Are Biosolids Safe?

At a recent industry-sponsored biosolids conference Deborah Koons Garcia castigated the EPA-approved practice of turning sewage sludge into fertilizer.

·         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef3PaeLnZuE

The waste-treatment community would like us to accept this practice.  Critics charge that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has turned a blind eye to the industry’s desire to pass off toxic material as a safe fertilizer.  Could this be?  Let’s find out.

According to an EPA web page

http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/wastewater/treatment/biosolids/index.cfm

• ·         The risk assessment for the Federal Part 503 rule that governs the land application of biosolids took nearly ten years to complete and had extensive rigorous review and comment.

• ·         Only biosolids that meet the most stringent standards spelled out in the Federal and state rules can be approved for use as a fertilizer. Now, through a Voluntary Environmental Management System, being developed for biosolids (EMS) by the National Biosolids Partnership (NBP), community-friendly practices will also be followed.

• ·         Although cities decide how best to manage their biosolids, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is obligated and continues to provide the public with educational information, based on the best science, about the safe recycling and disposal of biosolids.

In other words, the EPA has chosen not to regulate the production of biosolids from sewage waste.  Rather, this agency has positioned itself only to provide information to the public.

But does this really confirm critics’ charges that the EPA is capitulating to businesses that might be more concerned with profit than with human health?  Why don’t we compare the science behind the policy to make up our minds.

In a 2003 press release

·         http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b1ab9f485b098972852562e7004dc686/209dab87e1b0a8b785256dc20050c977?OpenDocument

the EPA announced its decision not to regulate the dioxin content of land-applied sewage sludge.  In other words, the EPA claims that its analysis of the data on sewage-born dioxins allows it to conclude that the dioxins in the sludge pose a negligible risk of increasing human cancer rates.

This, however, is not the last word on the toxicity of sewage sludge.  A Wikipedia article on sludge

·         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sludge

contains references to studies that suggest that at least some sludge is anything but benign.  According to the article, one study published in 2002

·         http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/2/11

documents numerous instances of pathology among 48 people living near a site where sludge residues were applied.  For instance, about one quarter of this population suffered from Staphylococcus aureus infections, with two deaths noted.  (Curiously, the lead author of this published study was an employee of the EPA.  Did anyone say, “Suppressed results?)

Another study cited in the Wikipedia article

·         http://www.sludgefacts.org/Ref98.pdf

presents evidence for concern.  According to the authors of this study residents near another site where sewage biosolids were applied reported a variety symptoms or maladies at statistically significant levels.  These included abdominal bloating, jaundice, skins ulcers, bronchitis and giardiasis.

This is not to say that human excrement should not be converted into fertilizer.  A number of sources suggest that human wastes can successfully boost agricultural productivity.  For example, one article summarizes a grass roots pilot project for bacterial decomposition of human waste.

·         http://www.alternet.org/environment/141718/your_crap,_our_compost:_turning_human_feces_into_fertile_soil/

According to Nancy Klehm, the brainchild behind the project, feces can be converted into high quality fertilizer—if it is collected directly from the human beings producing it.  On the other hand, trying to convert sewage sludge into something safe has the inherent disadvantage that sewage collects and concentrates many additional toxic by-products.  These include toxic metals, pharmaceutical compounds, insecticides, industrial wastes and pollution runoff from urban roads.

Finally, I’d like to ponder this question.  You mean the EPA is not the impartial entity I believed it to be?  If I can’t trust the EPA, who can I trust?  WHO, indeed!

The World Health Organization recognized that human wasted could be an essential component of agricultural nutrients in many areas of the planet.  Therefore, this organization published the results of its studies as a guideline document for people to practice safe production of “humanure”.  Here is that document:

• ·         http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/wastewater/wwuvol4_intro.pdf

By the way, that is only the Executive Summary.  If you want the full document, use this link:

• ·         http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/wastewater/gsuww/en/index.html

So there it is.  From bio-mess to biomass.

The Ragged Edge

4/2/04

It started with my Plymouth's erratic behavior. It was stalling out all the time, but the number of times it stalled and when it stalled seemed different each time I drove it. I noticed that the car's pattern of stalling was quasi-predictable, more or less tied to the engine's operating temperature. It suddenly occurred to me that there were 3 zones of operation--cold, warm and hot--separated by a chaotic transition boundary. These boundaries marked the event of the engine stalling.

I visualize these "stall boundaries" as ragged edges. You can't tell your position with respect to a boundary until you hit it. And since it's a chaotic function, the boundary's shape changes upon each instance of starting the car and running the engine.

The two diagrams here illustrate the wildly unpredictable nature of the situation.  The black line is the car’s usual progression in its temperature.  Sometimes the car would stall very few times.  Other times it would stall many times.  The difference I attribute to the chaotic transition boundaries—the ragged edges.

Now, the chaotic ragged edge idea permitted me to visualize and explain the types of stalling I was getting. There was suddenly a "perceptible" pattern of behavior that could be defined as a set of rules. As time went on, I could tell that I was--with certainty--approaching, crossing and receding from first one, and then another of the stall boundaries. However, the ragged edge made it impossible to know precisely when the crossing would occur.

