THE NEW LEAD POISONING?
For some 70 years lead poisoning was a major cause of brain impairment and resulted in many millions of deaths worldwide. It started in the 1920s when Lead was added to petrol to improve engine efficiency, despite being known since Roman times to be a poison. Up until 1999 when Leaded-petrol was banned, car exhaust fumes are estimated to have dumped around 140,000 tonnes of Lead into the atmosphere in the UK alone. The consensus around the unacceptable threat to human health was hard won.
Now a new battle is underway to eliminate the use of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS), a group of chemicals used to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease and water, and are used in fire-fighting foam, de-icers and a range of other treatments. Run-off from airports, military bases and industrial facilities are among the biggest sources of contamination. These chemicals are also recycled onto agricultural land via fertiliser made from dried sewage sludge.
PERSISTENT HARM
PFAS are commonly known as ‘Forever Chemicals’ because they persist in the environment and accumulate in soil, water, animals and humans. It has also been shown that these chemicals can be passed from mother to baby via the placenta and through breast milk.
The most studied chemicals of the group are endocrine disruptors and linked to thyroid disease, obesity, high cholesterol, reproductive issues and cancers, including kidney and testicular cancer.
England’s recommended safe limit for the two most pernicious of these substances PFOA and PFOS is 250 times higher than that recommended by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which says there is no ‘safe’ amount.
A DIRTY BUSINESS
The Environment Agency (EA) has long known that farmers – encouraged by the water companies – have been spreading fields with a toxic mixture of chemicals and carcinogens, including forever chemicals. We’re talking about dried human sewage sludge, marketed as ‘environmentally-friendly’ Biosolids. Anglian Water calls its product Nutribio.
In 2020, an FoI request revealed the EA had been warned about the dangers of this practice in a report that it commissioned in 2017 and then chose not to publish. The report showed crops in England were contaminated with organic contaminants including dioxins, furans, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at “levels that may present a risk to human health” and physical contaminants including plastics that could result in “soils becoming unsuitable for agriculture”.
Regulations governing the use of sewage sludge date from 1989 – long before recognition of how much harm PFOA/PFOS (forever chemicals) and microplastics are doing to the environment – both of which are known to be present in sewage sludge but are not controlled or limited.
The EA said it would have a new testing regime in place by 2023 but then abandoned this pledge. There is now no timetable to enforce the removal of harmful chemicals from the 3.5m tonnes of dried sewage sludge spread each year on UK agricultural land.
JUST THE START
There is so much potential legal action in the USA surrounding Forever Chemicals that court-watchers are drawing comparison with the Tobacco industry which, in 1998, entered into a wide ranging agreement with all 52 states to pull back from promoting their products and to pay $206billion in damages.
A major examination in Time magazine (Forever Chemical Lawsuits Could Ultimately Eclipse the Big Tobacco Settlement) quotes one of the successful litigants:”Not 100% of Americans are walking around smoking tobacco, but basically 100% of Americans are walking around with PFAS in their bodies and none of them asked for that.”
There is more about PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ in our earlier article about its presence in our water supply.
