The Trump administration has scrapped proposed regulations targeting sewage sludge contaminated with Pfas that is spread on farmland as fertilizer, dismantling scientific safeguards developed under the Biden EPA just months earlier.
The decision effectively abandons restrictions that would have largely halted the agricultural use of biosolids, the technical term for treated sewage sludge. The practice has already caused documented harm: sickened farmers, destroyed livelihoods, killed livestock, and polluted water supplies and food products entering the public food chain.
In a striking contradiction, the EPA's new guidance advises the American public to independently research sludge companies to protect themselves from the highly toxic chemicals in fertilizer products sold for home garden use. The agency simultaneously claims sludge poses no significant public health threat because it is mostly applied to farmland representing only a small fraction of total cropland.
Pfas, a class of roughly 16,000 compounds known as "forever chemicals," do not break down naturally and accumulate in human bodies and the environment. They are linked to cancer, liver disease, kidney problems, high cholesterol, birth defects, and weakened immunity.
The rollback stuns environmental advocates. Laura Dumais, an attorney with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, called the move "shocking." She said the EPA was essentially telling farmers that their lives do not matter by discarding rigorous scientific work without replacement.
"It's shocking for the EPA to take a scientific assessment and simply throw it out," Dumais said. "Basically, they're saying: farmers' lives don't matter."
In the final days of the Biden administration, the EPA issued a draft health risk assessment finding that any Pfas level above 1 part per billion in sludge increases cancer and other health risks to farmers. Most sludge samples exceed this threshold, meaning implementation would have severely limited or ended the agricultural practice.
The assessment examined two of the most common toxic Pfas compounds, Pfoa and Pfos, based on documented cancer and health risks to farmers. However, it did not fully analyze how these chemicals spread through contaminated produce, dairy, and meat to the broader public.
The Southern Environmental Law Center submitted research highlighting the cascading risks. The group calculated that more than 36 children per 1,000 who drink one to two glasses daily of milk from cows on farms where sludge containing 9.4 ppb of Pfoa was applied could develop cancer later in life. Pfoa levels exceeding 9.4 ppb have been detected in sludge tested in Maine. Non-cancer health risks for these children were more than 319 times higher.
Jean Zhuang, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the EPA decision "puts polluters first and leaves farming families and rural communities to bear the consequences."
"This administration is tossing aside a comprehensive, science-based assessment of the dangers of Pfas and replacing it with a thin, watered-down document that minimizes real harm," Zhuang said.
Sewage sludge is a byproduct of treating wastewater from the nation's sewer system. The EPA began allowing it to spread on cropland in the early 1990s because disposal is expensive and the material contains nutrients beneficial to plants. Yet the practice creates a perverse cycle: billions of federal dollars treat water annually, only for the toxic residue to be inserted into the food supply and re-contaminate water sources.
Biosolids can contain any of roughly 90,000 human-made chemicals, but current EPA rules require monitoring for only nine heavy metals. Regulators in Maine and Michigan found Pfas in every sample tested, as did a 2001 federal review of the nation's sewage sludge system. No government agency has systematically tracked where sludge has been spread, and most states do not test agricultural land treated with it.
The chemicals migrate into surrounding properties and contaminate water sources. In Maine, where over 100 farms have been affected by tainted sludge, chemicals applied decades ago continue poisoning soil, including on organic farms where farmers unknowingly grew crops in chemically laden earth.
The waste management industry, which profits from sludge disposal, has strongly opposed regulations. The EPA's claim that sludge covers only 1 percent of farmland lacks supporting data, since no comprehensive government tracking system exists.
Dumais expressed the absurdity of the EPA's position bluntly: "It's shocking that the EPA is willing to throw all of these people under the bus and the EPA's solution here is 'do your own research, we're not going to regulate anything, so if you think it's dangerous then figure it out for yourself.'"
Author James Rodriguez: "The EPA is essentially telling Americans to fend for themselves against a known toxin while the waste industry profits and farmers absorb the real damage."
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