Thanks for your comments, I agree fully with your statement. I believe the point of the rally (at least I hope) was to alert consumers to the contents of the compost mulch that the city was providing, so as not to use it in vegetable gardens. It would also be worrisome if it was utilized by local or commercial growers to fertilize their crops. Ideally this would be used for landscaping purposes, to fertilize non food sources and therefore being mutually beneficial to the environment and landfills.

Prion infected Class A sludge “biosolids” compost is spread in parks, playgrounds, home lawns, flower and vegetable gardens – putting humans, family pets, and children with their undeveloped immune systems and hand-to-mouth “eat dirt” behavior at risk. University of Wisconsin prion researchers, working with $100,000 EPA grant and a $5 million Dept. of Defense grant, have found that prions become 680 times more infectious in certain types of soil. Prions can survive for over 3 years in soils. And human prions are 100,000 times more difficult to inactivate than animal prions

Recently, researchers at UC Santa Cruz, and elsewhere, announced that Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a prion disease. “Prion” = proteinaceous infectious particle which causes always fatal TSEs (Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) in humans and animals including BSE (Mad Cow Disease), scrapie in sheep and goats, and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer, elk and moose. Human prion diseases are AD and CJD (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease,) and other rarer maladies. Infectious prions have been found in human and animal muscle tissue including heart, saliva, blood, urine, feces and many other organs.

Alzheimer’s rates are soaring as Babyboomers age – there are now over 5.3 million AD victims in US shedding infectious prions in their blood, urine and feces, into public sewers. This Alzheimer’s epidemic has almost 500,000 new victims each year. No sewage treatment process inactivates prions – they are practically indestructible. The wastewater treatment process reconcentrates the infectious prions in the sewage sludge.

Quotes from Dr. Joel Pedersen, Univ. of Wisconsin, on his prion research:

”
Our results suggest that if prions were to enter municipal waste water treatment systems, most of the agent would partition to activated sludge solids, survive mesophilic anaerobic digestion, and be present in
treated biosolids. Land application of biosolids containing prions could represent a route for their unintentional introduction into the environment. Our results argue for excluding inputs of prions to municipal wastewater treatment.”

“Prions could end up in wastewater treatment plants via slaughterhouse drains, hunted game cleaned in a sink, or humans with vCJD shedding prions in their urine or faeces, Pedersen says”
(Note – This UW research was conducted BEFORE UCSC scientists determined that Alzheimer’s Disease is another prion disease which may be shedding infectious prions into public sewers and Class B and Class A sludge “biosolids.)

Helane Shields, Alton, NH 03809

Infectious prions in sludge “biosolids” http://www.sludgevictims.com/pdf_files/PRIONSINSEWAGEANDSLUDGE_PEDERSEN_ETAL.pdf

http://www.sludgevictims.com/pathogens/ALZHEIMERS-CJD-samepriondisease.doc

http://www.sludgevictims.com/pathgens/prions-composting.html

http://www.sludgevictims.com/pathogens/prion.html