San Francisco-The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is labeling as nonsense more anti-biosolids claims – this time by Food Rights Network – that what’s being produced by area treatment plants contains a long list of endocrine disruptive properties. “Our tests show that biosolids compost is comparable to store-bought fertilizer,” insisted Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the commission, responding to the latest attack on the product, which is used for land application and non-food crops and is distributed free to the public. The network reported that independent tests by a scientist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences found polybrominated diphenylether, flame retardants, nonylphenol detergent breakdown products, and the antibacterial agent triclosan. Jue responded that the amount of triclosan in the study is less than you would find in toothpaste used to fight gingivitis. “Since there is no legitimate scientific evidence that plants uptake triclosan, unless people are literally eating hundreds of pounds of biosolids every day there is not a direct exposure pathway, unlike toothpaste or antibacterial soap,” Jue reported. “The same goes for PBDE, which is all around us in household dust, in concentrations from 520-29,000 ppb where their tests show biosolids concentration of 731 ppb. Swiping your finger on a layer of dust in your home will likely have just as much or much more PBDE than biosolids compost.”
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain