Biosolids Battle - 1995 Death in Berks

The REPUBLICAN & Herald

BIOSOLIDS BATTLE A muddied picture
1995 death in Berks complicates heated issue


Pottsville, Pa

BY SHAWN A. HESSINGER TAMAQUA BUREAU CHIEF http://www.blogger.com/ 08/27/2006

Regulatory agencies and industry insist it is safe.

However, concerns in the community and among some scientists remain that biosolids — the industry term for partially treated waste water solids from sewage treatment plants — may present dangers.


Opponents of the material’s use call it sewage sludge.

In Schuylkill County, Tamaqua voted Aug. 15 to advertise an ordinance restricting the application of biosolids, and East Brunswick Township and West Penn Township are considering similar ordinances.

“The group of scientists at Cornell who have studied this material are concerned that the regulations currently in place are not sufficient to protect the environment, human health and agricultural productivity,” said Ellen Z. Harrison, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

The institute’s Web site, cwmi.css.cornell.edu/Sludge.html, details information obtained in studies by 10 of its scientists dating back to the 1960s.

One report, “Investigation of Alleged Health Incidents Associated with Land Application of Sewage Sludges,” catalogued 39 incidents in 15 states in which more than 328 residents near land application of biosolids reported illnesses.

Symptoms compiled range from headaches and respiratory problems to death, the report said.

In fact, a study funded by the Water Environment Foundation, a lobbying organization for the sewage industry, concluded in 2002 that biosolids contain higher concentrations of metals like mercury and molybdenum than animal manures.

Entitled “Comparing the Characteristics, Risks and Benefits of Soil Amendments and Fertilizers Used in Agriculture,” the report also stated that the amount of metals per hectare remains higher in biosolids than in phosphate and micronutrient fertilizers when applied to farm land.

An overview of Pennsylvania regulations by the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State University in 1999 indicated that up to 8.6 milligrams per kilogram of polychlorinated biphenyls — a suspected carcinogen — may be contained in land-applied biosolids.

But industry leaders like Brian Rich, vice president of Reading Anthracite Co., which has used the material to reclaim 400 acres of mine land, say all levels of metal contaminants fall below federal and state standards.

The state Department of Environmental Protection, which regulates land-applied use of the material in the state, insists those levels have improved dramatically over the years through tightened regulation and improved technology.

“Biosolids produced from wastewater treatment facilities in Pennsylvania typically contain low concentrations of metals,” said DEP press secretary Kurt Knaus in an e-mailed response on the issue. “During the last 20 years, metal concentrations in biosolids have decreased dramatically through the aggressive application of industrial pretreatment programs by municipal treatment plants.”


Another 1999 Penn State report on biosolids quality shows concentrations of lead, copper, chromium, cadmium, mercury, zinc and nickel have all decreased since 1978.

However, Harrison said many concerns about biosolids content remain centered on the amount of the material still permitted for land application and the contaminant levels allowable in that material.

“Clearly, quantities are important,” Harrison said.

The 2002 industry-funded study reported that in 1998, 41 percent of the estimated 6.9 million dry tons of biosolids produced annually were being used for land application in agriculture. Also, Harrison said current federal regulations do not even begin to account for an estimated 20,000 organic contaminants currently in use, most of which are not destroyed in the waste water treatment process and may become concentrated in partially-treated solids.

Dale Kemery, spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water, said the treatment process is designed to “maximize” the transfer of pollutants into biosolids-cleaning water to be re-released from treatment plants.

However, in an e-mailed response to questions about the claims of possible contamination to the environment, Kemery insisted that the material’s absorptive qualities makes release of organic compounds, metals and pathogens unlikely.

Kemery also said the federal agency is not convinced the illnesses in the Cornell report can be directly linked to land application of the waste material.

“To EPA’s knowledge, none of these claimed adverse health effects have been proved or substantiated as having been caused by exposure to land-applied sewage sludge,” Kemery wrote.

The Pennock case

No amount of government or industry assurances will convince the parents of 17-year-old Daniel Pennock that their son’s 1995 death was unrelated to contaminants spread in a neighboring farmer’s field.

Pennock, of Heidelberg Township in western Berks County, died following several weeks in the hospital after what doctors told his parents was a staphylococcus infection.

