Environmental organizations held a webinar this week about their fight against 'forever chemicals' that are ending up on farmland. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
PFAS, the so-called 'forever chemicals' used to make everything from fast-food containers to makeup, have been found to be "ubiquitous environmental contaminants," as researchers put it in a 2022 paper in the journal Science. Their health impacts are still being studied. Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced drinking water regulations for six PFAS, citing their links to cancer and other illnesses.
But one place the EPA hasn't yet regulated these chemicals is in sewage sludge that's processed into agricultural fertilizer – also known as 'biosolids.'
BETSY NICHOLAS: Nothing is preventing these biosolids from being spread on land.
Betsy Nicholas is the vice president of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network.
NICHOLAS: … and we are very concerned about the potential for harm and toxic contamination, it getting into our food system as well as our waterways.
Her organization, along with the Virginia Conservation Network, Rockbridge Conservation, and other groups, held a webinar this week on the fight against PFAS in biosolids. In August, the Potomac Riverkeeper Network joined a federal lawsuit alleging the EPA failed to protect farmers in Texas from PFAS-contaminated biosolids that sickened them and their livestock. That case is ongoing.
NICHOLAS: We need to be looking at what's in these biosolids before we put it on farm fields.
The Virginia Biosolids Council reports that biosolids were applied to more than 36,000 acres of agriculture and forestry land in 2023.
