5 articles on australian soil contamination

This is Mr Lincoln Augustus, first second cousin of Holymagiman

The family has just been sitting here smoking the smokes and thinking the thoughts, and we are all in agreement that the Numba Ones are Numba one because Holymagiman's fields are truly organic.

And then we got to thinking about how organic Australia really is, and what those farmers are doing to keep it organic.

Annd Alvin the Idiot, who is most widely read, said that he had read a series of articles in your national newspaper, the Sydney Moring Herald around about May 6th 2002.

He has brought them up on his Comodore 64, and they made for some interesting reading. Holymagiman has decided not to expand his business to growing his crops in Australia, as he now realises what Australian soil is all about.

For the half life of all those pollutants that are in the Australian soil, with Government approval, will be mighty long.

The family thought that the following 5 articles would be most helpful in understanding the Government's views to soil pollution. They make for some dry reading, but should be read nonethelless to understand what you are eating.

The references to Queensland are most telling.

NEWS ARTICLE 1

Industrial waste sold as fertiliser

By Gerard Ryle
May 6 2002

Graphic: Waste products used in agriculture

Big businesses across Australia are disposing of their industrial waste as fertilisers or soil conditioners to be spread on farms, vineyards and home gardens.

The material often contains potentially toxic substances and heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, chromium and lead.

State government agencies encourage the practice in the name of recycling and farmers embrace it because it delivers cheap fertiliser. Corporations also can save millions of dollars in dumping costs.

Untreated slag from BHP's Port Kembla steelworks is being spread over dairy fields and crops in the southern tablelands.

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Radioactive material from aluminium refineries in Western Australia is being poured onto big cattle stations. In Victoria, South Australia and Queensland, waste from zinc smelters, power stations, cement kilns and car-part manufacturers is turned into products for farms and home gardens.

The practice is perfectly legal.

In Australia, there is no national regulation of fertilisers and any material that has fertilising qualities can be labelled and used as such, even if it contains toxins and heavy metals.

There are no requirements to register the products with state agricultural departments or to stop them being marketed as organic, which some of them are.

The few state regulations controlling toxic heavy metals in fertilisers can disappear when an industrial waste is re-labelled as a soil conditioner.

The potential threat to human health posed by the waste is a matter of dispute.

Studies show that large amounts of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium and mercury can cause cancers, birth defects and neurological problems in humans. They also can be taken up by grazing animals and by many table crops.

State environmental protection authorities and agricultural departments believe that the levels in the recycled material are harmless.

But they rarely test the products, relying instead on data supplied by the companies producing the waste for assurance that it is not dangerous.

Dr Mark Conyers, a soil scientist with the NSW Department of Agriculture, says it is time for a public debate on an issue which is unknown to most consumers.

"One of the things that disturbs me is that they give these apparently detailed analyses on their products, but they don't give you analysis on the bogymen [heavy metals]," he said. "It is like they are not there.

"My feeling is that these things should not be dumped on agricultural land until they have been deemed to be safe."

Lee Bell, a member of the National Environmental Consultative Forum, said there appeared to be a lack of regulation.

"It is a scandal and a disgrace and I think that if the public were made aware of the implications of doing this there would be mass outrage," he said.

"They are trying to convince people that black is white, and that potentially toxic waste is actually good for your garden. I don't think that any sensible and informed people would be of that view."

Ben Cole, a spokesman for the Total Environment Centre, said any reuse of unscreened industrial waste in agriculture should cause alarm.

"Industrial waste is dangerous; it should be kept well away from agriculture and the environment," he said.

"The risk of exposure to undesirable levels of heavy metals and other pollutants is far too high.

"Many of these contaminants bioaccumulate. This means they can be passed through the food chain and into our bodies, and flow into waterways via run-off."


NEWS ARTICLE 2:

How industrial waste gets into the food chain

May 6 2002

Agriculture gobbles up recycled materials, but there are few checks on the practice, Gerard Ryle reports.

Graphic: Heavy metals and their limits

The names of the companies recycling industrial waste into agriculture read like a who's who of Australian business.

Alcoa, BHP, Boral, Intercast & Forge, and Iluka Resources all dispose of by-products either directly to farmers or indirectly to fertiliser companies who use them in their production process.

Other companies, such as Ford, Backwell-IXL and TiWest, have explored ways of turning wastes into garden or agricultural products.

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Much of the recycling is done in the name of the environment, and big fertiliser companies who use material say there is nothing wrong with it.

