Follow-up

By Arnold Mann/Washington

That sludge dump next door that the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe? One expert at the Centers for Disease Control recommends you keep clear.

According to the EPA, Class-B municipal waste is safe for fertilizing crops and revegetating surface mines. But, says CDC senior industrial hygienist JOSEPH COCALIS, who talked to TIME not as a CDC spokesman but as a private citizen, "I personally would not want to eat food grown with human waste." The problem, Cocalis says, is that Class-B sludge is "biologically active" when dumped. The EPA places a 30-day restriction on public access, but pathogens can survive much longer. And surrounding dumps with earth mounds won't keep out trespassers like Tony Behun, 11, who died after riding his bike through sludge in Osceola Mills, Pa. Nor will they keep toxic gases or wind-borne pathogens from reaching high-risk residents--infants, the elderly and the immune-system compromised. What is needed, says Cocalis, are warning signs about the human pathogens and community-risk assessments before sludge gets dumped. Ideally, he adds, all sludge should be processed until it is pathogen free.

--By Arnold Mann/Washington