This strikes me as an exciting idea. First, the ragged edge concept is easy to visualize. Second, it delineates system states that are both highly predictable (in that that they will occur) and maddeningly erratic. This distinction is made by recognizing that there are points in a zone that are either far from or close to ragged edge transition boundaries. Third, it provides a model of knowledge that distinguishes experts from novices. Experts are notable for having accumulated reliable rules for detecting or anticipating ragged edge boundary phenomena.

Although the model is simple, I believe it can be employed in many situations where one desires to explain erratic or "turbulent" system behavior. Here are a few ideas:

• Schizophrenia: transitions between lucid thinking vs. disconnected ideation
• Investing: transitions between aggregate buying or selling behavior
• Management: transitions between successful planning vs. crisis-driven periods
• Cognition: changes in attention from very focused to scattered or distracted

I think the model works if it allows situations to be represented using the following simple structure:

1. Any number of distinct operating states (zones)
2. Boundary events that mark the transition between adjacent (and distinct) zones
3. A single "driver variable" that correlates to a path through the (zoned) state-space

Element 3 is perhaps the most interesting component, and the one that most limits the model's applicability. How many situations, after all, resolve to a change in only a single variable?

Nevertheless, ragged edge thinking can reveal that situations that appear to be completely disorderly do, in fact, have an underlying structure. In other words, some systems might be fundamentally simple--consisting of only a small number of zones--but appear to be complex because ragged edge transitions mask this underlying simplicity and give these systems the appearance of being completely unmanageable.

Is God Necessary?

Is God necessary?  What might this question mean? 

Is God necessary for the world to contain the exquisitely interlaced layers of design it has?

Is God necessary to establish morality?

Is God necessary to connect with the miracle of living and being?

Is God necessary for the human being to be truly human?

Is God a tool or a crutch, and what determines whether God is used as one or the other?

Does God bring a special kind of humor and equanimity to our lives?

Does God bring acceptance of death and dying?

Is God an idea that some people need more than others?  (More than other people do?  More than they need other people?  More than other ideas?)

Is God the necessary source of thankfulness or gratefulness?

Is the idea of God necessary so that people who rebel have something to fight?

Is the idea of a caring, all-good God necessary so that some (e.g., some Holocaust survivors) have someone to blame for their abandoning religion and trust?

Is love of God a substitute for actual, honest love?

Clearly, that is a lot of questioning of the purpose for God in our culture.  What is equally startling is that all this questioning can happen shy of a clear explication of what we mean by God.  And maybe that is for the best.  Perhaps the best way to understand the reason for God is to arrive at that knowledge implicitly.  Each question, by its very nature, implies a possible understanding of God.  That, I think is the best I can offer.  God’s “description” is a set of possibilities.  And the more we think about those possibilities, the more we are with God.

Can you think about many possibilities?  Is God the source of possibilities?  Are possibilities necessary?

Furious

60 Minutes, Sunday, March 6, 2011: HARD TIMES GENERATION

The story brought me to tears.  Now my heart aches from anger and disgust.  This is not right!  How can we be proud to be  Americans when our country permits families to sink into tragedy?  Is it OK to bail out wall street and general motors, yet allow good American citizens to sink to the fringe of survival?

Here is the story:
    http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7358670n&tag=related;photovideo

It was much worse on TV.  There, you watched it in high definition.  There, you saw the CBS Money Watch message brought to you by XXX immediately following.  There, you gagged at the stream of senseless commercials designed to get people to part with their disposal money.

What about the family that has no disposal money?

What about the politician who is so eager to declare the "recession" to be in recession?

What about the television news magazine that shows the trashing of American values without asking anybody to change it?

Fury
Mindlessness is awareness without anger
Depression is anger without action
Determination is action without uncertainty
Fury is the fearlessness of collective consciousness
Trampling the comfortable toleration of human indignity

Step Outside

Delores is feeling bombarded.

So many projects and things to acquire.  Trouble is, I barely have enough time to keep the regular part of my life going.  Perhaps this reflects the fact that my ambitions are at odds with wanting what I already have.  This is certainly one way to live your life: don’t take satisfaction from what you have, and desire that which you don’t have.  One could call this the road to salvation and notice how much misery lies on this road.

Consider: wanting is merely a heuristic (a strategy, a rule of thumb).  Wanting is easier than… what?  Than happiness, satisfaction, joy (not pleasure), contentment.  And suppose you add system complexity to the mix?  Then wanting goes out the door, along with the rest of the useless trash.

Do you see the problem?  Once you connect with the system, then you leave the pale where almost all of humanity resides.  Where can you find your friends now?  It is almost inevitable that you will seek the company of outsiders.  Some of them can stay open-minded.  They’ve seen too much.  Conventions and norms don’t drive them.

Information Bear 1

            It was still warm, even though the sun had set half an hour earlier.  The whole “family” was out on the back porch finishing one of Leslie’s outside summertime meals.  I imagine they were sipping glasses of lemonade or some such.  This was about a week after a major event: getting an elby big enough to lift a four-and-a-half kilogram weight.  That was ten pounds, back before David made everyone switch to metric measures.  So, this night’s dinner was something of a celebration, meaning it ended with an unimaginably rich chocolate cake, courtesy of Leslie.

