AUSTIN'S DISTURBING DILLO DIRT: ANOTHER WAY TO SELL TOXIC WASTE
Ordinarily, this blog stays 100% on-message in its mission to expose and explain the 65-year-old military/corporate scheme to dispose of a dangerous industrial waste product via public drinking water systems. At a recent Environmental Board meeting, however, Fluoride Free Austin's Linda Green, a passionate advocate of organic gardening, took the opportunity to speak her piece on the City of Austin's coyly-named recycled sewage sludge product.
Dillo Dirt, like all so-called biosolids, comprises an amalgam of "sterilized" human waste plus whatever else travels in the sewage stream. In Austin, it's also composted with yard clippings, a nice touch. But while the treatment and the heat of curing that it's exposed to may (hopefully) kill the pathogens, they do nothing to remove a host of other toxins. . Dissolved chemicals: heavy metals, organic compounds, pesticide residues, pharmaceuticals, settle out to join the solid wastes in the composting tank.
Fluoride is one ingredient in this toxic brew. Since only 1% of the fluoride injected into our water supply is actually consumed drinking, 99% of it finds its way out in the efflluent. Along with it come the lead, arsenic radioactive particles and other toxic metals associated with the potash fertilizer industry from which the fluoride is derived. Drugs, personal care products, household cleaning supplies - anything and everything that has ever been rinsed or flushed, eventually make their way into the stream.
The City then packages the product and sells it as compost by the thousands of tons to clients who are often only vaguely aware of its actual composition. In its Dillo Dirt FAQ sheet, the City of Austin declares the concoction is perfectly safe for use for vegetable gardening, though its own package labeling warns against the practice. Austinites who aspire to grow a healthy organic garden using Dillo Dirt will be twice sabatoged: by the fluoridated water which cannot be escaped and by the toxin-laden "compost" the city promotes as harmless and beneficial.
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Stay away from Dillo Dirt. You don't want it on your veggies, your lawn, or anything else.
NOTICE that the Spanish language warning is stronger than the English: "...TNRCC recommends that it not be used for cultivating for human consumption (on vegetable gardens). The use of this product should be limited to areas such as lawns, flower gardens, and other ornamental gardening projects."
Posted by M. Rae Nadler-Olenick at 2/3/2010 7:23 PM 
Categories: health environment biosolids
Tags: fluoride austin fluoridated water austin dillo dirt biosolids compost organic gardening follies
Categories: health environment biosolids
Tags: fluoride austin fluoridated water austin dillo dirt biosolids compost organic gardening follies
Thanks for the dirt on Dillo Dirt...! So sad how much of business today focuses so much energy on HIDING THE TRUTH clients and customers. This is especially true when it comes to how our environment continues to move in destructive and non-ecological directions! Don't get me started on the term "Natural" on food labels (which means nothing on a label except that the seller wants you to buy it, because there are no legal requirements for using that term!)
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The US EPA and waste industry are promoting the landspreading of Class B sewage sludge containing infectious human and animal prions on grazing lands, hay fields, and dairy pastures. This puts livestock and wildlife at risk of infection. They ingest large quantities of dirt and top dressed sludge with their fodder.
Prion infected Class A sludge "biosolids" compost is spread in parks, playgrounds, home lawns, flower and vegetable gardens - putting humans, family pets, and children with their undeveloped immune systems and hand-to-mouth "eat dirt" behavior at risk. University of Wisconsin prion researchers, working with $100,000 EPA grant and a $5 million Dept. of Defense grant, have found that prions become 680 times more infectious in certain types of soil. Prions can survive for over 3 years in soils. And human prions are 100,000 times more difficult to inactivate than animal prions
Recently, researchers at UC Santa Cruz, and elsewhere, announced that Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a prion disease. "Prion" = proteinaceous infectious particle which causes always fatal TSEs (Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) in humans and animals including BSE (Mad Cow Disease), scrapie in sheep and goats, and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer, elk and moose. Human prion diseases are AD and CJD (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease,) and other rarer maladies. Infectious prions have been found in human and animal muscle tissue including heart, saliva, blood, urine, feces and many other organs.
Alzheimer's rates are soaring as Babyboomers age - there are now over 5.3 million AD victims in US shedding infectious prions in their blood, urine and feces, into public sewers. This Alzheimer's epidemic has almost 500,000 new victims each year. No sewage treatment process inactivates prions - they are practically indestructible. The wastewater treatment process reconcentrates the infectious prions in the sewage sludge.
