The sludge report: feds use poor black children as guinea pigs

    This just in for all those who have labeled Rev. Jeremiah Wright a crackpot for reportedly preaching in one of his sermons that  "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

    I didn't hear the sermon. I haven't heard a snippet of the sermon. I've only heard the accusations repeated and repeated and repeated some more. But...whether Wright's facts were right or wrong, his suspicions were well rooted in reality.

    On Sunday, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. government had used poor black children in Baltimore and East St. Louis as guinea pigs by testing sludge as a means of saving them from lead poisoning. The HUD-funded study, which began in 2000,  resulted in a paper in 2005 that sort of released the results of putting human waste and industrial waste in soil that young black children might put in their mouths.
    With a hat tip to Richard Prince of Journal-isms, here's how reporter John Heilprin's story began:

Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

The Associated Press reviewed grant documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewed researchers. No one involved with the $446,231 grant for the two-year study would identify the participants, citing privacy concerns. There is no evidence there was ever any medical follow-up.

Comparable research was conducted by the Agriculture Department and Environmental Protection Agency in a similarly poor, black neighborhood in East St. Louis, Ill.

The sludge, researchers said, put the children at less risk of brain or nerve damage from lead. A highly toxic element once widely used in gasoline and paint, lead has been shown to cause brain damage among children who ate lead-based paint that had flaked off their homes.

The researchers said the phosphate and iron in the sludge can bind to lead and other hazardous metals in the soil, allowing the combination to pass safely through a child's body if eaten.

The idea that sludge — the leftover semisolid wastes filtered from water pollution at 16,500 treatment plants — can be turned into something harmless, even if swallowed, has been a tenet of federal policy for three decades.

In a 1978 memo, the EPA said sludge "contains nutrients and organic matter which have considerable benefit for land and crops" despite the presence of "low levels of toxic substances."

But in the late 1990s the government began underwriting studies such as those in Baltimore and East St. Louis using poor neighborhoods as laboratories to make a case that sludge may also directly benefit human health.

Meanwhile, there has been a paucity of research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.

A series of reports by the EPA's inspector general and the National Academy of Sciences between 1996 and 2002 faulted the adequacy of the science behind the EPA's 1993 regulations on sludge.

The chairman of the 2002 academy panel, Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe.

"There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe," Burke told the AP. "What's needed are more studies on what's going on with the pathogens in sludge — are we actually removing them? The commitment to connecting the dots hasn't been there."

That's not what the subjects of the Baltimore and East St. Louis research were told.

    A Senate committee led by California Sen. Barbara Boxer plans to look into government funding of study.
    Meanwhile, the Tuskegee Experiment, which began in the 1930s and continued for 40 years, during which time researchers allowed syphilis in black men in Alabama to go untreated, comes to mind. And anybody who doesn't at least give serious consideration to Rev. Wright's alleged AIDS charge may be the crazy one.