SLUDGE MAGIC
Dr. Alan Rubin, a career chemist at EPA’s Office of Water (OW), is considered the primary author of EPA’s 503 sludge rule, which allows treated sewage sludge, aka biosolids, to be land-applied to farms, forests, parks, and other private and public lands.
Rubin was also one of the scientists at EPA headquarters in Washington, DC, involved in retaliations against me and others who reported adverse health effects associated with biosolids in the scientific literature or the news media. Time magazine (September 27, 1999) ran a short article about Rubin attacking me and mailing “death threats” on EPA letterhead to private citizens concerned about biosolids, saying, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee!” When deposed in my Labor Department cases, Rubin explained what motivated his attacks:1
RUBIN QUESTIONED BY MR. KOHN (1999)
Q. Are you proud of the work you did? . . . Do you feel, in any way, hurt or upset to have someone like Dr. Lewis criticizing it? . . . Professionally hurt, a little?
A. Somewhat.
Q. How so? . . .
A. Well, I think my professional reputation, to a large extent, is based on my association with biosolids, 503 and its technical basis. So I feel my reputation would be somewhat disparaged if the basis of the rule, and the scientific findings were shown to be in error.
The term “sludge magic” originated when EPA’s 503 sludge rule was undergoing internal peer review at ORD in 1992. Dr. Robert Swank, the research director at the EPA lab in Athens, Georgia, where I worked, called Dr. Rubin, one of Walker’s coworkers at EPA headquarters in Washington, DC. At that time, there were no studies published in the scientific literature that supported the theory that organic chemicals and other industrial pollutants are sequestered by sewage sludge and cannot be taken up by plants and animals. At least Rubin couldn’t produce any. When Swank asked him to explain how it worked, Rubin replied, “It’s magic.”
When asked where all the studies supporting “sludge magic” could be found, Rubin deferred to USDA agronomist Rufus Chaney:94
RUBIN QUESTIONED BY MR. KOHN (1999)
Q. You called it sludge magic?
A. Yes, that is my term. “sludge magic” [means] there are unique properties in the biosolids matrix that sequester metals, that sequester organics. By sequester I mean significantly reduce the mobility to move from the biosolids out to the environment, and the matrix is really complex, and has organic material in it, organic pollutants, I’m talking about organic materials, like unit type materials, and carbohydrates, and manganese, and iron, and phosphorus, and all of these work together with the soil in a matrix to significantly reduce, if not eliminate movement of pollutants from the biosolids out to the environment. The processes, some of them are understood, some of them are not that well understood, but the whole thing taken together is called magic. So I coined the term magic.
Q. And the “sludge magic” which prevents harmful stuff that is in the sludge escaping the sludge?
A. Moving at any significant flux or rate out to the environment to create doses of pollutants that would harm plants, animals or humans.
Q. . . . these studies [are] kept somewhere?
A. No, they are actually—well, Chaney is probably the one that has them all, he is like a walking encyclopedia.
Usually, sewage sludges are converted into biosolids by simply adding lime to raise the pH, which reduces odors and pathogen levels. Lime doesn’t destroy most pollutants found in biosolids. Some pollutants, such as the pesticide malathion, are even converted to much more highly toxic pollutants at high pH. After working in EPA’s biosolids program for over thirty years, Dr. Rubin still couldn’t explain how biosolids prevent pollutants from posing a serious risk to public health and the environment. To be honest, I never cared for magic. No matter what a magician says or does, it’s all based on deception. So, I looked forward to my attorney, Ed Hallman, deposing Dr. Chaney at USDA’s Animal Manure and By-Products Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.
Rufus Chaney
Dr. Chaney made it clear that we had come to the right person. The people at EPA, he testified, have never understood the science of biosolids, and he has to reeducate them time after time.3
CHANEY ANSWERING MR. HALLMAN (2009)
EPA withdrew the original proposed rule and completely rewrote it. Actually I played a very significant role in what the rule became. It’s evident in the record. And even at the end I provided comments through USDA, approved at higher levels, saying that the rule needed a few more revisions before it was issued. But, yes, I was heavily involved in bringing to fore the science about biosolids that needed to be the basis for the rule.
Chaney explained that unique properties that prevent pollutants from becoming bioavailable. That means that they aren’t taken up or absorbed by plants and animals, and pose little or no risk to public health or the environment no matter which pollutants are present, or what their concentrations are. This holds true, he testified, regardless of whether wastewater treatment plants are even working properly. In other words, it really is magic.
Rufus Chaney (C), Scott Angle (R). USDA Photo 1995.
One of Rufus Chaney’s primary collaborators, Jay Scott Angle, replaced Gale Buchanan as the agricultural dean at UGA in 2005, the year we filed our qui tam lawsuit over the Gaskin study.4 President Bush appointed Buchanan under secretary of agriculture for research, education and economics the following year.5 Before leaving for Washington, Buchanan called one of my colleagues and said the stink over the Gaskin study was causing a big problem. Two years earlier, the director of UGA’s School of Marine Programs testified that he was advised not to hire me as a faculty member “because we’re dependent on this money . . . grant and contract money . . . money either from possible future EPA grants or [from] connections there might be between the waste-disposal community [and] members of faculty at the university.”6 In a press release announcing Angle’s appointment, UGA president Michael Adams and provost Arnett Mace applauded Angle’s research on biosolids at the University of Maryland, which discredited earlier reports that treated sewage sludge negatively affected nitrogen fixation in soil.7
The part about wastewater treatment plants not working properly, however, isn’t magic. Many wastewater treatment plants throughout the United States aren’t working properly, and are constantly in need of being repaired or upgraded to keep up with population growth. To help with this problem, EPA created a revolving loan program under the Clean Water Act to pump billions of dollars into the states to keep their wastewater treatments plants pumping properly. Chaney reasons that because the system as a whole is in constant need of repair, and there are still no documented cases of adverse health effects in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, “sludge magic,” as Rubin calls it, works even when waste treatment plants don’t.