Quotes from Dr. Joel Pedersen, Univ. of Wisconsin, on his prion research:
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Our results suggest that if prions were to enter municipal waste water treatment systems, most of the agent would partition to activated sludge solids, survive mesophilic anaerobic digestion, and be present in
treated biosolids. Land application of biosolids containing prions could represent a route for their unintentional introduction into the environment. Our results argue for excluding inputs of prions to municipal wastewater treatment."
"Prions could end up in wastewater treatment plants via slaughterhouse drains, hunted game cleaned in a sink, or humans with vCJD shedding prions in their urine or faeces, Pedersen says"
(Note - This UW research was conducted BEFORE UCSC scientists determined that Alzheimer's Disease is another prion disease which may be shedding infectious prions into public sewers and Class B and Class A sludge "biosolids.)
Helane Shields, Alton, NH 03809
www.sludgevictims.com/pathogens/A
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Thanks for this very useful information. There's a good program, "Parker's Pathways," on the Republic Broadcasting Network that deals with issues of both sludge and fluoridated water. You can hear it at http://republicbroadcasting.org on Sundays, 10 a.m. to noon, CST.
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Thank you, Linda, for great comments about the hazards of using sludge on land. Class A sludge compost is NOT sterilized, and pathogens can regrow in this material. The US sludge regulations are woefully inadequate: every industry, business, and institution is permitted to dump 33 pounds of hazardous waste into sewage treatment plants, every month. As these, and all the other contaminants you mention, are removed from the waste water, they concentrate in the resultant sludge. The Federal Clean Water Act defines sewage sludge as a pollutant. Why would any person want to put this complex and unpredictable polluted waste on land where we grow our food? Especially if much safer soil amendments exist that will produce healthy produce and preserve healthy soil. None of our major food processors ( DelMonte, Heinz) accept produce grown on land that has been treated with sewage sludge.
Visit sludgefacts.org for up-to-date and accurate information about the risks associated with sludge use.
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Thanks for your comment and the weblink. I've added it to my bookmarks.
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Just wanted to mention the phosphate industry wants to use too radioactive to be safe waste gypsum from our mega toxic piles for soil amendment. Sweeten the soil and make mutant tomatoes maybe. The allowed radiation is over the top by factor of 8. They also want to use it as a excellent road bed. Relax it is only radiation. Profit is so hard to have if you do it safe. Happy Dillo day. Jim
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Its good things, keep share
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Im so sad with this. I just learned from your post. If i only knew this from the past, maybe i nver use it to help conserve the nature
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See http://www.iaomt.org for articles on mercury in sewage sludge being almost 100% from dentist use of amalgams. San Francisco had heavy metal problems in their sludge. By getting every dentist to install a mercury seperator to catch amalgam mercury.
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we continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on useless water fluoridation when those same funds could be turned to productive purposes: toothpaste and toothbrushes, education, vouchers for dental visits the possibilities are endless.
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Good article...I will use some of these interesting principles myself...more great info please...
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Thank you, Linda, for great comments about the hazards of using sludge on land. Class A sludge compost is NOT sterilized, and pathogens can regrow in this material.
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I suppose that we have to look for the ways to produce less toxic waste, not to try to get rid of it.
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This Alzheimer's epidemic has almost 500,000 new victims each year. No sewage treatment process inactivates prions - they are practically indestructible.
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Toxic waste produced by industrial plants and consumer goods are one of the sources of pollution and will eventually lead to illness and diseases. Hope we can advocate to stop these types of pollutions in our areas.
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Everyone should check out http://austincut.com/feature/2011-7/austins-dirty-secret-dillo-dirt for more information on Dillo Dirt
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Thank you for an excellent suggestion! - FNO
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The Dillo Dirt has killed the "Great Lawn" at Zilker Park.
Don't try to blame it on foot traffic. Don't try to blame it on drought.
Other areas of the park receive FAR MORE traffic, and are thriving since the rains returned.
My guess is that the corruption we see all over town is aiming to destroy the park, and then build condos.
Austin is dead, long live Babylon.
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Very interesting observation. I don't spend much time at Zilker. I'll have to check it out. Thanks.
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Toxic waste should be dump properly because it is very dangerous to our health.
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