Human sewage is not fertilizer. It’s full of drugs, plastic, and who knows whatever else people just dump down the drain. Sure the water gets filtered, but the solid waste is contaminated as fuck all.
It has to be processed to remove the junk, which also sterilizes it. Which takes energy and time, and it USED to be more cost effective for a plant in a place where LNG comes from to pull nitrogen from the air to make fertilizer.
We already have plenty of solid sewerage waste, and even agricultural waste from cows we should be reusing.
The fertilizer had been made with biosolids, part of an effort to find a climate-friendly method to recycle municipal sewage. But the fertilizer also contained synthetic and highly hazardous chemicals known as PFAS, which are found in hundreds of household products and have had devastating effects on farms and ranches that inadvertently spread them on their land.
An untold number of farms and ranches across Texas and the rest of the nation may have also used fertilizer made from sewage tainted with these “forever chemicals” — which don’t break down in the environment — without knowing it.
Johnson County environmental crimes investigator Dana Ames was asked to look into the soil and land issues; her findings showed high levels of contamination. The fertilizer has had devastating effects — physically and financially — on Coleman and his wife, he said. He is one of the five farmers in Johnson County who filed a 2024 civil lawsuit against Synagro, alleging the plaintiffs’ land was poisoned by the company’s biosolids fertilizer. The company took over Fort Worth’s biosolids processing operations in 2020 following resident complaints of odors around sites where fertilizer was applied. Fort Worth was not named in the lawsuit.
Nearly 70 million acres of U.S. farmland could be contaminated by the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, according to estimates from biosolids industry groups. This contamination stems from the widespread use of sewage sludge as fertilizer.
The practice remains largely unregulated, despite mounting evidence it could contaminate food and water, creating public health risks. State and federal policymakers need to tackle this threat with steps such as banning the use of PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge on farm fields.
Harmful chemicals in sewage sludge that is spread on pasture land as fertilizer are causing cancer, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday. The risk is highest for people who regularly consume milk, beef and other products from farms where it is spread. The risk is “several orders of magnitude” above what it considers acceptable, the agency said.
It’s sort of bonkers that sewerage treatment plants do create fertilizer as well. It just has to get from the treatment plants to the plant plants.
Also, most fertilizer being shipped around the world is just nitrogen taken from the air, which is an energy intensive process. Hence, the use of LPG.
It’s much more efficient to shop fertilizer than lpg.
Human sewage is not fertilizer. It’s full of drugs, plastic, and who knows whatever else people just dump down the drain. Sure the water gets filtered, but the solid waste is contaminated as fuck all.
It has to be processed to remove the junk, which also sterilizes it. Which takes energy and time, and it USED to be more cost effective for a plant in a place where LNG comes from to pull nitrogen from the air to make fertilizer.
We already have plenty of solid sewerage waste, and even agricultural waste from cows we should be reusing.
…there’s free drugs down there?
you dont want to use sewage/poop as fertilizer, you will be risking bacterial,viral and parasites from it.
As it’s processed, it has to have pfas, microplastics, and heavy metals removed. That also sterilizes it.
*don’t?
But they do. That sludge is mostly spread on non-food fields though, because that would require more treatment than we are willing to pay for.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/02/texas-farmers-pfas-forever-chemicals-biosolids-fertilizer/
https://fortworthreport.org/2025/01/27/sewage-fertilizer-poses-health-risks-epa-warns-what-does-that-mean-for-north-texas/
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2025/01/forever-chemicals-sludge-may-taint-nearly-70-million-farmland-acres
https://apnews.com/article/sewage-sludge-pasture-farms-milk-beef-harmful-cancer-epa-42e084b6a41852fdafd199d355c7a890
My city has been making fertilizer from the sewage sludge for a century now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite
Glad someone is!