Chaney further reasoned that any peer-reviewed scientific articles claiming that land application of biosolids poses a risk to public health or the environment must be false because no scientists funded by the US government and other reputable institutions have documented adverse effects from biosolids since the 503 sludge rule was passed in 1993. Chaney, I’m sure, would dismiss any notion that a lack of documented cases since 1993 has anything to do with EPA’s establishing a National Biosolids Acceptance Campaign to fund land grant universities, such as the University of Georgia, to promote biosolids and eliminate scientists who report problems or document adverse effects.
In 1992, EPA’s sludge rule failed to pass a scientific peer review within its Office of Research & Development (ORD) where I worked. Chaney blamed scientists in EPA’s Office of Water (OW) for this failure:8
CHANEY ANSWERING MR. HALLMAN (2009)
They originally proposed a rule where they even had the data screwed up. I don’t know how much you know about that. But the original rule would have essentially prohibited all land application. . . . They had an uptake of PC and B instead of PCB, taken up a thousand times easier than PCBs, and so the limit would have been a thousand times lower than it needed to be. So there were lots of errors the first time around, stupid errors. They didn’t—they didn’t review it with USDA or Food and Drug Administration before they put it on the street and they suffered and had to withdraw it and start over.
In his deposition, Chaney pointed out that adverse health effects from biosolids were documented in the scientific literature before 1992, and that he himself authored many of those studies.9
CHANEY QUESTIONED BY MR. HALLMAN (2009)
Q. And you believe that all the studies you’ve seen, including the ones that you have coauthored and worked on, indicate that the land application of sewage sludge in accordance with 503 is safe . . . and is not a danger to human health and welfare, is that correct, if it’s applied in accordance with those regulations?
A. I won’t disagree with that. I had advised EPA that I wanted a lower cadmium limit. . . . I won the battle because pretreatment and the universal understanding of the unacceptability of cadmium in biosolids has led to biosolids declining to 1 to 2 ppm in most cities in the United States. Biosolids has become remarkably less contaminated because of what we’ve done with the 503 and because of the publications, such as mine, which showed adverse effects of previous practices.
The phenomenon by which biosolids have become less contaminated with cadmium is clearly evident in the data that the City of Augusta reported to EPA and the State of Georgia (see Appendix II: Biosolids Cadmium Data Pre- and Post-1993). These are the same data that EPA and UGA published in a study used by the National Academy of Sciences to conclude that Augusta’s biosolids were not responsible for hundreds of cattle that died on two dairy farms where it was applied. The data purportedly show that monthly cadmium levels in the city’s sewage sludge fluctuated wildly up to 1,200 ppm from January 1980 to February 1993, the very month that EPA promulgated the 503 rule. Then, one day in the middle of February, cadmium levels suddenly dropped to 5 ppm and remained at that level from then on.
Dr. Chaney wants everyone to believe that high cadmium levels in biosolids made people and animals sick all across the country before February 1993 when EPA passed the sludge rule under his guidance. Then, after EPA followed his instructions, no human or animal has since gotten sick from cadmium in biosolids. All I can say is that it takes some really powerful magic to make every industry in America, which has been disposing of large quantities of cadmium since the Industrial Revolution, drop it to a few ppm on the same day in 1993 and hold it at this level. It’s even more amazing because no regulatory agency at the state or federal level monitors levels of cadmium, or anything else, in biosolids.10 They just take whatever data the cities provide.
In Augusta’s case, we happen to know that the city’s “sludge magic” was fake because the city’s former plant manager, Allen Saxon, confessed when deposed by Mr. Hallman. Judge Anthony Alaimo explained exactly how it happened when he ruled in favor of the McElmurray family in a lawsuit, and ordered Dr. Chaney’s agency, the USDA, to pay for crops the family couldn’t plant because their land was too contaminated with cadmium and other hazardous wastes in Augusta’s biosolids. Judge Alaimo wrote, “In January 1999, the City rehired Saxon to create a record of sludge applications that did not exist previously.”11
The year 1999, by the way, is the same year EPA gave UGA a federal grant to publish Augusta’s data in the Gaskin study. Then, as soon as Mr. Saxon finished making “sludge magic” happen, all of the original data Augusta reported to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) between 1993 and 1999 magically disappeared, and not just in Augusta. They turned up missing from the EPD records in Atlanta as well. EPA doesn’t know what happened to the data, nor does the EPD, nor the City of Augusta, nor UGA. All of the data just magically disappeared from city and state records at the same time cadmium disappeared from Augusta’s sewage sludge. Apparently, no one other than us had any interest in learning how Augusta’s records of high cadmium concentrations miraculously disappeared from Augusta and the Georgia EPD in Atlanta in January 1999, or how high cadmium levels magically disappeared at wastewater treatment plants across America in February 1993.
According to Chaney, it just doesn’t matter anyway whether the data are fake or real. He explained in his deposition:12
CHANEY QUESTIONED BY MR. HALLMAN (2009)
Q. Ms. Gaskin could have totally made up all that data and you would still rely on it because it was in a peer-reviewed study; is that accurate?
A As long as it—as long as it was in general agreement with general patterns established in hundreds of papers. . . .
To sum up Chaney’s position, because Gaskin’s paper concluded that Augusta’s sludge did not pose a health risk, it’s valid research even if all of the data are fabricated. On the other hand, people should disregard scientists who report problems with biosolids, even if their work is published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. That’s because researchers at universities funded by government and industry to support biosolids assure us that the practice is safe and have published hundreds more papers saying that there are no problems.
