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Ontario’s food supply may become increasingly tainted by drugs like Valium and other hazardous chemicals as long as sewage sludge continues to be used as crop fertilizer, critics charged yesterday.
They are calling on the Ontario government to ban the use of sludge – a mix of household and industrial waste – at the province’s farms until the full impact of its health effects is known.
“We are letting people use sludge on crop fields in Ontario while we don’t know the effect on our food and we don’t know the effect on our health,” NDP health critic France Gelinas said. “But there are enough red flags going up by enough people to know that somebody has to be mandated to look at this seriously and do the serious research.”
Environmentalists say the issue is especially concerning in the wake of recent outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella and listeria. And while there may not be enough research done on the direct impact of food grown in sludge, there have been cases that show dangers exist.
The National Farmers Union supports a ban of sewage sludge until processes are in place to remove all its toxic residues, and argues that the people in the area directly affected should be properly notified about the practice.
About 120,000 tonnes of sludge are spread on 150 square kilometres of farm fields in Ontario with what critics say is no real monitoring system to track health concerns.
Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky said in the legislature yesterday that the government is taking “a very balanced approach [and] a science-based approach” to the issue and has been consulting with its partners across the province. The Environment Ministry considers the fertilizer safe as long as the government’s standards are followed.