The wastes come from iron, zinc and aluminum smelting, mining, cement kilns, the burning of medical and municipal wastes, wood-product slurries and a variety of other heavy industries.įederal and state governments encourage the practice in the name of recycling and, in fact, it has some benefits: Recycling waste as fertilizer saves companies money and conserves precious space in hazardous-waste landfills. In Tift County, Ga., more than 1,000 acres of peanut crops were wiped out by a brew of hazardous waste and limestone sold to unsuspecting farmers.Īnd in Camas, Clark County, highly corrosive, lead-laced waste from a pulp mill is hauled to Southwest Washington farms and spread over crops grown for livestock consumption.Īny material that has fertilizing qualities can be labeled and used as a fertilizer, even if it contains dangerous chemicals and heavy metals. In Gore, Okla., a uranium-processing plant is getting rid of low-level radioactive waste by licensing it as a liquid fertilizer and spraying it over 9,000 acres of grazing land. The Times found examples of wastes laden with heavy metals being recycled into fertilizer to be spread across crop fields. The use of industrial toxic waste as a fertilizer ingredient is a growing national phenomenon, an investigation by The Seattle Times has found. What's happening in Washington is happening around the United States. "When it comes out of the silo, it's no longer regulated. "When it goes into our silo, it's a hazardous waste," said Bay Zinc President Dick Camp. The powder, a toxic byproduct of the steel-making process, is taken out of the bottom of the silos as a raw material for fertilizer. under a federal permit to store hazardous waste. A dark powder from two Oregon steel mills is poured from rail cars into the top of silos attached to Bay Zinc Co. It's a fertilizer."Īcross the Columbia River basin in Moxee City is visual testimony to Martin's assertion. "They just call dangerous waste a product, and it's no longer a dangerous waste. "It's really unbelievable what's happening, but it's true," Martin said. Manufacturing industries are disposing of hazardous wastes by turning them into fertilizer to spread around farms. But they discovered something they found shocking and that they think other American farmers and consumers ought to know: They don't have proof that the stuff they put on their land to feed it actually was killing it. But only after Mayor Martin led them in weeks of investigation did they identify a possible new culprit: fertilizer. So it was only natural that Patty Martin would catch some farmers in her Central Washington hamlet wondering aloud why their wheat yields were lousy, their corn crops thin, their cows sickly. Overall this is a competent and fairly entertaining Season 7 episode which is not exactly what I would characterize as a must-see, but still a worthwhile entry for fans of the series.When you're mayor of a town the size of Quincy, Wash., you hear just about everything. On the positive side, there are several highway scenes shot on location which I found to be interesting and different from the norm. The story is not the most original as we've seen these race against time to avert a public health crisis episodes many times before with one of them even featuring an illegal offshore dumping plot, so it does lose a point from me for that. While there isn't a mystery featured in this episode as we see the cause of death right in the beginning and it is arguably more of a case of gross negligence rather than an intentional crime, I found it to be a reasonably decent episode. When Quincy learns that the death was likely caused by inappropriate disposal of chemical waste, it becomes a race against time to locate the dumping site before others are poisoned and killed. Quincy (Jack Klugman) conducts the autopsy and is perplexed by the findings which indicate that the victim died from coming into contact with a contaminant rather than a heart attack, and this leads to an investigation into the source. When one of them becomes exposed to the fumes, he quickly falls ill and dies the next day. Dead Stop begins late at night with two truckers dumping hazardous chemical waste in an unauthorized location.
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