            I can only imagine.  I’m not kidding.  Leslie is dead.  And I’ve never tasted chocolate cake.  Came close, once.

            Anyway, with Roger nearly comatose from overeating, Ishmael diverted the conversation to how elbies could hope to compete with other, more developed sources of work-energy.  David smiled broadly.  This was a question he had waited a long time to answer.

            “People living on the grid don’t appreciate the extent to which technology has determined lifestyle.  Thomas Edison knew he was inventing an industry when he commercialized electricity transmission.  What he may not have realized was that he was dancing to a tune that would be recapitulated in nearly every business sector.  It’s all about mass movement.  Large quantities of information-bearing substances, from cargo to oil to books to contracts to home appliances to cosmetics to entertainment.  These became the substrate on which to grow the knowledge base that defines modern social systems.”

            “What do you mean ‘information-bearing substances’?” Ishmael replied.  He was doing his best to keep up.  “The economy is based on goods and services, isn’t it?”

            “The economy is based on what’s in peoples’ heads.  As the economy has grown it has created a knowledge base of possibilities that swells with every different noticeable distinction.  Take lip gloss, for instance.  A fourteen-year-old girl at the neighborhood drug-store looks at the array of brands, colors, styles and marketing features of a hundred different products called lip gloss.  And to her they’re all different!  She will not confuse ‘creamy peach’ with ‘summer peach’.”

            “Once upon a time,” Leslie chimed in, “a made-up woman used lipstick, and there was only one color.  Red.  Perhaps a few different shades of red, but it was all red.  These days, it takes more than two full store aisles to hold all the different cosmetic products, and a sizeable portion of that is devoted to lip products.”

            “So an information-bearing substance is something like a product line in which each small variation is considered a separate product,” said Marta.

            “I get it.  The more products, the more choices you have to consider.  And choices require information,” said Ishmael.  Then he added, “What does that have to do with my original question?  Adding elby-energy to the mix of energy products expands the menu of choices.  But the other products are already so developed, who would care to use this one?”

            David resumes his argument.  “As I said, the knowledge base that enables the design, production and selection of information-bearing substances exists in peoples’ heads.  The economy is largely intangible, since it’s based on choices that people can be trained to value.  But the knowledge base has become increasingly unstable.  That part of the KB that’s in peoples’ heads is supported by an infrastructure that is narrow, kind of like a mushroom.  At some point it’s all going to fall apart—actually, I think that has already started.  Costs will go sky-high, so to speak, and most of the available choices will simply fall away.  It’s not just cosmetics that will disappear.  Most of the current civilization’s KB will disappear.  It will usher in a time of profound ignorance, another Dark Age.”

            Roger sat up with a start.  There was something on his mind.  He wanted to jump to the punch line so he could ask a new question.  “OK, OK, so we’re creating elby-energy.  And it’s not part of the current KB, so it won’t be lost—”

            “That’s it exactly!”

Ignorant Food 2

(Continued from "Ignorant Food 1")

As Delores and a friend were driving to see a movie, the sky began blazing with searing orange clouds.  The view captivated both of them.  Delores observed that human beings seem to be the only animal that can be transfixed by the beauty of a sunset or marvel at the splendor of a rainbow.  Her friend thought that was an agreeable comment.

Yet, how many times do we find that people fail to direct their attention to wonders such as these?  Delores has been known to complain that she, of all the drivers on their way during a morning or afternoon rain shower, seemed to be the only one to look up at a stunning double rainbow—much less even park the car to fully take it in.

The same is true of food.  Do we fully take it in?

The German language has an interesting distinction that speaks to the manner in which food is eaten.  One word, fressen, denotes the type of eating that animals do.  It is a mechanical or desperate act, driven only by the biological need to reduce a motivational state called hunger.  The other word, essen, is meant to conjure the human act of eating.  A refined and civilized human being takes pains to make food and the manner in which it is eaten an experience of splendor.  Certainly, humanity has been at its most creative in turning food into any number of unique and memorable occasions.

But something is wrong here.  To those of us in the developed world, the production and delivery of eatables is an arrangement that is in full swing.  Food is an ever-present given in our lives.  Do we take it for granted?  Do we fully take it in?  Do we expect food and eat it automatically at the appointed times?  Do we ess or do we fress?

And this is why Delores was stunned by Nils’ sharing of the powerful idea from César Chávez.  (See Ignorant Food 1.)  Of course the farmer comes to the table three times a day!  Of course I am eating the labor of people!

Delores had her eyes opened.  She can now look at people eating and see the truth.  They are not eating the labor of people.  They are not eating the resources of the earth.  They are not eating the energy-structure of living beings.  They are not eating the ingenuity of the system.  They are not eating the generosity of friends.  They are not eating the wonder of food.  They know not what they do.

Eat your tasty food.  Fress up, happy animals.


(More at "How I Consecrate Eating")