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Climate|How to Know if Toxic Sewage Sludge Has Been Used in Your Community
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/climate/sewage-sludge-pfas-your-community.html
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For the past year, I’ve been reporting on how “forever chemicals,” a group of toxic contaminants known as PFAS, can end up in our sewage and farmland.
It’s not well known, but when wastewater treatment plants treat our sewage or wastewater, there’s a thick sludge that’s left behind. And much of that sludge is used as fertilizer on farms across the country.
In my latest article, I looked at how a lack of action at the federal level, and a hodgepodge of state regulations, can mean some states risk becoming the dumping grounds for contaminated sludge. As a result, some of these communities are pushing back.
You could call it a form of NIMBY-ism. Every state produces sewage sludge, and it needs to go somewhere. And reusing sewage sludge as fertilizer has its benefits. It is rich in nutrients. And spreading it on fields cuts down on the need to incinerate it or put it in landfills, which would have other environmental costs. Using sludge fertilizer also reduces the use of synthetic fertilizers that are based on fossil fuels.
But when PFAS turns up in sludge used as fertilizer, it can become a problem. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have been linked to developmental delays in children, reproductive health harms, cancer and other illnesses.
The federal government regulates some pathogens and heavy metals in sludge used as fertilizer, which is also known biosolids, but not PFAS. That has left states, and some communities, to handle the issue on their own.