BMC Public Health
In 2004, Chaney commented on the US Composting Council’s (USCC’s) list serve about my termination by EPA acting assistant administrator Henry Longest, who developed EPA’s sludge policies in the late 1970s.13 USCC is currently headed by Lorrie Loder, Synagro’s product marketing director. Chaney, of course, supported Longest’s decision to end my career in environmental research for publishing research that raised public concerns over biosolids. He contrasted my BMC study with the Gaskin study:
CHANEY USCC (2004)
The paper by Gaskin et al. [Gaskin, J. W., R. B. Brobst, W. P. Miller, and E. W. Tollner. 2003. Long-term biosolids application effects on metal concentrations in soil and bermudagrass forage J. Env. Qual. 32:146-152.] reports objective measurements on the soil metal concentrations, and metals in forages growing on the soils. . . .
[Lewis’s] publication [Lewis D. L., D. K. Gattie, M. E. Novak, S. Sanchez, and C. Pumphrey. 2002. Interactions of pathogens and irritant chemicals in land-applied sewage sludges (biosolids). BMC Public Health 2:11.] Contains none of the data from examination of biosolids exposed subjects, and lacks the comparison with randomly selected individuals from the general populations. It is not valid epidemiological science. . . .
I support the whistle-blower rule and process as strongly as any other citizen or government employee. I happen to believe that Dr. Lewis has been treated fairly. Claims and opinions about public health are not peer-reviewed scientific evidence. EPA and other agencies have to base rules on the peer-reviewed papers, and to consider the weight of evidence. Some papers are more complete in proof of the issue tested, as I noted above regarding proof that some source caused a specific human infection.
Chaney’s remarks serve to underscore an important observation worth mentioning. Scientific journals overlook government scientists’ job-related conflicts of interest.
Rufus Chaney is paid to promote government policies on biosolids. If he didn’t support them, he would lose his job, just as I did, only much more quickly. Chaney is the government’s number-one scientist charged with creating and defending whatever “science” is needed to support the sludge regulation, which he developed for EPA to enforce. Consider the fact that every municipality and industrial polluter depends on Rufus Chaney to fill the scientific literature with studies “proving” that dumping their hazardous wastes in sewers is environmentally beneficial and doesn’t harm public health. His position at USDA speaks for itself:14
CHANEY ANSWERING MR. HALLMAN (2009)
I’ve been appointed in a category which is above GS-18 called senior scientific research service. Within that, there are no sub-grades. There is a group—there is only about ten of us in all of my agency that have reached that level. . . . I would say I’m the US Department of Agriculture’s most knowledgeable scientist about biosolids.
How much trust should be placed in a scientific article published by a scientist working for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) concluding that a GSK product is safe? Such an article would have little, if any, credibility. On the other hand, how much trust would the article merit if it concluded that GSK’s product is unsafe? Quite a lot, I would say, because the scientist would be sacrificing his or her career to publish it.
Before Chaney developed EPA’s sludge rule, his papers concluded that cadmium in sewage sludges applied to land presented a risk to public health. But after the sludge rule passed, Chaney’s position changed. Now he argues that biosolids are safe, no matter what. For example, it doesn’t matter whether Augusta, Georgia, covered up high levels of cadmium in its sewage sludges, or even if its wastewater treatment plant is functional. So far as Chaney’s innumerable publications are concerned, I think that the only ones that are trustworthy are those he published before he got into the business of defending the sewage sludge regulations he developed for EPA.
Unfortunately, publishers of scientific journals, for whatever reason, don’t pay attention to job-related conflicts of interest held by government scientists. As a result, we have a body of science behind EPA’s sludge rule, which EPA can explain only as magic, and it doesn’t even matter whether data are fabricated. The standard for quality control and research ethics cannot possibly go any lower.
When the dairy farmers and I filed a qui tam lawsuit over EPA and UGA employees using a federal grant to publish fake data, EPA and UGA hired private attorneys to protect the fabricated data, which the National Academy of Sciences used to support EPA’s regulation. This level of institutional corruption threatens scientific integrity throughout government and industry. We have no mechanisms in place to even confront it, much less stop it. The only honest thing left to do is throw out the whole body of “biosolids science,” and start over with a new group of scientists who have no conflicts of interest with government and industry.
Combating institutional research misconduct requires carefully reading the original source documents.
Take, for example, Chaney’s statement that our BMC article contains none of the data from examination of biosolids exposed subjects, and lacks the comparison with randomly selected individuals from the general populations. It is not valid epidemiological science. . . . These claims originate with Synagro’s white paper containing allegations of research misconduct against me and my coauthors. These allegations represented a failed attempt to have UGA withdraw our study published in BMC Public Health, which linked Synagro’s products to illnesses and deaths. Our study was the first to document adverse health effects from biosolids in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In 2004, Synagro withdrew its allegations after UGA forwarded its petition to EPA, and EPA dismissed the allegations.15
The false allegations that Chaney parroted appear throughout Synagro’s white paper, which states, for example:16
SYNAGRO WHITE PAPER (2001)
[Steps Lewis should have taken] include analysis of biosolids composition, fate and transport of chemicals and pathogens, determination of dose-response relationships, and methodology for and identification of the cause of health ailments purportedly associated with an environmental contaminant. . . .
Such studies should involve a comparison of outcomes for subjects who are exposed to biosolids (treatment groups) and other subjects who are not exposed (control groups). . . . The leading study, a comprehensive multi-year study of Ohio farm families living near land-applied fields, reported “no adverse health effects . . . in either people or animals.” (Cit. 38.) While Dr. Lewis admitted that this study was based on sound epidemiology, he refuses to apply its techniques. . . .
