Subj: WISCONSIN DRS. MCMAHON AND PEDERSEN PRIONS - LANDFILLS - SEWAGE SLUDGE
"BIOSOLIDS" - BEING SPREAD ON GRAZING LANDS, HAYFIELDS AND DAIRY PASTURES
Date: 7/21/2005 8:00:19 PM Central Daylight Time
From: [email protected]
To:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
When sewage flows into wastewater treatment plants, it runs first into a tank filled with natural
bacteria. The organisms essentially break down the incoming waste, which eventually separates
into clean water and "waste activated sludge," a combination of bacteria and the sticky, slimy goo it
exudes. In early laboratory simulations, McMahon found that prions-which are sticky
themselves-latch onto the bacterial goo and remain infectious.
http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=40434
UW-Madison: Scientists Probe CWD's Spread Through Soils
7/11/2005
CONTACT: Trina McMahon (608) 263 3137, [email protected];
Joel Pedersen (608) 263-4971, [email protected]
MADISON -It is challenging enough to eradicate deer populations in areas thought to harbor
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), the mysterious neurological deer and elk illness that is cropping
up in unexpected places, such as New York this spring.
But once state officials have killed hundreds of deer, what if infectious prions - the elusive proteins
thought to cause CWD - remain in deer carcasses, eventually seeping through garbage landfills
and draining uncontrolled into wastewater treatment plants and beyond?
With backing from the Environmental Protection Agency, scientists at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison are investigating the potential scenario. And they will report early findings on
Wednesday during the Second International Chronic Wasting Disease Symposium here on July
12-14.
The symposium comes at a time when the known range of CWD seems to be swelling from its
relatively small, endemic home in parts of Wyoming and Colorado toward the east, where deer
populations are denser.
Recent evidence suggests that prions have a tendency to latch onto soil particles. Since deer eat
soil at certain times of the year scientists have surmised that CWD-inducing prions might piggyback
into the animals through ingested earth. But can those prions hop out of a dead deer and back into
soil - even if it's the smelly earth of a dumpsite?
To understand the potential risks in disposing of deer carcasses in landfills, environmental
biochemist Joel Pedersen, virologist Judd Aiken and geo-environmental engineer Craig Benson are
trying to simulate a "mass waste" situation in the laboratory. "[Landfills] are a really, really
complicated system, so we are starting out simple, with just a pure column of sand," says Pedersen.
The UW-Madison researchers found that prions did indeed leach, or drain down, through the sand
particles. "We are currently evaluating leaching through soils commonly used in landfills and will
soon be working with synthetic municipal waste and real municipal waste," Pedersen adds.
It's hard tracking prions, not least because researchers know hardly anything about them.
Completely unlike bacteria and viruses, prions "don't conform to the paradigm of what we know to
constitute infectious diseases," says Trina McMahon, a UW-Madison environmental engineer, who
will also speak at the CWD meeting.
McMahon's piece of the puzzle begins where fluids from landfill sites course into wastewater
treatment plants. She is exploring how prions would behave if they were to flow from landfills into
the wastewater treatment process. "This is a waste containment issue," says McMahon. "If prions
remain in solid form, we can probably contain them, but if they get into liquid they would be much
more mobile."
When sewage flows into wastewater treatment plants, it runs first into a tank filled with natural
bacteria. The organisms essentially break down the incoming waste, which eventually separates
into clean water and "waste activated sludge," a combination of bacteria and the sticky, slimy goo it
exudes. In early laboratory simulations, McMahon found that prions-which are sticky
themselves-latch onto the bacterial goo and remain infectious.
In later stages of wastewater treatment, the sludge is processed into a purified and nutrient-rich
organic material known as a biosolids. Scientists have long urged farmers to spread the substance
on their fields but the practice remains controversial, says McMahon.
The researcher intends to spend the next year ascertaining whether prions eventually wind up in
and remain infectious inside biosolids. Her results could heavily sway the fate of the material's use
in agriculture.
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Note: Unfortunately, these Wisconsin researchers seem to be concerning themselves only with
CWD prions and are ignoring the potential for human prions from blood, urine and feces of
Alzheimer's/Cruetzfeldt Jakob victims, Parkinson's, Huntington's and other potential human
dementia/prion diseases which may be present in both Class B AND Class A sewage sludge
"biosolids" being sold by the bag to an unsuspecting public for use on their lawns and in home
flower and vegetable gardens . . . . . . . .