For instance, sulphuric acid used in the making of phosphate-based fertiliser is recycled sulphur dioxide captured from the pollution stacks of Pasminco's zinc and lead refineries. And ammonium sulphate, a by-product from Anaconda's nickel smelter, is used as a source of nitrogen in compound fertilisers.

But while some recycling may be desirable, there is little monitoring by state agricultural departments. Safety issues are left almost entirely to the honesty of private industry.

"In the olden days the Department of Agriculture would have done random checks on products to make sure they were what they were," said Dr Mark Conyers, a research scientist with the NSW Department of Agriculture.

"Today there are no inspectors. There is no compliance testing. There is just a labelling requirement, and if someone says 'I am not happy with the information, I am going to get a second opinion' it is up to the individual consumer to challenge the company."

The Herald has learned that there are no national laws on the level of contaminants allowed in recycled materials used in agriculture.

State fertiliser laws are restricted to just three heavy metals - lead, mercury and cadmium. Other potential hazards are ignored.

As a result some farmers can find themselves sprinkling several cups of arsenic over their lands when they follow recommendations on one recycled material for higher crop yields.

Arsenic has no nutrient value for plants and is considered injurious to human health. It can also be ingested by animals and some table vegetables. But, with a number of other toxic substances, such as uranium, chromium and nickel, it is in some recycled wastes.

"It is hard to get hard numbers out of data about what are safe levels of arsenic, or even lead, mercury and cadmium," said Dr Conyers. "You might get data on what is safe on potatoes in Tasmania but you don't get general information on what are safe levels in soil. The numbers are very rubbery.

"What we do know is that there are problems with lead, mercury and cadmium, and there are suspected problems with arsenic and chromium in some industrial waste products."

The recent explosion in using waste in agriculture appears to have coincided with two events.

The first was a general push by state environmental protection authorities to encourage recycling by raising disposal costs for hazardous materials.

The second was the abandonment, state by state, of rules that required the registration of fertilisers. These rules had been around for decades and NSW was one of the last to get rid of them.

In 1998, NSW was one of the last states to abolish the need for companies to list their products and their all-important contents.

"Companies are often looking for ways to bulk out products from cheap waste material," said Angela Thomas, technical manager for the fertiliser company, Yates, which does not use any dangerous byproducts. "I can't actually quote anything for you, but I wouldn't be surprised. There is such a drive at the moment for people to find alternatives for their waste products.

"I suppose some companies would see that it would be a good way to get rid of materials that they couldn't get rid of elsewhere," Ms Thomas said.

Even those who make their living from selling the recycled products to farmers are amazed at the lack of regulation.

Richard Clarke, who sells steel and cement-making wastes and incinerator ash from the burning of Canberra's sewage, says he is never bothered, even by the EPA.

"The Department of Agriculture used to keep an eye on us and this is the crazy thing," he said. "It has all become truth in labelling and it is a very big open market now because of the cutbacks the State Government have made." Mr Clarke, who tests all materials offered to him for safety before selling them to farmers, said he knocks some of them back, even when industries offer them free.

"There are products that are out there that are just no good," he said. "The Government says it is concerned about the environment, but then why isn't the Government controlling a little bit more what is going on the ground?"

But it appears that some recycling is being done with the active encouragement of state authorities.

For instance, at Townsville's Sun Metals Corporation, the world's third-largest zinc smelter, a waste gypsum is blended with natural gypsum, and then spread over cane fields and banana plantations. The waste product contains heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium and mercury, but the blending process brings it below Queensland's allowable levels for agriculture.

"We don't make any money on it. We are just trying to get rid of a waste product and get it reused for a better purpose than what we would do with it in terms of just putting it into a lime pond for storage and ultimately for capping and sealing," said the company's environmental officer, Eddie Boggiano.

"We have a licence from the EPA and they are aware of that; and also Burdekin Lime Company [which mixes the product] has an environmental licence whereby they can transport the gypsum, because it is considered a waste from here and it should be tracked."

Similarly the recycling of waste from Blue Circle Southern Cement at Marulan has drawn effusive praise from the CSIRO.

"Blue Circle Southern Cement sell their 'pollution' to farmers for $130,000 a year," says one CSIRO document on sustainable resources.

In fact the company is now saving about $200,000 a year more by adopting a program of recycling lime kiln dust to farmers.

What was once a waste is now a product called "hot-lime". The extra savings come in the form of lower EPA licensing fees, said the company's general manager of minerals, Allan Starr.

