Lowly Fungi Tell the Tale
We report our usual observations that most forest fungi are killed by exposure to toxic sewage sludge from Wastewater Processing Plants,* but that a few species do survive, meaning, they are toxin-tolerant to a greater or lesser degree. This report shows some common fungi of the Snoqualmie Forest, Washington State, from an area not exposed to sewage sludge, or at least we think that. There are a few toxin-tolerant species in this collection, but most of the species do not appear if the forest has been exposed to sludge.
*Wastewater Processing Plants (WWPPs), aka, Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) or Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs).
The question then is if toxic sewage sludge is actually toxic, and if so, how do natural biota respond to such toxic exposure?
Answer: Yes, of course, toxic sewage sludge from any WWPP is toxic. How could it not be toxic? How could it be ‘Safe’ for exposure to humans, wildlife and the environment?
When you consider the combined industrial, medical and human municipal wastes that are drained and flushed into any sewage conveyance system, including roadway runoff flows, how could such materials be ‘Safe’ by any measure, with ‘Safe" implying an absence of harm? Not going to work! The US EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) does not think so, either.
More Action Needed to Protect Water Resources From Unmonitored Hazardous Chemicals
US EPA, Office of Inspector General (OIG), 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20460
Report No. 14-P-0363 September 29, 2014, Chapter 2
EPA Has Not Taken Actions to Address Discharges of Hundreds of Hazardous Chemicals From Sewage Treatment Plants
Summary: “The EPA regulates discharges to and from sewage treatment plants, but these regulations are not effective in controlling the discharge of hundreds of hazardous chemicals to surface waters, such as lakes and streams. Sewage treatment plant staff do not monitor for hazardous chemicals discharged by industrial users. This is the result of factors we observed, including a general regulatory focus on the priority pollutants list that has not been updated since 1981, limited monitoring requirements, limited coordination between EPA offices, a lack of tracking hazardous waste notifications required for submittal by industrial users, or a lack of awareness of discharges reported by industrial users under the Toxics Release Inventory.”
Auditors fault EPA for lax chemical safeguards
By Timothy Cama - 09/29/14
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn’t do enough to stop hundreds of hazardous chemicals from getting into waterways via sewage plants, a watchdog report found. The EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) said the agency uses the Clean Water Act to regulate only 126 toxic chemicals that could flow to sewage plants, leaving about 300 chemicals that are considered hazardous under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. “These regulations are not effective in controlling the discharge of hundreds of hazardous chemicals to surface waters such as lakes and streams,” the OIG concluded. The Clean Water Act gives the EPA the authority to regulate any pollutant, but it hasn’t updated its list of chemicals to regulate in sewage plants since 1981. Auditors also found that the EPA may not be consistently enforcing the requirement that industrial polluters file reports on the chemicals they discharge to sewage plants. “Not only is there no database of the information, we found that no compilation of the notification forms was available in the regions and states we interviewed,” OIG officials said. “As a result, sewage treatment plants may not be adequately treating wastewater entering their facilities and are at risk of discharging hazardous chemicals into receiving bodies of water such as rivers and streams,” the office said. Auditors suggested that … the agency improve communications … and boost its compliance monitoring, among other changes. The EPA told the OIG that it agreed with nearly all of the recommendations and would work to implement them within a year.
Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW) Wastewater Sampling Study; Study Results
Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs), including flame retardants, hormones, pharmaceuticals, steroids, nonylphenols, and pesticides, are increasingly being detected in the environment and there is concern that wastewater may be a significant source of these pollutants. To better understand the extent to which CECs may be entering water through this pathway, EPA has sampled nine Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs) to characterize the occurrence of a variety of pharmaceuticals and other CECs. EPA is releasing the results of the Nine POTW Study. EPA identified several Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) in untreated and fully treated wastewater samples collected at nine, non-randomly selected publicly owned treatment works (POTWs). EPA analyzed for over 100 chemicals that are representative of several types of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, steroids, hormones, flame retardants, and pesticides. The results of these sampling efforts are published in the “Occurrence of Contaminants of Emerging Concern in Wastewater from Nine POTWs.”
http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/ppcp/potw....
http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/ppcp/uploa...
Lowly Forest Fungi Tell the Tale. Below are images of just a few of the common fungi that can be found in any of our forests. Upon sewage sludge exposure, only a few survive, as you have seen in these reports. The targets of our studies are the toxin-tolerant forest fungi that survive toxic insult by sewage sludge inundation.
The first six images below are of toxin-tolerant forest fungi that we have identified, but in this case, imaged in a forest setting not used for the open land disposal of sewage sludge:
The remaining six images are of fungi that typically do not survive exposure to toxic sewage sludge, with a few of the species appearing to be toxin-tolerant to some degree:
The newly enhanced or improved sewage processing plants, now with longer "Retention Times," were intended to yield a less toxic sludge product. However, we suspect by our field observations that the result is more likely an increase in the concentration of some of the "Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs), including flame retardants, pharmaceuticals, nonylphenols and pesticides" that are not monitored by the managing agencies, and which agencies only "... focus on the priority pollutants list that has not been updated since 1981."
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