From BBC
ShareSave
Environment correspondent
ShareSave
Successive governments have failed to deal with the threat posed by spreading sewage sludge containing toxic chemicals on farmers’ fields, a former chair of the Environment Agency has told the BBC.
About 3.5 million tonnes of sludge – the solid waste produced from human sewage at treatment plants – is put on fields every year as cheap fertiliser.
But campaigners have long warned about a lack of regulation and that sludge could be contaminated with cancer-linked chemicals, microplastics, and other industrial pollutants.
Emma Howard Boyd, who led the EA from 2016 to 2022, says the agency had been aware since 2017 that the sludge can be contaminated with substances, including ‘forever chemicals’.
“Forever chemicals” or PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals which come from things like non-stick saucepans. They don’t degrade quickly in nature and have been linked to cancer.
Documents seen by BBC News suggest the water industry is now increasingly concerned that farmers could stop accepting the sludge to spread and that water firms have been lobbying regulators and making contingency plans in case rules change.
Ms Howard Boyd says efforts to update rules, which date back to 1989, to include new contaminants were “continually frustrated by the lack of ministerial appetite to deal with this issue.” In a public letter signed by more than 20 others she called on the current Environment Minister Steve Reed, to act now.
The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) told the BBC regulations around sludge spreading are being looked at. The