According to Mike McLaughlin from the CSIRO, who is in charge of a national program to monitor cadmium contamination in soils, much of the recycling simply makes sense. "A lot of the waste streams are very useful," said Dr McLaughlin. "Sulphur used to be put out into the air, but this can now be captured and used to make fertilisers.

"Rather than paying for sulphuric acid, you are taking a pollutant that would be going into the atmosphere and using it to substitute for a mineral that would have to be mined out of the ground anyway."

It is a point repeated by Craig Heidrich, a spokesman for the Ash Development Association of Australia. This is a body seeking alternative uses for Australia's estimated 12 million-tonne annual discharge of waste ash from coal-powered generating stations.

"There is a lot of fear and paranoia about using a so-called industrial waste for that type of application - it breeds the usual sort of scepticism," he said, but "from an environmental standpoint, from a nutrient standpoint ... this has no negative effects."

Jim Devine, a spokesman for Macquarie Generation, which recycles coal ash waste from the Bayswater Power Station into a tree plantation, said the material would otherwise have to be buried at great cost.

"We see it as an opportunity to capitalise on what has traditionally been regarded as a liability, that's for sure," said Mr Devine. "Every tonne we can divert from the [disposal] dam defers construction of the next dam. It is an expensive business maintaining it where it is at present."

But Lee Bell, a member of the National Environmental Consultative Forum, said some recycling was little more than legalised dumping and is not being properly monitored.

"The miraculous development of some industrial wastes into so-called fertiliser doesn't seem to have any regulatory control at all," Mr Bell said.

"It seems that if you can give waste some name that relates to improved farm yields, then it is fine to put it on the market. The regulators don't seem to be able to cope with that."

[email protected]


NEWS ARTICE 3

Fertiliser companies now police themselves

By Gerard Ryle
May 7 2002

Australian consumers have no way of knowing what is in the fertiliser they are spreading over their farms and gardens.

In late 1998 NSW followed Victoria, becoming one of the last states to abolish the registration of products.

Under laws that had applied since the 1930s companies wanting to sell a product used to have to pay a fee to have it registered. They also had to provide detailed information about its content.

But after the big fertiliser companies complained about the cost, the industry became almost completely self-regulated.

Companies selling fertilisers are meant to abide by state labelling codes. However, a loophole allows manufacturers to produce a fertiliser in one state, under one set of laws, and then to sell it in another.

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Angela Thomas, the technical manager for Yates, said not all companies put heavy-metal warnings on their packs even if, technically, they should.

She said there was little testing of products by state agricultural departments and no recent prosecutions for incorrect labelling.

"There was actually quite a strict way of registering fertilisers in each individual state but now a lot of the requirements for registrations have been rolled back," she said. "You just need to basically conform to the regulations. You don't have to submit an application to actually register a fertiliser."

Denis Butler, from the Chemical Residue Laboratory of NSW Agriculture, confirmed there was no testing regime in NSW.

He said that when the Fertiliser Act was revised in 1998 - it became law the following year - it was determined that "industry regulation would take over from government regulation in respect to fertiliser content and marketing".

In other words the companies would police themselves.

The Herald found a similar story when it contacted the chemical residue branches of other states. Only Victoria undertakes some form of testing, and then only once every two years.

"We all kind of looked over each other's shoulders and saw the way the wind was drifting," said Peter Rutherford, chemical co-ordinator for the West Australian Department of Agriculture.

"We saw ... our registration system was nothing more than a duplication of consumer protection provided by the Fair Trading Ministry, so we just said, 'Why impose that?' So we took it off."

Geoff Cowles, a senior registration officer with the department of primary industries in Queensland, said the rules were now similar to the Commonwealth tax system.

"The onus rests with the seller to get it right, so any product that is on the market in Queensland is assumed by this department to be complying with all respects of the legislation," he said.

"Our view is that provided the product hasn't exceeded the maximum permitted concentration [of heavy metals], the product should be reasonably safe to be on the market."

Asked how the department knew the levels were not exceeded, he said: "Well you don't because ... a product that is on the market is assumed by our department to be complying in every respect with the legislation.

"The only way you could find out would be if you were to investigate every batch of fertiliser that is on the market. We don't have the resources to do that.

"... One of the difficulties we have in the no-registration process is that we are really not in a good position to know ... what is on the market."


NEWS ARTICLE 4


From furnace to field, but it's cheap

May 6 2002

Waste slag from Port Kembla ends up down on the farm as Canola Plus. Gerard Ryle writes.

Brian Ferguson has been farming his Goulburn property for more than 30 years so he reckons he knows a few things the experts don't.

