Listen, if you like the idea of having recycled sh*t being spread on your front lawn, then this blog posting probably isn't for you.
But otherwise, you'll probably take offense to a report that is soon to go before a U.S. Senate Committee hearing on government funding of sewer sludge being used in black communities to test whether it is a remedy for lead poisoning.
Does this sound pretty much like the stupidest thing you've heard in a week of stupid things? Well, I'm willing to bet that it is. The Associated Press reported recently that lawmakers are going to investigate the use of the sludge in poor black communities in Baltimore to see if lead from chipped paint and car exhausts would stick to it.
Can anyone say Tuskeegee Experiment? I mean dammit! When I hear about things like this, it really brings out my inner-Jeremiah Wright. As much as I love being a citizen, as Wright would say: "God Damn America!"
Environmental Racism
Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.
AP
Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant during it's regular plant operations in Washington, Friday, May 25, 2007. No one can say exactly what is in sludge. It's a constantly changing brew of human, commercial, hospital and industrial wastes. The primary organic ingredient is human excrement, which proponents say makes sludge a useful fertilizer. Critics worry about the metals and pathogens that remain. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)
AP
Thomas A. Burke, professor at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., pictured last year. The idea that sludge, the leftover semisolid wastes filtered from water pollution at 16,500 treatment plants, can be turned into something harmless, even if swallowed, has been a tenet of federal policy for three decades. A series of reports by the EPA's inspector general and the National Academy of Sciences between 1996 and 2002 faulted the adequacy of the science behind the EPA's 1993 regulations on sludge. The chairman of the 2002 academy panel, Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe.(AP Photo/Kathleen Lange
AP
The secondary sedimentation tanks of the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant during it's regular plant operations in Washington, Friday, May 25, 2007. No one can say exactly what is in sludge. It's a constantly changing brew of human, commercial, hospital and industrial wastes. The primary organic ingredient is human excrement, which proponents say makes sludge a useful fertilizer. Critics worry about the metals and pathogens that remain (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)
AP
Chris Peot shows biosolids, applied to a farm, in Mitchells, Va. No one can say exactly what is in sludge. It's a constantly changing brew of human, commercial, hospital and industrial wastes. The primary organic ingredient is human excrement, which proponents say makes sludge a useful fertilizer. Critics worry about the metals and pathogens that remain. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
AP
How you gon' take poop, vomit, pee, mess, rotten food and other things that are even worse than those things and place it where little black children play just to see if it can nullify the effects of the toxins that corporations constantly get tax breaks to spew into the environment?
Many impoverished neighborhoods, black and otherwise sit in areas where they are exposed to pollution, toxic waste, poisons, vermin and all kinds of things that cause fatal illnesses in their residents, young and old, over long periods of time. Rarely does the government sanction the companies responsible because of their political pull in local, state and federal elections.
The term for this is environmental racism and people are reacting to it. One of the best examples is the fight going on right now in Chester, Pa., against waste facilities that are making people sick every day. Just read the link I've provided here. Looking at this alone is enough to turn your stomach.
As much as we get pissed about rogue cops and loudmouthed radio idiots, this is a cause that we have been sleeping for at least a century! There are tons of studies out there that demonstrate that illness, poor child behavior patterns, poor health, and even depression have a correlation to the toxic environments that many black people live in.
This is something I'm sure you smell every time you walk out of your front doors in the morning -- or maybe you don't because you're used to the stench at this point.
Look, there's more going on than just presidential elections this fall. At least a dozen states have gubernatorial and senatorial elections as well, and this is your chance to make your voice heard. I'd encourage you not to literally swallow sh*t any more, if you can help it.
Here's a link to the National Black Environmental Justice Network. It's an advocacy group that addresses just the thing I'm talking about here. If you care about what kind of air you breathe, water you drink or ground your kid plays on, then it behooves you to get educated and be proactive.
Otherwise you're just talking crap.
1. tipical in America
CJ at 8:23AM on May 9th 2008