Stoneridge Farm in Arundel, Maine, was poisoned by PFAS after the owners used sludge from water treatment facilities as fertilizer. Photograph: Tristan Spinski/The Guardian

Tom Perkins at The Guardian is doing a bang-up job reporting on PFAS contamination here in the states. (While CNN, the New York Times, and other US mainstream media skirt the issue. Weird. Although it does have the potential of upsetting their sponsors.)

Maine Bans Use Of Sewage Sludge On Farms To Reduce Risk Of PFAS Poisoning

Maine last month became the first state to ban the practice of spreading PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge as fertilizer.

Maine and Michigan are the only two states that are routinely checking sludge and farms for PFAS, and both are finding contamination on farms to be widespread.

Maine’s legislature banned the practice of spreading sludge as fertilizer in April after environmental officials discovered astronomical levels of PFAS in water, crops, cattle and soil on farms where sludge had been spread, and high PFAS levels have been detected in farmers’ blood.

Biden needs to set up a PFAS fund to compensate farmers:

Contamination from PFAS-tainted sludge has already poisoned well water on around a dozen farms, and has forced several Maine farms to shutter. The state is investigating about 700 more fields where PFAS-contaminated sludge was spread in recent years. Farmers have told the Guardian that many of their peers with contaminated land won’t alert the state because they fear financial ruin.

Maine is being proactive, while other states are INCREASING their sludge use:

In Virginia, environmental regulators are considering permitting an additional 6,000 acres worth of sludge to be spread and have so far resisted public health advocates’ calls to test for PFAS and reject new sludge permits.

In Alabama, the state’s department of environmental management said in 2019 that “the best use of biosolids is as a [fertilizer].” … Officials in Alabama are increasing the amount of out-of-state sludge that’s imported and spread on fields or landfilled, and the state in 2020 updated its biosolids rule to “encourage” the use of biosolids as fertilizer.