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. Yet we inhale it as it’s being spread on our fields and we drink it in our drinking water, for it has been absorbed into the largest living organ on our planet – the skin of the earth. It stays for a long time. It’s called a forever chemical.
If you’d like to read more about toxic sludge, the United Sludge-Free Alliance is an excellent resource.
This stuff doesn’t disappear, like some magician’s trick. Out of sight is not out of mind. The ecosystem of our life is all connected. The health of the soil directly affects the health of our plants which directly affects the health of our bodies. To dump this product into the earth does not “get rid of it.” It simply adds it into the food production cycle. Our soil is not separate from our rivers. The toxic chemicals in this product leach into our rivers. These chemicals are carried to the sea, to the clouds, to the rain, and back into the earth. Back into our food. Into our bodies. Into our children’s bodies.
No, we are not getting rid of anything. We are adding this toxic stew into our food production cycle on a daily and ever-increasing basis.
We are eating toxic sludge.
Why does Seed of life care about this?
Because I grew up here. Because I live here. Because I am careful to source my teas and herbs from organic suppliers, especially those who care about the land their plants are grown on, and I can’t look away from this. And because I’m a mom. I am concerned about the world my sons will inherit. I can’t do much. But this is one thing I can do. As the late Wendell Berry said:
The soil is the great connector of lives,
the source and destination of all.
It is the healer and restorer and resurrector,
by which disease passes into health, age into youth,
death into life. Without proper care for it
we can have no community,
because without proper care for it
we can have no life.
This practice of calling poison fertilizer and dumping it on our farmland is unacceptable. It is a desecration of the earth, the animals that live here, and the fish that swim in our waters. It is a desecration of the bodies of our children, whose developing brains are highly susceptible to the effects of these chemicals in our air and in our food.
I’ve watched it happen for too long. I’ve driven past the dumping site in my community and smelled the heavy toxic smell once too often.
Want to join me? Follow our Facebook page, From The Ground Up. Together, we can do something. Together, we can protect Pennsylvania’s soil and Pennsylvania’s children.
