We Plough the Fields and Scatter......

George Monbiot has highlighted yet another profoundly antisocial activity of the UK's privatised Water Companies. They are being paid by chemical and cosmetic manufacturers for waste dumping into sewage treatment works. The resulting mix of human excrement and industrial effluent, is then sold or given to farmers, as 'fertilizer' to spread on their fields. Some of the contained chemicals will enter dairy and vegetable products (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/18/cocktail-toxins-poisoning-fields-humans-sewage-sludge-fighting-dirty). Monbiot points out that the circa 120,000 synthetic chemicals entering our food chain whose actions are impossible to assess. Safety infomation about them is 'confidential' or 'ambiguously described'. Tens of thousands of other chemicals are also dumped on the land in this way. Government dictates that safety information from chemical companies should be the 'irreducible minimum'. Its Environmental Agency appears not to be encouraged to attempt to effectively monitor the practice.