Fateful Harvest : The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book and about time
Review: When this book talks about how the effects of heavy metals are not seen right away, I know this to be very true. Look at the autism epidemic and look at the amount of heavy metals that are in these autistic children. They don't just have too much mercury, they also are showing excessive levels of lead, arsenic, antimony, aluminum, etc. So is this how the effects of hazardous waste in fertilizer are showing up?

Rating:
Summary: Yum, toxic waste for lunch
Review:   The author acts as a filter for dozens of libelous ideas that Mayor Patty Martin presents based on her monitoring of local farmers and fertilizer companies. He verifies that:
  Hazardous chemicals are being disposed of by turning them into fertilizers. There are no requirements to provide an analysis for the non-active ingredients which might include Arsenic, Beryllium, Cadmium, Chromium, Cobalt, Dioxins, Lead, Mercury, Nickel, and Uranium which can be present in huge quantities. Dust masks are be mandatory just to handle many such formulations.
  Most farmers, consumers, and regulators have no idea these toxins are being plowed into the soil. Since no analysis is available, no tracking is possible for those who do know.
  No regulatory agency is charged with testing fertilizers for toxic contamination, no standards exist yet in the US (they do in Canada) An even bigger loophole exists for "bulk soil amendments"
  Plants absorb many toxics and pass them to the human food chain. Little research has been to determine what is safe for humans, the soil, farm animals, the water table, etc.
  There is a disease cluster for ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis in the mayor's town (a rare fatal environmentally induced disease).
  Crop yields can drop dramatically and what was once perfectly good fertile soil can turn into a useless toxic dump site.
  The author may not be a scientist, but he is a hard worker and he knows his craft. He's got a very big story here. Even organic farmers in some states use amendments and are unaware of the dangers.
  This is the kind of atrocity that every consumer, gardener, farmer, grocer and activist need to rally to defeat.