Factory Farming: Major Loopholes Allow Toxic Waste to be Used in Fertilizer

The Steel Industry and K061. There are three major pathways that hazardous waste can follow from the industry to the farm, each with a different level of reporting and testing requirements. The most loosely regulated route is through a loophole that allows steel companies to send toxic-laden ash--technically called "K061 Waste"--from their smokestacks, to companies that make zinc fertilizers, without testing it or even recording where it is going. This material can literally flow from the smokestack directly to the fertilizer sack and from there to the crop field.

The second method is for companies to exploit a loophole that was designed for the "recycling" of hazardous wastes. Any company sending any wastes to a fertilizer company for recycling need only ensure that the material would pass the EPA's Land Disposal Rule (LDR); regulations written for the storage of treated toxic wastes in lined and highly regulated hazardous waste landfills. If the waste is safe enough to be stored in these landfills, then it is considered safe enough to be recycled into fertilizer. The generating company is not required to test their wastes beyond the LDR standards, nor are they required to document what eventually happens to it.

The third recycling loophole allows companies to transfer their wastes directly to farms if the farms can treat the waste on their land and render the material harmless. This "land treatment" process is more highly regulated than the previous two loopholes and was originally designed to allow beneficial use of relatively benign waste. This report, however, shows that manufacturers sent more than 200,000 pounds of non-beneficial heavy metals to farms between 1990 and 1995.