ON OCTOBER 13, 1994, 11 year old Tony Behun rode his dirt bike through freshly applied sewage sludge on a strip mine site in Rush Township, Pennsylvania. He returned home covered head to toe with black, putrid smelling material. His mother had him remove his clothes in the garage and bathe immediately. She hosed his bike off to remove the sludge.
TWO DAYS LATER Tony had a lesion on his arm and leg, a sore throat, fever, vomiting and headache. Six days later he was in a hospital emergency room, his fever climbing. The child was then rushed by helicopter to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh where he died the next morning from a virulent Staphylococcus aureus infection ... 8 days after he rode his bike through the sludge.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) first blamed Tony's death on an infected bee sting. Subsequently, they apologized for this false statement. Later they suggested he was infected by sewage in a creek or a chipmunk bite. Then they claimed the Staphylococcus aureus which killed Tony is not a pathogen found in sludge.
(It is - see EPA's Pathogen Risk Assessment Methodology for Municipal Sewage Sludge Landfilling and Surface Disposal" PA/600/R-95/016 August 1995. )
In yet another misstatement of the truth, the PA DEP went on television November 15, 2000 and stated "NIOSH investigated the case and concluded Tony's death was not caused by sludge."
(Totally false - never happened -- NIOSH only concerns itself with work related health and safety issues.)
Continuing their inept investigation, the PA DEP recently went to the sludge site, took a sample of the 6-YEAR OLD SLUDGE, had it analyzed, and announced on their web page that there was no Staphylococcus aureus in the sludge.
(As previously indicated, US EPA says one year is the absolute maximum for survival of sludge viruses and bacteria in soil.)
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