Gunnar Lindgren, P.E.
In each waste barrel contains:
1 teaspoon (1,8 g ) Chromium and 0,9 g Nickel
11 lbs of paper and textile waste
6 zinc batteries (32 g Zn)
38 lbs chicken- and fish-bone residue (3 lbs Phosphorous)
1 small mercury battery (0,1 g Hg)
11 lbs of glass
1 small tube red paint (0,1 g Cadmium)
70 tin cans (11lbs Iron)
15 kg cat litter
10 copper rivets(21 g Cu)
1 fishing line weight (3 g Lead)
75 beer cans (12 lbs Aluminum)
4 acrylic mugs (200 g)
misc. unpredictable waste materials
* One garbage can (110 lbs) of trash with the above contents equals the amount of officially sanctioned contaminants contained in sludge permitted for spreading per acre of farmland by Sweden's EPA.. It could, furthermore, contain unlimited amounts of PCB and dioxins and still be within regulatory guidelines. Sweden's farmland may, in fact, have about 1 ton of sludge (dry weight) spread on it per acre per year. This amount corresponds to about twenty 110lb garbage cans per acre each year.
* In 10 years' time we have managed to spread the contaminant equivalent of about 30,000 tin cans and aluminum cans per hectare whether it be sludge equivalent to the above-described garbage cans' content. If the entire sludge mountain in Sweden were to be land-applied, around 8.000.000.000 (eight billion) cans would end up being spread on agricultural soils during this period. And Sweden has only eight million inhabitants. Can a reasonably responsible person have the temerity to call this "recycling" ?
* Is this how our officials protect our hard-won agricultural soils from this trash, regardless of it's origin and visual impact? Environmental protection used, once upon a time, to be about preventing cans and bottles from littering the countryside and keeping fish from dying in our lakes and rivers. Our knowledge of environmental and human health protection has evolved dramatically. Today's worst nightmare concerns waste which is creepingly lethal in parts per trillion such as dioxins-- or nonyl phenols that trigger hormone reactions, effective in molecules-- invisible, odor-free, and having no taste. They accumulate in glands and concentrate in breast-milk thus targeting the most vulnerable of our species - breast feeding infants whose chance of getting cancer is on the increase. Arguing in favor of the practice of spreading trash / sludge on food- producing land is equivalent to promoting random, premeditated murder on a large scale with a bit of time-delay...[an apt expression borrowed from Rachel's Environmental Newsletter - P.Montague]
* It used to be illegal [i.e., a criminal offense] to deliberately introduce even one poisonous substance into the food chain. Now we see an emerging industry that intentionally adds every harmful substance known to humans (in various concentrations), directly into the most vulnerable link in that chain--namely, our food producing base-land - the farm. As a consequence, we can expect to see a further jump in the lowering of people's and live-stock's immune defenses already weakened by chemicals that have found their way into the food chain even without this sludge-to-food "short-cut". The effect of sludge on food production is equivalent to a chemical, biological and radiological assault rolled into one. We could not find a more effective way of collecting, concentrating and redistributing the toxic substances present in our milieu than by using sewage sludge as "fertilizer". "Bio-solids" amount to nothing less than the ultimate bio-hazard: a "Final Solution" to human and animal life, as it were, by way of ever-increasing cancers, birth-defects, allergies, immunity deficiencies and infections in general.
Note
(Swedish sludge according to the Swedish EPA Report 4423 contains per kilogram dry substance around 54 mg lead, 1,5 mg Cadmium, 509 mg Copper, 36 mg Chromium, 2 mg Mercury, 18 mg Nickel, 636 mg Zinc och 30 g Phosphorous. Metals originating from urine and feces is subtracted. All metals according to the report cannot be recycled and stays therefore in accumulated forms. Residential garbage contains according to the same report similar amounts of metals.