It’s just fertilizer.
This is what you’ll hear from the companies who want to get rid of this waste product, from the businesses who make money hauling it to farms, and from the farmers who are paid to spread it on their fields. But it’s not. As you’ll see in What is Toxic Sludge? there is no way this waste product can be called fertilizer.
You will also be told, “It’s regulated.”
But It’s Regulated
Let’s talk about those regulations.
There are supposedly regulations regarding where this toxic waste product (excuse me, fertilizer) can be spread. The field has to have good drainage. It can’t be near wetlands or ponds. The idea is that the contaminates (they know there are contaminates) will be filtered out before they reach any water supply. But there’s no testing that proves this.
Both food processing sludge and sewage sludge have heavy metals, antibiotics, disinfectants, drugs, steroids, hormones, bacteria, pathogens, and chemicals. You will 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. If you question these statements, check out the film documentary Biosludged. Sewage sludge has been used to make dried “fertilizer pellets” that are sold in home and garden stores for home gardeners. It is marked ‘natural and organic’ of course. The producer of the film analyzed these fertilizer pellets. The results are appalling and they show you what is really in sewage sludge.
Regulations also say that the crops grown on these fields may only be fed to animals, not humans. Yet considering we eat what the animals produce, this is simply a smoke screen. We cannot separate sick soil from our food supply. Health begins in the soil. And, as the United Sludge-Free Alliance states, “sewage sludge can be imported from any state, municipality or city. Tracing what businesses, industries and medical facilities that have contributed to your sludge is not easy and makes testing of toxins extremely difficult.”
There is no regulation that monitors the build-up of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, hormones, and chemicals in soil, plants, or animals. What we do have is a study published in a May 2026 article in Science Alert that recently revealed that 98.8 percent of over 10,000 blood samples tested in a US study were shown to have forever chemicals in them. This is extremely alarming for the health of future generations.
Let’s talk about this for a minute.
Forever Chemicals
What are “forever chemicals”?
Their big name is “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances” or PFAS for short. Don’t you just love all the innocent-sounding but very confusing acronyms? These chemicals are meant to increase the lifespan of products. You’ll find them in things from non-stick pans to body products to food packaging materials to food processing plants. And yes they end up in food processing residual waste, the FPRs that are being spread on our farmland. These chemicals are estimated to take about a thousand years to fully decompose. As if we can truly estimate that. In short, they stay around forever. Therefore the name.
The toxic sludge that’s being spread on our farmland contains these chemicals.
As the United Sludge Free Alliance notes, “WEF – the “Water Environmental Federation” sewage membership organization – recognizes that PFAS (forever chemical) contamination is transferred into communities via solid and liquid sewage sludge wastes which contaminate air, water, soil, and foods. Farms throughout the nation are experiencing PFAS contamination of livestock and plants that we consume from years of sewage sludge/biosolids use as a “fertilizer”, creating long-term implications to our food, water and communities.”
It’s clear that these chemicals are not being broken down in the lagoons or pits that are being built.
Food processing residual waste and sewage sludge is not “fertilizer.” For too many years we’ve done this to our earth and now these chemicals have invaded our bodies and the ecological system of our earth.
Water Safety
Everything that enters the soil will filter down to the groundwater.
As Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring, “Seldom, if ever, does Nature operate in closed and separate compartments, and she has not done so in distributing the earth’s water supply. Rain, falling on land, settles down through pores and cracks in soil and rock, penetrating deeper and deeper until eventually it reaches a zone where all the pores of the rock are filled with water, a dark, subsurface sea, rising under hills, sinking beneath valleys. This groundwater is always on the move, sometimes at a pace so slow that it travels no more than 50 feet a year, sometimes rapidly, by comparison, so that it moves nearly a tenth of a mile in a day. It travels by unseen waterways until here and there it comes to the surface as a spring, or perhaps it is tapped to feed a well. But mostly it contributes to streams and so to rivers. Except for what enters streams directly as rain or surface runoff, all the running water of the earth’s surface was at one time groundwater. And so, in a very real and frightening sense, pollution of the groundwater is pollution of water everywhere.”
Strict regulations in Maryland and several surrounding states have made it difficult to spread this product on their land for fear it would contaminate the Chesapeake Bay. So it’s brought here and spread on Lancaster County’s farmland instead.
But consider this: the toxins leach down through the ground and into our groundwater that feeds our wells and rivers that, incidentally, feed into the Chesapeake Bay. Lancaster County is part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
One more thing. The storage pits for sludge, or anaerobic lagoons, can overflow. According to a Wiki search: “Lagoon overflow can be caused by “adverse weather conditions, such as increased rainfall or strong winds. These overflows release harmful substances into the surrounding land and water such as: antibiotics, estrogens, bacteria, pesticides, heavy metals, and protozoa.”
Now I have no doubt that business owners and their lawyers would insist Wiki is not a reputable source.
But consider this: Antrim township, PA had bad groundwater contamination after only two years of spreading FPRs, or food processing residuals. Water testing showed high nitrites, E. coli, and coliform bacteria. It’s what led to the forming of the group Antrim Township Citizens For Safe Water.
Only recently, Ephrata township had an E. coli contamination. Coming from a water treatment facility that has consistently won awards for clean water for over a decade, this is alarming considering that the practice of spreading FPR’s on our farmland in Ephrata began within the past two years.
Toxic sludge on our farmland has to stop. There are alternatives that do not harm our soil and our water.
The Soil Is Our Common Ground
Healthy soil and clean water.
This is an issue that stands in the middle of political differences. The people I am talking to, from local farmers to neighbors, no matter where they stand on politics or religion, agree that spreading toxic sludge on our farmland is a grave concern. This unites us. I believe that we can all agree that care of the earth, the only home we have, is of vital importance for today’s children and for future generations.
“The earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.
There is nowhere else, at least in the near future,
to which our species could migrate.
Visit, yes. Settle. Not yet.
Like it or not, for the moment,
the earth is where we make our stand. …
To me, it underscores our responsibility
to deal more kindly with one another
and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot,
the only home we’ve ever known. “-Carl Sagan
Image credit: Pixabay