Our BMC paper, which is available online at www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/2/11, does contain this information. It includes, for example, data we obtained from the patients’ medical records, and a dose-response analysis of exposed and unexposed individuals in an area near a field treated with biosolids (Figure 2).17 This, in fact, was the field near Shayne Conner’s house, where he died from respiratory failure.
Conner’s parents sued Synagro, which bought out the company that applied the biosolids. EPA ethics officials approved of my serving as an expert witness for plaintiffs, and required that I donate any expert witness fees to EPA or other governmental or nonprofit organizations. It was the only way I could obtain medical records and other important documents involved in the case. Because the BMC article challenged the safety and efficacy of EPA’s sludge rule, it did not represent a conflict of interest on my part insofar as being biased toward supporting EPA’s interests. My settlement agreement over my 1996 Nature commentary left EPA with the option of not terminating me when my appointment to UGA ended. EPA, therefore, made sure that I remained financially motivated to support its policies on biosolids while working at UGA.
By serving as an expert witness, I was able to obtain data from all but one household in Conner’s area. Random selection of test subjects, which Chaney criticized us for not using, is employed when researchers can only test a small portion of a population. It ensures that a small sample group is representative of the whole population. We reported:
LEWIS ET AL. BMC PUBLIC HEALTH (2002)18
Based on a least-squares analysis, proportions of individuals with symptoms increased linearly from 40 to 80 h (r2 0.98) with time exposed to wind blowing from the field; all occupants in households with exposure ≥ 80 h reported symptoms (Fig. 2). Proportions of individuals with symptoms also decreased linearly with distance from the field from 130 to 320 m (r2 0.95); all occupants in households living ≤ 130 m from the field reported symptoms.
To obtain data on the residents’ symptoms, we used questionnaires patterned after the Ohio study recommended in Synagro’s white paper. As Nature reported in an editorial and news article, a multi-university follow-up study in Ohio published in 2007 independently confirmed our findings, and cited our work published in BMC Public Health.19
To give Dr. Chaney the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume he has never actually read our paper. Otherwise, I would have to say he just outright lied about what was, or was not, included in the way of data. Gaskin, her two UGA coauthors, and the original UGA principal investigator on her study voiced the same accusations after Synagro filed its white paper allegations as a research misconduct petition and sent Gaskin a copy. To address the allegations, I arranged for Gaskin’s group and her department head to meet with my group and my department head in the Department of Marine Sciences.
Before discussing our paper, I asked for everyone who had read it to raise their hands. Everyone associated with Gaskin’s project had coauthored an editorial criticizing our paper, which Gaskin had prepared to submit to an industry publication. Gaskin, however, was the only person in her group who claimed to have actually read our paper. The reason I asked for a show of hands is because I knew that Gaskin’s editorial, like Chaney’s comments published by USCC, were drawn from the industry white paper.
I assumed that Gaskin had, in fact, read our paper. But then I began to wonder when she leaned across the table at me to raise her voice and drive home the one point she seemed convinced was my Achilles’ heel. “Why didn’t you report that you just looked at Class B biosolids?” she asked. I stared in dismay at both her demeanor and the question, then thumbed through our paper to try to locate the information for her. Under the sub-heading “Assessing Environmental Conditions” in the “Methods” section, our paper states:
LEWIS ET AL. BMC PUBLIC HEALTH (2002)20
County records indicated that biosolids-related complaints for individual patients described in this study were concurrent with land application of Class B biosolids. In the case of one family (Residents 19–22), however, records indicated that dairy wastes, rather than biosolids, had been applied.
According to EPA’s 503 sludge rule, Class A biosolids have no detectible pathogens, whereas low levels of indicator pathogens are permitted in Class B biosolids. Of course, pathogen levels are pretty meaningless when sewage treatment plants aren’t equipped to detect most pathogens that survive waste treatment processes. Moreover, most bacterial populations that are killed back can re-establish themselves within a few days after biosolids are stockpiled, or spread on land.21
It’s like cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. Eating it fresh out of the oven is one thing, but after it’s been sitting out for a few days is a different matter. Biosolids are rich in proteins, which allow staphylococci to proliferate just as they do with turkey dinners. In our study published in BMC Public Health, we discovered that one out of four residents who reported irritation of the skin, eyes, or respiratory tract from exposure to biosolids had staphylococcal infections involving S. aureus or S. epidermitis. Two of the three deaths linked to biosolids were caused by S. aureus infections. Because multi-antibiotic-resistant bacteria are common at wastewater treatment plants, biosolids-related infections are of particular concern.24
During her depositions, Julia Gaskin was often combative and rude, but always honest. She testified that she believed Augusta’s biosolids harmed the McElmurray and Boyce dairy farms, and she said that her study included plenty of data that supported their lawsuits.23
GASKIN ANSWERING MR. HALLMAN (2009)
A. Now, you have characterized that the EPA has used this against them. There is certainly data in here that could have been used to support them as well.
Q. What data?
A. The fact that we had high cadmium and molybdenum in three fields that had been—and forages in three fields that had been greater than six years. The fact we saw a reduction in copper and molybdenum ratios with long-term biosolids application.
