North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[road's end farm <organic101@linkny.com>]

On Oct 25, 2006, at 10:59 AM, Jim Fruth wrote:

> >The solution to pollution 
> is dilution<  Around here, sludge, and septic tank waste, is spread on 
> agricultural lands, hay fields mostly.  The cows eat the hay and we eat the 
> cows; European farmers have been doing this for 'eons' with no (apparent) 
> ill effect.

If by "eons" you mean hundreds of years, I'd like to point out that much of the problem with modern sewage sludge (and the contents of at least some septic tanks) is contamination with chemicals that would not have been in human waste until relatively recently (though lead and arsenic may have started showing up when lead arsenate became a common spray, in the 1890's.)

Some chemicals concentrate as they move up the food chain; in which case, applying them on hay fed to livestock raised for human consumption will give humans a higher dose of the stuff, not a lower one.

Other things do break down through the action of soil microorganisms. Part of the trouble with sewage sludge is that it may well include a load of persistent as well as of short term problems.

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly