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| | | Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 6/26/2008 6:47:13 PM
Posts: 119, Visits: 602 |
| | Anyone have the skinny on the cow killing biosolids? There was an AP story about a week or two ago. It seemed like a evil biosolids producer, good farmer story. Me, I think it is as likely that the cheap farmer bought feed from China that had thallium in it and the cows spread it over the nice clean biosolids fields. Just looking for someone who might know what happened. Mark |
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| | | Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Today @ 1:37:32 PM
Posts: 481, Visits: 1,437 |
| | Never heard of cows dying from biosolids. Biosolids are scanned via laboratory analysis by law. How soon after solids spreading were the cows allowed to roam over it? There are certain plants toxic to animals also. Maybe AP jumped the gun or over the moon, as usual. |
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| | | Junior Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 6/11/2008 5:21:41 PM
Posts: 12, Visits: 77 |
| | http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23506826/ |
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Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 2 days ago @ 5:42:08 PM
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| | | Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 7/1/2008 12:17:20 PM
Posts: 114, Visits: 223 |
| | I would love to spend an hour with the data -- printouts, chromatograms, ICP calibration records etc. How did they take the samples? I have trouble understanding thallium at huge levels in biosolids. Cadmium, molybdenum and chlordane? PCBs? I am not convinced that we know the full story. |
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| | | Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 6/26/2008 6:47:13 PM
Posts: 119, Visits: 602 |
| | I am sure we don't know the whole story. We are talking about Augusta GA. So could it,thallium, have come from a plant that makes gopher poison for golf courses? Mark |
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| | | Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Today @ 1:37:32 PM
Posts: 481, Visits: 1,437 |
| | One Engineer for the plaintif managed HazWaste sites. He wouldn't be trying to create another one for profit,would he? |
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| | | Supreme Being
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Today @ 1:37:32 PM
Posts: 481, Visits: 1,437 |
| | Thallium was used in rat poison once. I wonder if the farmer had some spread around his barn? |
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| | | Forum Newbie
Group: CEC Committee
Last Login: 3/28/2008 1:58:36 PM
Posts: 1, Visits: 4 |
| These memos are from two reliable sources that pertain to AP's dead cow story, and provide good responses to the issues raised in that story.
FROM: Chris Peot, DCWASA Biosolids Manager & Expert Panel Member
TO: Biosolids Expert Panel
March 20, 2008
SUBJECT: Associated Press Story on Georgia Court Case
You recently received a copy of an Associated Press story and other information about a recent court case in Georgia. This story has been presented as “raising doubts” about the safety of the land application of biosolids as regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
As manager of one of the largest biosolids programs in the nation, as a member of this Expert Panel, and as someone who worked closely with the AP reporters for nearly a year, I want to provide you with information that was omitted in the AP story.
Last May I was contacted by a reporter with AP who said he was doing a feature story on biosolids and who asked for my help. I believed this was an opportunity to share the overwhelming scientific case for the safety and benefits of biosolids and to facilitate the reporter’s search for the facts. I and many others in the biosolids profession, including government officials and farmers, provided hours of on-camera interviews, arranged tours of our facilities and arranged for the reporters and photographers to observe an actual land application process in Virginia. We then waited patiently for the story to appear. After many months, I began to inquire about the story. Each time I asked, the response was vague, usually that it was being edited or being reviewed, but that its release was imminent.
Those of us who had worked with the reporters on this story began to suspect that because the science and the experience supporting biosolids was so overwhelming — and because the story wasn’t particularly interesting — the reporters were having difficulty finding a “hook” that would grab editors’ attention and cause them to buy the story from AP.
The case in Georgia obviously provided the AP with their hook (one of the authors confirmed this with me via e-mail)—an isolated and highly disputed incident, which occurred 18 years ago, that could be used to create alarm about biosolids and, not incidentally, sell the story to subscribing newspapers and electronic media.
The true story about the Georgia case is complex, and while I’d like to give you every minute detail, I’ll submit a few of the most pertinent facts. I will be happy, however, to provide you with any of the supporting documents and more details if you desire. I believe you should be aware of the following facts:
From: Charles Hooks, Virginia Biosolids Council
In addition, the following information may also be useful in answering questions from your staff, the public and local media:
The Gaskin Study
The AP reporters are claiming that the University of Georgia study by Gaskin and others is fatally flawed because it relied on "false data" from the Augusta WWTP. In fact, the Gaskin study is based on actual soil and grass samples from land--many different farms--that received the biosolids from Augusta. The authors acknowledge that the data from the WWTP are questionable and that the metals in the biosolids were too high:
Their conclusions, however, do not rest on the data from Augusta, they rely on the actual soil and grass samples. While the plaintiff's paid consultant attacked the methods used for the samples, that does not make his opinion more valid than the peer-reviewed scientists.
The Gaskin study concluded the following:
"The study indicated that toxic levels of metals have not accumulated in the soils due to long-term biosolids application. Overall forage quality from the biosolids-amended fields was similar to that of commercially fertilized fields, however, due to the relatively high S and potential for a low Cu to Mo ratio, Cu supplements should be used to ensure ruminant health."
There are no peer-reviewed studies to indicate that the Gaskin study is flawed.
A Smoking Gun?
Then there is the "smoking gun" of the note that says the researchers should "fess up" that the data are wrong. AP claims in the story that they somehow "obtained" a draft document of the Gaskin study that contains this confession, with the implication that their investigative reporting skill resulted in this disclosure. In fact, these notes were produced by the authors of the study during the discovery phase of one of the many plaintiffs' suits.
But federal judge William Moore denied a motion by the plaintiffs to include the note in their false claims suit against the study's authors and on September 28, 2007 made the following ruling about the note:
"The note appears to be an editing comment, illustrating one scientist's attempt to ensure that the study's conclusions accurately reflect the scope of the research, and that the paper does not infer additional conclusions by use of imprecise language . The Court finds that this note, standing alone, is neither evidence of fraudulent conduct nor evidence of contamination on Plaintiffs' lands ."
The AP did not use this judge's ruling, apparently since it puts a completely different light on the claim that the Gaskin study was based on false information and was fatally flawed.
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