She admitted that she knew there were problems with Augusta’s data, which EPA gave her to publish, and had no reason to argue with Judge Alaimo’s ruling that the data were fabricated.24
Perhaps most revealing, Gaskin and her EPA coauthor, Robert Brobst, testified that they both objected to Tracy Mehan, EPA’s assistant administrator for water, using their study to discredit the McElmurray and Boyce cases. Specifically, Mr. Hallman questioned them about a letter Mehan issued on December 24, 2003, in which Mehan used the Gaskin study to disregard problems on the two dairy farms. In that same letter, Mr. Mehan cited the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council (NRC) report concluding that there was no documented evidence that biosolids applied under EPA’s 503 sludge rule has ever harmed public health. The NRC report cites a draft version of the Gaskin study, which Robert Bastian at EPA headquarters provided to the NRC for the purpose of disregarding the McElmurray and Boyce cases. Attorney Ed Hallman read Brobst’s testimony, then questioned Gaskin:25
BROBST, GASKIN QUESTIONED BY MR. HALLMAN (2009)
[Brobst]
We, the authors, at least Julia and I, will stand by that the study had nothing to do with the dairy farms. I mean, we both said that on several occasions, and I believe we will both stand by that. And I have conveyed that to headquarters. If they choose to not listen or choose to listen, that’s up to them. I don’t have any say in how they make these paragraphs and how they form things and form their conclusions. I wouldn’t have done it that way.
[Gaskin]
Q. Do you recall any conversations that you’ve had with Mr. Brobst about the study had nothing to do with the Boyce and McElmurray farms?
A. Yes.
Q. Tell me the substance of those conversations.
A. I, the substance of the conversations were concerns that our study was being used, that people were citing our study as if the dairy farms were part of what we had sampled, and they were not. And I had concerns about that, that even though the JEQ article clearly said beef cattle farms, that some people were not being clear about that fact.
Q. Did you ever voice those concerns to anyone besides Mr. Brobst?
A. I voiced those concerns to Mr. Brobst and also at one point Ned Beecher.
Q. Who is that?
A. He is the director of the Northeast Biosolids Association.
A. I told him that I was concerned that the JEQ article was being conflated with the dairy and that our study did indicate that there was not a widespread problem, but it did not specifically address the dairy concerns.
In the end, therefore, it appears that EPA headquarters in Washington, DC, set up the University of Georgia to publish scientific data that would mislead the National Academy of Sciences to conclude that there was no documented evidence that biosolids applied under EPA’s 503 sludge rule has ever harmed public health.
NRC Report (2002)
Responding to the congressional hearings into EPA retaliations against me, my EPA laboratory director, and others who have questioned the science EPA uses to support its sludge rule, EPA called upon the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council (NRC) to reevaluate its scientific basis. Ellen Harrison, an NRC panel member from Cornell University, provided the panel with copies of my unpublished manuscripts and two in-press, peer-reviewed journal articles (BMC Public Health, 2002; ES&T, 2002). Harrison, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute, and her coauthors published a well-documented, peer-reviewed article concluding that EPA’s current sewage sludge regulation does not protect human health, agriculture, or the environment.26 She was also part of a group of NRC panel members selected to brief EPA on the academy’s findings when their report was electronically released on July 2, 2002. She testified in my labor case:27
HARRISON QUESTIONED BY MR. KOHN (2003)
Q. I’m looking for a larger-picture question here, what would you state would be Dr. Lewis’ major contribution in terms of the concerns he was raising to the National Academy review process?
A. David is the only scientist that to that time had raised the scientific issues that might lead to exposure and disease and so David’s ideas in that regard, I think, were important to sort of framing the National Academy panel’s in recognizing that . . . there are a lot of gaps here, there are plausible routes of exposures that we haven’t assessed. So David’s role was—I mean in my book David was a hero in this regard basically. Despite the incredible flack he was getting, [he] put forward reasonable scientific theories, backed by some research to suggest that there were plausible routes of exposure and that in fact illness might be resulting. He, I mean as far as I’m concerned, he kind of turned the whole thing around . . . I think without David’s involvement we wouldn’t be at all where we are today in terms of looking at the safety issues anew. David raised-David gave a legitimacy to the allegations that has made it impossible to ignore the alleged health issues. . . . So I think David has probably been the most important player in all this.
Although the report drew heavily upon my unpublished manuscripts, the electronic version only cited one paper, an ES&T article. Susan Martel, an NRC staff member, explained to Harrison that all but one reference to my work were removed from draft versions of the NRC report based on input from panel members. Then, according to Martel, the panel chair, Thomas Burke, removed the one remaining reference to my ES&T article from the final copy of the report, which is posted on the NRC’s website.28 Burke took that action after he and Martel received the following email from panel member Greg Kester, the biosolids coordinator for the State of Wisconsin:29
Hi Tom and Susan—In contrast to your message that the briefings went well, I am quite disturbed by what I have heard transpired at the EPA briefing this morning. Among other items, I heard that EPA staff in the biosolids program were referred to as “the usual suspects” and basically denigrated for their work in the program. The message was also taken that their work should be devalued and the work of David Lewis should be elevated. I did not agree to such representation nor do I believe much of the committee did. We specifically noted that EPA should not be criticized for the work they did. . . . While EPA may not have been moved by the criticism, there are those on the Hill who would love nothing more than to criticize EPA.
One year earlier, Synagro VP Robert O’Dette had emailed Kester a copy of his white paper accusing me of research misconduct. Kester, in turn, forwarded it to senior officials at EPA headquarters and other EPA offices throughout the country.30 In his email, Kester stated:31
This paper presents many of the issues raised by Dr. Lewis in the New Hampshire case and provides compelling refutation. It was written by Bob O’Dette of Synagro.