The 30-tonne pile of greyish matter he is about to plough into his paddocks to promote cattle pasture may be raw industrial waste from BHP, but it cost him less than half the price of normal lime.

"The agronomists, they are against it," Mr Ferguson said. "One of them says it kills the soil microbes. I don't know. I think you have got to try a bit yourself and go from there."

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In the journey from BHP's Port Kembla steelworks to Mr Ferguson's southern tablelands farm a remarkable transformation takes place.

Waste slag, which an analysis shows contains heavy metals including arsenic, chromium, lead and nickel, suddenly becomes a fertilising product called Canola Plus.

Instead of being stored in heaps regulated by the Environment Protection Authority (EPA), it is ploughed into fields where cattle graze and where vegetables grow.

"Most people are probably concerned about it because of the heavy metals and stuff," Mr Ferguson said. "But it is cheaper than lime and this stuff is a hell of a lot easier to spread because it is granulated."

He first heard about the product through another farmer who had been using the material for years, apparently with great success. "You have only got to talk to people who have used it and they swear by it. But we won't use any more now until we are sure it doesn't affect things too much."

Although rebranding BHP steel waste as a fertilising product is perfectly legal, it is unknown to most consumers and even to the EPA.

When the Herald first asked BHP if it knew, the company denied all knowledge. But up to 30,000 tonnes a year isContinued Page 6


NEWS ARTICLE 5:

Toxic waste imports put food in danger

By Gerard Ryle
May 8 2002

Related links:
- Industrial waste in fertilisers: Greens demand inquiry
- No looking back for the farmer happy to be a lab rat
- When 100% natural isn't 100% natural

Waste Lands - the in-depth investigation

Toxic waste from China and other countries is being imported and used as a raw ingredient by some Australian fertiliser manufacturers and distributors.

The wastes - from steelworks, electric-arc furnaces and zinc smelters - are being made into products that have shown heavy-metal levels up to 110,000 times higher than those which prompt NSW consumer warnings.

They are being sold to unwitting farmers, mainly in Queensland and Western Australia, as zinc sulphate micronutrients to grow root vegetables destined for supermarkets.

The federal Department of the Environment confirmed yesterday it had intercepted two recent shipments of the material after being tipped off to the practice.

The department tested the material and classed it as hazardous waste under Australian law.

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It was believed to be found to contain extremely high levels of cadmium, which can poison humans, vegetables and livestock.

''At the minute we are not prepared to talk about where it is being imported from ... We don't want to point the finger at any other country until we know more about it," a department spokesman said.

''It is an industrial residue and if you treat it correctly and subject it to chemical processes to clean it up, then you have clean zinc sulphate. The problem is shipments that haven't been cleaned up."

The department said about 340 shipments of zinc sulphate were imported just from China last year. Thousands more tonnes are believed to be coming from other countries.

The department said it was tipped off by a newspaper advertisement early last year warning farmers of the practice.

It was placed by a Sydney company, Hardman Australia, which stopped making the product after it was undercut by cheap imports.

''What we are talking about is the dross from zinc smelters, the stuff that floats to the top," said its managing director, John Bradley.

''They take that dross because it is cheap and nobody wants it, it is a waste, and they refine that into zinc sulphate heptahydrate.

''In doing so they finish with very high levels of toxic waste metals within the product because it is not being made from clean material."

He said importers were exploiting loopholes that do not require products to be re-tested for potential heavy-metal contaminants once they reach Australia.

''The trouble is that the Chinese are giving testing certificates on the products. But they are just lies, that's the nicest thing I can say.

''If we made that material we would be able to survive too, but we would poison everybody. It is madness. They are turning farms into waste dumps.

''And for some of this stuff, if you contaminate your ground with it, you might render it impossible to ever farm clean vegetables again."

Mr Bradley said he discovered the practice after being forced to import the material: his company had found it uneconomic to keep producing a local product to strict Australian standards.

Concerned about the Chinese certification that accompanied one shipment, he had it tested. The laboratory found it contained 11 per cent cadmium - or 110,000 parts per million.

Mr Bradley said root crops grown in soil with cadmium levels as low as 0.3 parts per million could exceed World Health Organisation guidelines.

He said the company had been priced out of the market ''because we are honest. We don't want to poison people. Everybody when they go down to the supermarket to buy their vegetables could be buying toxic, contaminated vegetables."
Contact the reporter: [email protected]


Well, that is all for now, so we leave you with the blessings of the Lord
MLA