Pennock’s mother, Antoinette, recalls that her son became ill on a Friday with flu-like symptoms and stayed home from school.

“We didn’t know the effects of sludge,” Antoinette Pennock says.

Nor did the family know that from 1988, the year before they had moved to the property along Bunker Hill Road just off Route 422, a neighboring field had been repeatedly treated with biosolids.

“I wouldn’t have bought the property if I had known,” says Daniel’s father, Russell Pennock.

Her son’s sore throat and fever the following day prompted Antoinette to call a doctor.

It was not until Sunday, however, when Antoinette and her niece returned from the movies to find Daniel ashen-faced, coughing up a rust-colored material and running a fever of between 103 and 104 degrees that they realized the true gravity of the situation.

A culture taken at the hospital Monday identified the infection, said Antoinette Pennock. Although treated aggressively with antibiotics, her son failed to recover. For years, the cause of Daniel’s fatal illness remained a mystery to his family.

“All this time we were trying to figure out, ‘How did this kid get sick?’ ” his mother said.

But in 2001, Antoinette read a newspaper report about biosolids and the similar story of another Pennsylvania youngster, Tony Behun, who had become ill and died after riding a motorbike across a field treated with sewage sludge.

“And I said to myself, ‘Gee, this sounds a lot like Danny,’ ” Antoinette said.

Though they say they do not recall ever being notified, the Pennocks later discovered biosolids had been spread on a nearby field their children regularly walked through to catch a bus for school, and across which Russell had been granted access for hunting.

They do not know how their son might have become infected or whether he ever walked in the field. In his e-mail response, Kemery insisted the state Department of Health had concluded 11-year-old Behun had succumbed to a pathogen not known to be found in sewage sludge and common to 20 to 30 percent of the population.

He also denied that any causal link had been established between Pennock’s death and land applied sewage sludge.


“The source of the viral and staph pneumonia was not established, nor does the report establish that Daniel Pennock had any contact with either sewage sludge or the land to which sewage sludge had been applied,” Kemery wrote.

Kemery also insisted a third death, that of 26-year-old Shayne Connor in Greenland, N.H., in 1995, had never been linked to application of biosolids on a farmer’s field near his home, despite an autopsy and investigation by a state medical examiner.

Biosolids application in the Connor case involved Synogro, Kemery said, the same company supplying the material for the controversial application to two farmers’ fields in Schuylkill’s East Brunswick Township.

A suit brought by Connor’s family against the farmer, landowner and others was eventually settled in favor of the plaintiffs, according to a March 1999 report on the issue by the New England Biosolids & Residuals Association.

The pathogen dilemma

David L. Lewis, a former scientist from the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, said direct exposure to biosolids may not be necessary for illness to result from the material’s toxins or pathogens. Lewis, who, after 31½ years with the agency, found himself reassigned and his research funding cut after publishing studies raising concerns about the material, says industry and regulators have sought to suppress such investigation for decades.

He currently has a complaint pending against his former employer with the U.S. Department of Labor’s administrative review board and EPA has refused to discuss the case.

“The issue is not as complex as a lot of people would lead you to believe,” said Lewis, who has reviewed Daniel Pennock’s medical records. He said the youth first contracted a rotavirus infection commonly associated with sewage.

Lewis believes it was this rotavirus that weakened Pennock physically, after which he contracted the staphylococcus infection that would finally claim his life.

He believes two factors may make even those in close proximity to biosolids susceptible to a wide range of infections: first, the toxins contained in the material, and second, endotoxins produced by the treatment process itself.

Though state and federal officials maintain current regulations are sufficient to protect public health, Lewis says soil acidity and other standards cannot possibly insure metals and other toxins will not enter the environment. Exposure to some of these toxins, Lewis said, may weaken human immune systems in close proximity to biosolids, which already contain high concentrations of pathogens. Lewis also said that the sewage treatment process itself may produce endotoxins, the by-products of the death and breakdown of naturally occurring bacteria often responsible for the flu-like symptoms common among employees new to the environment of the sewage treatment plant. Rich, a supporter of the land application of biosolids, insists studies of the health of Philadelphia sewer workers over the past 40 years show no health problems associated with exposure.