The NRC panel used Synagro’s white paper in its deliberations over my research, and rewarded O’Dette by using a photo he submitted for the cover of the NRC report. Although the panel liberally borrowed from my unpublished and in-press papers without citing the source, it was careful to credit O’Dette as the source of its cover photo. Then, after removing my in-press, peer-reviewed articles documenting scores of cases of adverse health effects across the country, the NRC panel falsely reported: “There is no documented scientific evidence that the Part 503 rule has failed to protect public health.”32
In 2003, my coauthor and I submitted our work to Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). We were shocked when the editor rejected it on the basis that we did not credit the NRC for our work. The editor wrote:33
A major shortcoming of the manuscript is the lack of any reference to the very recent National Research Council report, Biosolids Applied to Land, which addresses virtually all of the issues raised by the authors. A Commentary on that report would give the authors ample scope to present their views, either criticism or support, in a contemporary context.
Fortunately, after I provided extensive documentation proving that we were indeed the original sources of all of the information in our submission, EHP accepted the paper. The editors allowed us to reference our own original works, and just credit the NRC with “echoing” our findings and recommendations.34 But the fallout from what the NRC panel did wasn’t over yet.
In 2008, a Nature reporter called me wanting my response to a federal judge, Anthony Alaimo, ruling that data in the Gaskin study were fabricated to cover up cattle deaths linked to hazardous wastes in Augusta’s sewage sludge. Nature, as it turned out, was putting together a two-page news article and editorial about our research at UGA, pointing out that a multi-university study in Ohio had independently confirmed our findings. I thought to myself, it doesn’t get much better than this. Then I read the editorial:
NATURE EDITORS (2008)35
In what can only be called an institutional failure spanning more than three decades—and presidential administrations of both parties—there has been no systematic monitoring programme to test what is in the sludge. Nor has there been much analysis of the potential health effects among local residents—even though anecdotal evidence suggests ample cause for concern. In fact, one of the studies used to refute potential dangers, published in the Journal of Environmental Quality in 2003 by researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens, has been called into question (see page 262).
Even the National Academy of Sciences seems to have been taken in. A 2002 report from the academy cited the then unpublished Georgia work as evidence that the EPA had investigated and dismissed claims that sewage sludge had killed cattle, but the study had not looked at the dairy farms in question. And although it may be technically true that there was no documented evidence of sludge applications causing human illness or death, the academy also cited work by an EPA whistleblower, David Lewis, suggesting at least an association between these factors.
If anything, recent research underscores those findings. The Georgia citation notwithstanding, the academy did outline a sound plan for moving forward. It recommended among other things that the EPA improve its risk-analysis techniques; survey the sludges for potential contaminants; begin tracking health complaints; and conduct some epidemiological analyses to determine whether these reports merit concern.
To read the NRC report, the Nature reporter located it on EPA’s website rather than using the NRC website. After I filled the reporter in on what happened, Nature ran the following correction, which contained more misinformation, which the NRC provided to Nature in an attempt to explain why it removed the last remaining reference to our work in the final version of its report.
NATURE EDITORS (2008)36
Correction: The 2002 biosolids study from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) did not reference research into health impacts by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) whistleblower David Lewis, as reported in our News story “Raking through sludge exposes a stink” (Nature 453, 262–263; 2008). The citation was included in a prepublication draft that is still posted on the EPA’s internet site, but the NAS panel voted to remove the reference before final publication. An NAS spokesman said the panel decided the information was not relevant as the panel was not charged with evaluating health impacts.
For whatever reason, EPA only posted the electronic version of the NRC report containing the one surviving reference to our work. I like to think that, in the end, EPA couldn’t stomach the way it all turned out, and decided to give me and my coauthors some credit for what we did. At least panel member Ellen Harrison got in the last word about the National Academy of Sciences removing the last remaining reference to our work:37
HARRISON TO NATURE EDITORS (2008)
The NAS made this change to the report without permission from the panel. This is a violation of the NAS procedures requiring full committee consensus on reports. I would not have approved the removal of this reference since it was clearly relevant to the work of the committee. . . .the unilateral action of NAS to remove the reference was highly inappropriate.
These People
EPA officials and WEF officials involved in the National Biosolids Public Acceptance Campaign systematically funded scientists who supported the 503 sludge rule while eliminating those who did not. In 2002, a Texas county commissioner invited me to speak at a public hearing about a growing number of illnesses linked to Synagro’s biosolids in his area. I agreed on the condition that he invite Synagro to have its own expert rebut my arguments. So, the commissioner wrote a letter to the company’s VP for government relations, Robert O’Dette, who authored Synagro’s white paper containing allegations of research misconduct against me and my coauthors at UGA. In his reply, O’Dette explained how the system works:38
ROBERT O’DETTE, SYNAGRO (2002)
What we don’t need are more so-called scientists whose research findings are predetermined by scientific or personal bias. These people will find their work rightly discredited and their funding will disappear while credible researchers continue to have funding.
Synagro sent its own expert, Ian Pepper from the University of Arizona, to give a presentation at our conference, and it held its own conference across the street with others speaking on its behalf.
Department of Justice
In 2004, Andy McElmurray asked a local FBI agent to find out why the Justice Department was prosecuting a South Carolina man for disposing of paint wastes in a sewer line, but not pursuing a City of Augusta employee for intentionally contaminating area farms with biosolids containing illegal hazardous wastes. The agent arranged for Andy and his attorney, Ed Hallman, to meet with the assistant US attorney in Savannah, who said that the case should be investigated, but said that he didn’t have the time. They also met with the head of EPA’s Criminal Investigations Division in Region IV in Atlanta, who explained that he would not pursue a case involving violations committed by “another government entity.”39
When I testified in Honolulu, a council member alleged that several of his fellow council members had accepted bribes from someone working for or with Synagro Technologies, Inc. He said he rejected a $5,000 offer, but alleged that more influential members were offered more. Later, he let me look though his files, and I copied several documents that clearly indicated that the bidding process had been rigged by a city official. I forwarded the documents to the head of EPA’s Criminal Investigations Division (CID) in Boston, whom I happened to know. After reviewing them, he said that he didn’t think the US Attorney in Boston would be interested.
