| Comments on The Next Pandemic The links on this page are not broken -- the government has simply deleted the pages and the info. updated 7/17/2014 |
| From the Administrator as well as comments by Dr. McGowan and Sludgewatch Administrator. EPA Office of Water created its fraudulent 503 sludge policy regulation without any input from microbiologist, medical doctors, medical professionals, veterinarians or lawyers and we now have a pandemic on our hands. Pandemic generally is used to refer to a potential deadly widespread outbreak of flu. However, it also applies to a widespread epidemic of foodborne poisoning by infectious agents. Since EPA started dumping infectious contaminated sewage sludge on food crops, home lawns, gardens and parks in the late 80's, the United States has been in a pandemic state since the early 90s. Yet, EPA has had the statutory authority to prevent Federal Agencies from properly investigating this pandemic and reporting the facts. The pandemic has been blames on the victims. In 1996, Ralph J. Touch, Ph.D, R.S. DAAS Chief Sanitarian U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service Presented a paper, NEW, REEMERGING AND DRUG RESISTANT DISEASES: ROLE OF THE SANITARIAN. He noted foodborne poisoning incidents had reached 81 million cases annually in the United States. The paper has been removed from the website http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/SO/emergdis.html In May 1997, Food and Drug Administration, U. S. Department of Agriculture, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, used 1994 data in a report to the President, FOOD SAFETY FROM FARM TO TABLE: A NATIONAL FOOD SAFETY INITIATIVE In 1990 there was 6.5 million cases of foodborne poisoning. Yet: "The Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, a private nonprofit organization, estimated in its 1994 report, Foodborne Pathogens: Risks and Consequences, that as many as 9,000 deaths and 6.5 to 33 million illnesses in the United States each year are food-related. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that medical costs and productivity losses for 7 specific pathogens in food have been estimated to range between $6.5 billion and $34.9 billion annually. Total costs for all foodborne illnesses are likely to be much higher. Those estimates do not include the total burden placed on society by the chronic illness caused by some foodborne pathogens". http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fsreport.html CDC Foodborne Illness webpage notes In the last 15 years, several important diseases of unknown cause have turned out to be complications of foodborne infections. For example, we now know that the Guillain-Barre syndrome can be caused by Campylobacter infection, and that the most common cause of acute kidney failure in children, hemolytic uremic syndrome, is caused by infection with E. coli O157:H7 and related bacteria. In the future, other diseases whose origins are currently unknown may turn out be related to foodborne infections. http://www.cdc. gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/foodborneinfections_g.htm#typeschanging Update page http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/files/foodborne_illness_FAQ.pdf In Food-Related Illness and Death in the United States, Paul S. Mead, Laurence Slutsker, Vance Dietz, Linda F. McCaig, Joseph S. Bresee, Craig Shapiro, Patricia M. Griffin, and Robert V. Tauxe of CDC state: To better quantify the impact of foodborne diseases on health in the United States, we compiled and analyzed information from multiple surveillance systems and other sources. We estimate that foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. Known pathogens account for an estimated 14 million illnesses, 60,000 hospitalizations, and 1,800 deaths. Three pathogens, Salmonella, Listeria, and Toxoplasma, are responsible for 1,500 deaths each year, more than 75% of those caused by known pathogens, while unknown agents account for the remaining 62 million illnesses, 265,000 hospitalizations, and 3,200 deaths. Overall, foodborne diseases appear to cause more illnesses but fewer deaths than previously estimated. More than 200 known diseases are transmitted through food (1). The causes of foodborne illness include viruses, bacteria, parasites, toxins, metals, and prions, and the symptoms of foodborne illness range from mild gastroenteritis to life-threatening neurologic, hepatic, and renal syndromes. In the United States, foodborne diseases have been estimated to cause 6 million to 81 million illnesses and up to 9,000 deaths each year (2-5). However, ongoing changes in the food supply, the identification of new foodborne diseases, and the availability of new surveillance data have made these figures obsolete. New, more accurate estimates are needed to guide prevention efforts and assess the effectiveness of food safety regulations. http://www.cdc. gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no5/mead.htm