Cover of the report from the Ecology Center and Sierra Club.
If you buy some kinds of bagged fertilizer for your garden, you might be getting more than you want.
The Ecology Center and Sierra Club sampled different kinds of fertilizers made from biosolids. That’s the sludge left at a wastewater treatment plant after water is cleaned up. Almost all of them had PFAS compounds in them.
Some of them were being marketed as organic or natural.
The report, “Sludge In the Garden: Toxic PFAS in home fertilizers made from sewage sludge,” suggests using them in your garden could contaminate the food.
Lester Graham / Michigan Radio
J.D. Hock’s heart sank in 2018, when the state of Michigan warned it was unsafe to eat deer harvested within a five-mile radius of Clark’s Marsh in Oscoda Township.
For decades, his family had hunted on property just outside the “do not eat” zone. He had just mailed “an insane amount” of venison jerky to his son-in-law, an armed service member in Afghanistan.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he thought, wondering whether the care package contained poison.
Airplanes used for parts now sit on the tarmac of the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda Township.