In 2005, the dairy farmers and I filed the qui tam lawsuit over EPA and UGA employees using a federal grant to publish Augusta’s fabricated data. We included Honolulu’s documents in that case because Synagro was the same company that applied Augusta’s biosolids during the Gaskin study and collaborated with Gaskin. The Justice Department, however, was not interested in pursuing the case. Five years later, Mr. Hallman contacted the FBI in Detroit when the Justice Department there prosecuted a city council member for accepting over $60,000 in bribes from Synagro. The contract was reportedly worth $2.1 billion.40 Hallman forwarded some of my information from Honolulu to the FBI, which confirmed receiving it. They never requested any additional information.
The US Department of Justice, however, doggedly pursued me when EPA asked the assistant US attorney in Macon, Georgia, to collect $61,493 in court costs, plus interest, which the court ordered in May 2012 after dismissing our qui tam lawsuit. These costs covered expenses incurred when private attorneys hired by EPA and UGA copied all of the documents associated with the dairy farmers’ previous lawsuits against the City of Augusta. Although none of these documents were used in any of the proceedings, and case law only grants court costs for documents used in the proceedings, the court overruled our objections on the basis that they were untimely.
The assistant US attorney sent me, and only me, an official US Department of Justice form requiring me to produce my personal tax records, and list the current value of all of my assets down to every piece of furniture, including any pictures hanging on my walls. It also required the current balances on any bank accounts I owned, plus any and all other financial information pertaining to my financial assets. Although the form stated that the information was voluntary, it explained that the Justice Department has ways of forcing citizens to provide the information. It included the following admonition in bold print:
WARNING False statements are punishable up to five years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, or both pursuant to 18 USC. §1001.
In my response to the assistant US attorney, I pointed out that the Department of Justice form states that it only pertains to collecting debts owed to the federal government.41 The court order stated that the dairy farmers and I owed court costs to the defendants, that is, Julia Gaskin and the other UGA and EPA employees who were sued in their private capacity. The False Claims Act explicitly excludes federal and state entities, such as EPA and UGA, from being named as defendants. The court, in fact, rejected EPA’s and UGA’s arguments when they challenged our ability to sue the defendants in their private capacity.
Moreover, I reminded the assistant US attorney that my attorneys had already provided all of my financial data using the State of Georgia’s form for assessing the ability of plaintiffs to pay court costs. The federal government has no corresponding statute concerning court costs in federal cases, and, when that is the case, state laws are applicable.
Begin with: Finally, in my response to the assistant U.S. attorney, I refused to estimate the current value of my physical possessions on the basis that I am unqualified to accurately determine their current value, and unable to hire the proper experts to assess their value. I explained that, as a board member of the National Whistleblowers Center, I am familiar with cases where government whistleblowers have been prosecuted by the Justice Department and imprisoned over innocent discrepancies in statements made to federal agents. I wasn’t about to voluntarily join Bradley Birkenfeld in prison. I did, however, offer to let the Department of Justice have its own assessors come to my home and determine the value of my possessions. The assistant U.S. attorney replied as follows:
ASSISTANT US ATTORNEY TO MR. HALLMAN (2012)42
The United States of America entered into an agreement to hire and of course pay private counsel to represent the EPA (Agency of the United States) Defendants in this case. Pursuant to the stated agreement the United States has paid private counsel for representation of the EPA defendants. Therefore, the costs awarded to the EPA defendants in this case are the Government’s costs and recoverable by the Government.
In his reply, the assistant US attorney made it clear, once again, that the Justice Department was interested in extracting the government’s costs from me, and only me, even if it meant forcing me to mortgage my house. At no time did he require either of the dairy farmers to provide their tax records and other financial information. He stated:
ASSISTANT US ATTORNEY TO MR. HALLMAN (2012)43
[The] relators’ pending offer of settlement in the amount of $35,000.00 will be promptly considered by the Department of Justice upon relator, Lewis’, response to the questions below. [Partial List]
• What is Mr. Lewis’ anticipated adjustable income for tax year 2012?
• How much equity does Mr. Lewis have in real property and personal property?
• What is the estimated value of the real property which is the subject of the pending mortgage or refinance application?
• If the above stated mortgage referenced in question#3 is approved how much cash does Mr. Lewis expect to receive at closing or upon approval?
I informed the assistant US attorney that my house was jointly owned by my wife, and that she was not willing to mortgage her property to pay my debts. Upon reviewing my answers to his questions, he agreed to settle the court costs for $35,000.44 Before entering into these negotiations, EPA and UGA originally offered to drop the $61,493 in court costs if the dairy farmers and I would agree to a gag order. We refused.
The End
When Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich greeted me in his office overlooking the National Mall in 1996, he looked at me and said, “You know you’re going to be fired for this, don’t you?”
“I know,” I replied, “I just hope to stay out of prison.” The speaker had just read my commentary in Nature, titled “EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics.”
At first, Nature’s editors didn’t like this title, which I faxed to London early one morning as I headed off to my job at EPA. Several days later, they let me know that it had grown on them, and they were going with it. It reflected the proverbial crossroads in my life. Since I was five years old, I wanted to become a scientist and have my own laboratory. A few months before Nature published my commentary about the politicization of science at EPA, I finally had my own lab and the freedom to pursue whatever research projects I wanted to within the boundaries of EPA’s mission. Henry Longest hung around just long enough to terminate me on my fifty-fifth birthday in 2003.
