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Dear Sir or Madam:

I take exception to the notion that highlighting the dioxin in Kellogg's sludge products is "reactionary."

First of all, the EPA has continued to duck dealing with the sludge problem. It has not updated the substances it requires sludge to be tested for literally for decades.

Second, and more importantly, it is part of the greenwashing problem. Let's take a closer look: in response to the serious consequences of metals and other contaminants from sewage sludge, it works to protect the waterways that sludge used to be dumped into. Basically, the cleaner the water coming out of the municipal sewage plants, the dirtier the sludge. What's left is the concentrate of all of the chemicals flushed down the drains by industries and humans. And then, instead of requiring that this toxic sludge be contained, it decides to allow it to be heat treated and off-loaded onto fields and farms across the country with no meaningful notice to consumers whatsoever. It even creates a PR-hyped way to deal with it, calling that stuff that "passes" its totally inadequate tests "Class A Biosolids," thus further obscuring for the American people what is even being put on lands, giving the substance an "A," and erasing the word "sewage" from the equation. In my view, it is a classic and Orwellian effort to reinvent reality. And why? To help deep-six public understanding of the terrible sludge problem resulting from the great good advance in cleaner water.

A dated study from the EPA, that you cite, basically says move along, nothing to see here.

But, people have a right to know if the food they consume every day, 365 days a year, for decades is being grown in dioxins and other cancer-causing or hazardous substances. I've yet to see them invest in a real longitudinal study about the effect of feeding humans food laced with dioxin two or three times a day every day for 50, 60, 70 years, or the equivalent. In that sense, the people of this country are the lab rats in the experiment of sludging agricultural land, without their knowledge.

I would never deliberately plant my tomatoes in the concentrate of solvents, heavy metals, and endocrine disrupting pharmaceuticals or other substances, just because the substance also had nitrogen or phosphate. There are far better ways to get key nutrients to plants than city sewage sludge.

And, I think people have a right to know if their food is being grown in substances laced with carcinogens.

I think the idea of some for profit company using kids to promote the growing of food in sewage sludge products without disclosure is unconscionable.

And, the fact that the EPA has failed to stop allowing our farms to be treated as dumping grounds for substances it objects to in our rivers and oceans simply helps underscore the extent to which that regulatory agency has been captured by the sludge industry.

I do not accept the "determination" of a government agency that has literally invested in the sewage sludge industry that deliberately putting dioxins into our food supply to advance that indudustry does not pose "significant" risks to human beings.

We'll have more to come on the rebuttal of Kellogg and the sludge apologists in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, you can take all the refuge you wish in dated study by an agency that's captured on this issue. On our end, we'll continue to work to alert people to information about sewage sludge gardening that we believe they have a right to know. If you think speaking this truth plainly is too "emotional," well then so be it.