Comments on the Next Pandemic By Dr. Edo McGowan When speaking of the next pandemic, all writers in this series, including the editor, contend that we are generally unprepared and that health care will be overwhelmed. Thus there are critical things we now do not do. A lack of scientific and regulatory coordination is high on that list. On the other hand there are activities that directly augment the risks of assuring spread of a pandemic. One area that was missed is how we dispose of our waste, particularly sewage. In North America and on most other continents, the practice of land applied sewer sludge has gained unprecedented acceptance. This move has been driven by the need to rapidly rid ourselves of our waste. Unfortunately, the science behind this activity was developed by those without a good grounding in communicable and infectious disease. Nonetheless, there is a massive, highly moneyed and politically powerful constituency backing this enterprise. Both the Osterholm and Karesh/Cook papers note the movement of genetic material between various organisms, thus providing the opportunity to cook up entirely new types of pathogens. This is how the uncertainty is multiplied and how our immune systems will be faced with the unknown and unrecognizable foe. Interestingly, much of this goes on every day in our own back yards. The sewer treatment plant in almost every city or town across nation after nation is already doing this mixing. The poorly treated waste is then discharged to ocean or river, to open land and the solids, now termed biosolids, are spread across thousands of square miles in volumes of tons per acre. There, this material is open to background organisms, livestock, man and wildlife. It is supposed to be a controlled activity, but those regulating it have little understanding of the capacity for movement of genetic material between and amongst various organisms. In the case of SARS in Toronto, the patients and their contacts were very carefully tracked and confined. Their human waste, however, was merely flushed down the toilet. From there it went to the sewer works and was mixed therein with trillions of other organisms and pathogens. Then it was discharged to the lakes or put on farmland as biosolids and nobody thought the worst of that activity. Until the entire circuit of transmission is fully appreciated, we are fooling ourselves that we will gain a handle on the next pandemic. By our current activity, we are unwittingly setting the stage. Imagine if you will taking the sewage from heavily hit areas, trucking it from Toronto to farms in Michigan, and then sending the produce across the nation in commerce. Sewer sludge is now often the potting soil you buy at the local nursery—didn’t know that did you? Further, E. coli O157:H7 the infamous hamburger pathogen is now found to be able to track up inside the vascular system of fresh lettuce—washing your lettuce won’t work. Irrigation tail water from one farm runs into that of another. Thus through land applied biosolids, the contained pathogens can be moved for miles—well beyond the confines of the original farm. SLUDGEWATCH ADMIN The issue of pathogen transfer in sewage sludge and septage land application is unaddressed by our regulators. Most government officials who specialize in epidemiology are completely unfamiliar with the practice of land application of these pathogenic wastes. I still don't understand why feces from SARS patients were sent into the toilets and flushed to the sewage treatment plants. SARS was to have top containment and disinfection...and toilets do not disinfect. Indeed the toilets spread pathogens not only into the sewage and sludge. Flushing the toilet churns up some of the fecal matter into droplets that splatter onto surfaces around the washroom surfaces...where they can be picked up by others in the washroom and inhaled. CDC needs to address fecal waste disposal in any epidemic of a virulent pathogen...like SARS. When Toronto was hit with SARS it was almost impossible to provide this kind of information to any regulators and public health officials...who are all closed in crisis facilities and unreachable. In Ontario, Public Health did require staff to find out which SARS patients are on septic systems. Then they had to track whether these septic systems were pumped. Then they tracked the honeywagens to farmfields. But that didn't include all the facilities used by SARS patients....so the potential spread opportunies are immense. Imagine SARS or avian flu getting picked up by seagulls, racoons, field mice. These animals could provide a reservoir of the pathogens and cause infections in human and animal communities indefinitely. _______________________________________________ Sludgewatch-l mailing list [email protected] http://list.web.net/lists/listinfo/sludgewatch-l End of Sludgewatch-l Digest, Vol 11, Issue 18 ********************************************* |