However, Lewis says exposure in the sewage treatment plant is often mitigated by the dilution of contaminants in water solution; while biosolids applied to agricultural and mine land represent a more concentrated source of toxins and pathogens.

Additional illnesses and other possible environmental impacts have repeatedly been reported by those in areas treated by biosolids.

“I’ve had boils. Last year, I had sinus infections that they could not get rid of,” said Judy Fasching, Lenhartsville, Berks County, who says biosolids have been applied to a field across the road from her property since 1997.

Antoinette Pennock says many family members and regular visitors to her home suffered from boils and sinus and other infections in the years leading up to her son’s death.

The following year, the Pennocks screened in a large back porch to combat flies they say were plaguing the neighborhood but that they say disappeared when the biosolids application stopped in 1995, the year of their son’s death.

Kemery says other residents of Tuttle Lane, Greenland, N.H., near where Connor died, also alleged illnesses related to sewage sludge application.

However, he insisted no scientific connection between these illnesses and biosolid application has ever been made.

Kemery also admitted many “emerging contaminants” including endocrine disrupting compounds, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, poly brominated diphenyl ethers and others must still be evaluated for possible regulation.

“These are important areas of research and warrant further study,” Kemery said.

Other questions


Further concerns over land application of biosolids range from its possible impact on human health to impact on crop production and the environment. An outbreak of hepatitis A at a Chi-Chi’s Restaurant in Monaca, Pa., in 2003 eventually impacting 555 people, including food servers and diners, was traced to green onions served at the restaurant.

“There’s always been the thought that somehow fecal matter got in contact with the onions,” said Richard McGarvey, spokesman for the state Department of Health.


Hepititus A results from a virus known to inhabit the intestinal tracks of both humans and animals, making such exposure the only likely cause of the contamination, McGarvey said.

McGarvey said the onions were eventually traced to one of four or five possible farms in Mexico by federal officials, but said a positive source for the contamination was never identified.

Though one possible explanation might be lack of sanitary facilities at the farms where the onions originated, McGarvey agreed another might be application of biosolids or a manure product on fields, a contention held by some biosolids opponents.

Reading Anthracite Co. currently grows both Christmas trees and a crop of hybrid poplars that Vice President Brian Rich says can eventually be used for timber on former mine land treated with a mixture of spoils, coal ash and biosolids.

Rich points to the comparatively positive growth of trees planted in the material compared with those planted on untreated mine land. Rich and East Brunswick Township farmer Jeff C. Hill, whose application to use the material on farmland off Route 895 in the township has stirred up opposition from neighbors, insist the slow nitrogen release compared to commercial fertilizer benefits crops.

Though Harrison admits nitrogen, phosphorous and organic matter contained in the waste water solids may be beneficial, she added that metals including copper, nickel and zinc can decrease crop yields over time.

On a recent tour of grassy fields created with biosolids application, Rich bent down to hunt the soil for spiders and other life he says now inhabit the new ecosystems replacing barren mine land.

But Harrison said other research into soil biology has revealed that earth worms and other creatures may avoid treated soil when possible and cannot properly reproduce in such an environment.

John Novak, a professor of civil engineering at Virginia Polytechnical Institute, Blackburg, Va., and supporter of biosolids land application, said care must be taken to ensure no water runoff from application sites occurs.

Some, like Fasching, insist precautions against runoff from treated sites are rarely taken by applicators.

However, Kemery insists Cornell scientists and other opponents of the land application of biosolids have been extremely selective in their criticism of the material.

“We believe the potential risks from biosolids utilization cannot be discussed without consideration of many processes in the agricultural community, and natural processes, which may be of greater importance,” Kemery said.

Pennsylvania’s DEP seems similarly confident that the material is safe despite claims to the contrary. “We believe our program is protective of the public health and the environment, and we have not seen peer reviewed research suggesting there are risks that we did not account for in our program,” said Knaus in an e-mailed response from the department on its own biosolids program. “Science and three decades of experience back its use when applied, according to DEP regulations and good farming practices.” Knaus said attempts by the agency to secure Daniel Pennock’s medical records from his family for study have been ineffective.

The Pennocks say they plan to pursue further legal remedy after an initial attempt proved ineffective due to statute of limitations constraints.