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A local concern. A global consequence.

Hazardous waste in fertilizer

Here is a quick tutorial on the disposal of hazardous waste as fertilizer. Knowing these few key facts will empower you to educate others, and help you to discern the truth in what you read on this issue.

1. This method of disposal has never been proven safe. Despite what industry may claim, twenty years of EPA documents repeat this statement over and over and over.

2. Any hazardous waste containing nutrients or micronutrients can be used as fertilizer, irrespective of what contaminants it contains, or in what concentrations.

3. Hazardous waste used as fertilizer need only meet two requirements - They must meet the treatment standards for disposal in a lined hazardous waste landfill, and they must have a market, i.e., people who will buy them. If no market exists, then by law these same hazardous wastes must be disposed of in a landfill.

4. Treatment standards were not designed for fertilizers, but to predict leachability of hazardous wastes from a lined hazwaste landfill. Treatment standards, also known as LDRs, were never designed to predict crop uptake, migration to groundwater, soil accumulation or air dispersion.

5. Children are more vulnerable to toxins in the environment. This practice has never been reviewed in light of children’s health. In the meanwhile, as this practice has grown so too have childhood health problems - asthma, cancer, birth defects, learning disabilities, autism, etc. The EPA suspects the probable cause is environmental toxins.

6. There is no such thing as trace amounts of toxins being released to the environment through fertilizer. Every 1 ppm averaged in these “products” is 110,000 pounds dumped into the environment every year.