Beltsville, Md.-A USDA scientist is debunking newspaper reports that biosolid fertilizer used to inactivate lead in lawns put poor neighborhoods in Baltimore at risk without their knowledge. “The reporter has joined with a group of anti-biosolids zealots to stir up trouble,” responded Dr. Rufus Chaney, a research agronomist at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. “I think any careful examination of the facts will show that we made all needed disclosures to the cooperating families, and the treatments of their lawns significantly reduced soil lead risk to the community.” But Chaney’s rebuttal apparently isn’t changing the mind of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is determined to hold hearings before the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, which she heads as chairman. A spokesman for the committee, who asked not to be identified, told Green Markets that Boxer, D-Calif., is going ahead with the hearings “later this spring or at least by summer” into government funding of the studies that put biosolids on the lawns of East Baltimore rowhouses and a vacant lot near a school in East St. Louis, Ill. The study, by researchers with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, apparently was aimed at reducing or eliminating the threat of lead poisoning for neighborhood youngsters. There also were reports that the Maryland NAACP is pressing for a federal or state criminal investigation. Chaney, who is renowned worldwide for developing safe, environmentally friendly techniques to remove trace elements of heavy metals from contaminated soils so that they can’t move into food crops, asserted, “I am concerned that such deliberate anti-biosolids reporting which ignores the science that is being criticized needs to be challenged. We applied Class A biosolids compost from Baltimore, a high-quality soil conditioner product available for sale for all home and garden uses in the region. And the soil treatments did substantially reduce the risk to children from lead in those soils.” He said the yards were chosen because of the high concentration of lead found in poor, African-American neighborhoods where families couldn’t afford the cost of cleaning up the soils. The families all volunteered to be part of the study and were fully informed of every aspect of the research, according to Chaney.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain