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| Fertilizer Industry - rejournal.com, Itronics GOLD'n GRO Liquid Fertilizers Registred for Sale in Seven Northeastern States, 2/8/07. Through its subsidiary, Itronics Metallurgical, Inc., is the only company in the world with a fully permitted "Beneficial Use Photochemical, Silver, and Water Recycling" plant located in the United States which can convert used photoliquids into pure silver and liquid fertilizers. - Assoc. of Fertilizer and Phosphate Chemists, Summary of Critical Portions of Present or Proposed Regulations. Links to several different nation's, biosolids v. chemical fertilizers, and metals standards for WA, CA, OR, and AAPFCO. http://afpc.net/Metal%20Regulations.html - APPFCO's guide for implementation of Section 13(a) of the Uniform State Fertilizer Bill. AAPFCO's metal standards for fertilizers that contain guaranteed amounts of phosphates and/or micronutrients are adulterated when they contain metals in amounts greater than the levels of metals listed in the table here. - Shaffer, Matthew, CALPIRG Charitable Trust, Waste Lands: The Threat of Toxic Fertilizer (2001). Presents chemical analysis of 29 fertilizers, from 12 states, for 22 toxic metals. Findings: 20 fertilizers tested higher than 'levels of concern' for 9 toxic heavy metals. The most frequently exceeded levels of concern were for cadmium, chromium, and vanadium. Note: no state requires reporting all 9 metals that were found at levels of concern in 20 products. Of the states that have metals standards, they only include cadmium but not standards for chromium or vanadium. - Uri, Noel D., Resource Economics Division, Economic Research Service, U.S. Dept of Agric., Environmental Considerations in the Fertilizer Use Decision, Environmental Geology 103 (May 12, 1998). Noting the cost of adverse environmental impacts of fertilizer use are currently externalized. "Because the use of fertilizer has been shown to respond to market forces, it is efficient to use the market to control the use of fertilizer. This can be done through, for example, the use of a fertilizer tax."-Jillian Lloyd, Special to The Christian Science Monitor 1997. Turning Toxic Sludge Into Fertilizer Effort marks test of new and controversial way to clean up Superfund sites inexpensively :[ALL 06/23/97 Edition]. Christian Science Monitor, June 23, http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed January 30, 2009). Waste from Metro, a wastewater treatment plant in Denver 'recycled' into fertilizer (biosolids/sewer sludge). Metro, along with other Colorado agencies responsible for cleaning up a Superfund site near Denver, wants to add that site's toxic waste to the sewer sludge mix. And while Metro and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) insist that the sludge is safe, local farmers are unconvinced. Ironite Ironite is such an exceptionally contaminated 'product' that it deserves a category of its own. It has been banned for sale or use in several states. There is so much press on Ironite that it would be impossible to link to them all here. Below is a representative sample. For more information use your web browser and search on "Ironite" - Mary Losure, Arizona mine tailings sold as Minnesota fertilizer, Minnesota Public Radio 4/22/02. "[S]ample tests of Ironite by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture have found arsenic levels of more than 4,000 parts per million. That's 100 times higher than the EPA's limit for arsenic in sewage sludge used as fertilizer. Ironite also contains high levels of lead." - Listing the Iron King mine (source of raw material for Ironite fertilizer) on the 'Superfund' list. http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/nar1779.htm Note: Listing on the National Priority List (NPL = the Superfund list) "does not in itself reflect a judgment of the activities of its owner or operator, it does not require those persons to undertake any action, nor does it assign liability to any person." The list does, however, signify that the site is one of the most highly contaminated sites in the State for which federal funds are needed to complete remediation. - Lead and arsenic leach from Ironite. Brajesh Dubey and Timothy Townsend, Arsenic and Lead Leaching from the Waste Derived Fertilizer Ironite, 38 (20) Environ. Sci. Technol. 5400 -5404 (2004). Dubey & Townsend are with the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences, University of Florida, PO Box 116450, Gainesville, Florida 32611-6450. Abstract at the American Chemical Excerpt: The TCLP and the SPLP were performed on commercially purchased samples of the waste-derived soil amendment marketed as Ironite. Ten samples of the 1-0-0 grade (the most widely available in Florida) were tested. Two samples of the 12-10-10 grade and three samples of the 6-2-1 grade (a liquid version) were tested as well. TCLP. All of the 1-0-0 grade samples exceeded the U.S. hazardous waste toxicity characteristic (TC) limit for lead (5 mg L-1), while five of the 10 SPLP samples exceeded the TC limit for arsenic (5 mg L-1). A composite sample of the 1-0-0 grade was found to leach much greater concentrations of both arsenic and lead using California's waste extraction test (WET). None of the 6-2-1 samples contained lead or arsenic above TC limits. An experiment performed on the 1-0-0 grade which examined leachability as a function of pH found that at pH values in the range of what is encountered in the human digestive system (pH 4.0 to 1.5) lead leached 2-36% of its initial content, and arsenic leached 1-6% of its initial content. A simple gastric acid leaching experiment found 83 and 37% of the lead and arsenic present to leach, respectively.
- U.S. EPA, OFFICE OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, NATIONAL RISK MANAGEMENT RESEARCH LABORATORY, LAND REMEDIATION AND POLLUTION CONTROL DIVISION
WASTE MANAGEMENT BRANCH, Williams, Aaron G. B.; Scheckel, Kirk G.; Tolaymat, Thabet; Impellitteri, Christopher A., Mineralogy and characterization of arsenic, iron, and lead in a mine waste-derived fertilizer, (40) 16 Environ. Sci. Technol. 4874-4879 (2006), ISSN 0013-936X. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC. Abstract at the Chemical Society http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18026413. Also, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16955880 Excerpt: The identification of As in oxidized Fe oxides and Pb as PbSO4 is in disagreement with the dominant reduced phases previously reported and suggests As and Pb contained within the mine waste-derived product are more bioavailable than previously considered. ... The observations from this study indicate As and Pb exist as oxidized phases that likely develop from the beneficiation and processing of mine tailings for commercial sale. The potential release of As and Pb has important implications for water quality standards and human health. Of particular concern is the quantity of As released from mine waste-derived products due to the new As regulation applied in 2006, limiting As levels to 10 μγ L[-1] in drinking water. | |
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