Several things became crystal-clear to me during the intervening period. First, EPA, UGA, and the Department of Justice had no interest in stopping federal and state employees from using federal grants to publish bogus data to cover up widespread illnesses and deaths associated with EPA’s sewage sludge regulations. Secondly, the Justice Department wasn’t concerned about Augusta’s fabricating twenty years of environmental data required under the Clean Water Act to cover up hazardous wastes in Augusta’s biosolids. Finally, each institution was keenly interested in silencing scientists who reported research fraud committed by government employees protecting the government’s interests.
As institutions, EPA, UGA, and the Justice Department seemed perfectly happy to let government employees provide the National Academy of Sciences with fake data to conclude that there’s no evidence that EPA’s sludge rule has ever failed to protect public health and the environment. And the National Academy of Sciences had no interest in correcting the record after Nature published an editorial and news article about problems with the Gaskin study. The Pennock family in Pennsylvania, who lost their son Danny to biosolids, got together with Andy McElmurray and filed a formal complaint against Tom Burke, the chair of the NRC panel, for removing the one last shred of evidence from the NAS report of what really happened in these cases.
They were part of a small group of families who lost their children and livelihoods who made the national news. EPA assistant administrator Tracy Mehan swept them under the rug in just one letter, citing the National Academy of Sciences report, the Gaskin study, and a medical examiner’s preliminary report in New Hampshire, on Christmas Eve in 2003. The examiner’s report, which dismissed any link between biosolids and Shayne Conner’s death, was based on literature produced under the EPA-WEF National Biosolids Public Acceptance Campaign, which was provided by the NH Department of Environmental Services (DES):
ACTING CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER, NH (1995)45
After review of pertinent literature, it is my understanding that this type of fertilizer has been tested for a number of hazardous parameters, and found safe to use. There appears to be no scientific basis for connecting this person’s sudden and tragic death to any environmental or infectious hazards posed by the use of such material.
This opinion, however, was contradicted by DNA analyses that my research team performed on bacteria present in frozen samples of the biosolids collected in Shayne Conner’s neighborhood at the time of his death. The samples were overgrown with Brevibacterium diminuta, a type of bacteria known to cause sudden respiratory failure and death when inhaled with dust particles. Its presence could easily explain why residents inhaling biosolids dusts blowing from the field treated with biosolids near their homes experienced difficulty breathing, and Shayne died of sudden respiratory failure. The Complaint eventually settled out of court.
EPA’s assistant administrator took care of them all and my life’s work as well. He wrapped them up as a Christmas gift, and gave it to science and industry, the children of liberty. There were, however, many more who suffered and died. I visited some of their families in their homes, and read their desperate letters and emails that keep pouring in year after year. They are cropping up in every major city and rural area across America, looking for someone, anyone who can help. With EPA and the biosolids industry suppressing independent investigations into adverse health effects, those who are harmed can no longer find expert witnesses willing or able to testify on their behalf. It’s the government’s way of protecting the industry, and itself, against prosecution.
Other farmers in Georgia and elsewhere are experiencing what happened on the dairy farms near Augusta.46 But, after seeing what EPA did to the McElmurray and Boyce families, most farmers keep their silence. A reporter in Mobile, Alabama, called me about several dairy farms there having the same problems with biosolids, but wouldn’t report it for the same reason. One former executive with a national company in the biosolids business told me off the record that cities across America make up data on pollutant levels in biosolids, not just Augusta. He said everyone knows that EPA will cover them, just like it did Augusta.
This is not an isolated case. It’s how government, industry, and our academic institutions use science to protect government policies and industry practices. Any scientists who stand in their way will have the same outcome as I did. Any private citizen who tries to fix the system will get the same treatment as the McElmurray and Boyce families did. On my last day at EPA, there was no retirement party. I drove over to the BBQ Shack, a popular hangout for EPA employees, for lunch. Dr. Larry Burns, who was an associate director for the National Exposure Research Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, came over to my table to say goodbye. He served as a liaison between our lab and the national lab in Research Triangle Park. “You should be proud that the National Academy of Sciences supported your work,” he said.
“I just hope somebody at EPA continues it,” I replied.
“No way,” he said, “not after what happened to you.”
Later that day as I headed out the door of the EPA lab on College Station Road, I stopped by the research director’s office to say goodbye to Harvey Holm. I had begun working there as a Stay-in-School student in October of 1968, fresh out of high school. “I can’t believe you’re really leaving,” he said. “I thought it would never happen. You’ll be back, I’m sure of it.” No, Harvey. I won’t ever be coming back.
In cases such as mine, the ultimate objective of government and industry is to shut down debate. Recently, a reporter told me that she spoke with other scientists about research misconduct supported at institutional levels in order to increase the flow of grants from government and industry. All of them said that they’ve never been pressured by their employers to support government or industry. I suggested she go back and ask them what they think would happen if scientists at land grant universities, which are heavily funded by the USDA, published data that undermined USDA policies, or what the ramifications would be if scientists working at medical schools heavily funded by the pharmaceutical industry linked vaccines to autism or Alzheimer’s Disease.
Herein lies the biggest problem of all. The damage to scientific progress caused by skewed data is likely to be relatively small compared with the cumulative impact of the research that scientists avoid publishing to protect their careers. In other words, the greatest threat to scientific integrity isn’t what gets published; it’s the research that doesn’t get published—or even conducted in the first place. The ultimate goal of EPA’s National Biosolids Public Acceptance Campaign, according to the agency’s decision memorandum, was to make biosolids “non-controversial by the year 2000.” If scientific debate were unfettered, the scientific community would, sooner or later, determine which side of an issue is correct. Leaders of government and industry know this; hence, their goal is to silence debate in areas of science where their interests are at stake.