MONTROSS - Faint traces of a chemical flame retardant were discovered recently in fish ...... eels from Westmoreland County, according to a scientist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He said more work is needed to determine whether the animals were contaminated by sewage applied to farm fields.
Rob Hale, an associate professor at VMS, said levels of brominated diphenyl ethers in the shellfish he sampled ranged from 1 to 5 parts per billion , the fringe of detectable limits.
Westmoreland Board of Supervisors (said) the sludge he sampled bore 539 parts per billion E .......... "which we consider reasonably high."
Hale reported his findings yesterday in tandem with a residents'task force recommends .... county tighten sludge, or bio-solid, regulations that have allowed county farmers to fertil ........for the past 10 years.
About 15,000 acres in Westmoreland are permitted to receive sludge, said task force C .....Douglas Jenkins, a Coles Point commercial fisherman. He said up to 20 tons per acre ..... applied to permitted fields every three years under state regulations. Farmers receive th....... from disposal contractors who truck most of a from Maryland sewage plants.
BDEs are little-known chemicals used as a flame retardant in plastics- They are similar ..... are suspected carcinogens. Unlike PCBs, however, BDEs are not covered by Environmental Protection Agency regulations, Hale said.
In addition to BDEs, the sludge Hale sampled also contained chemicals called nonylphenols.........said are a byproduct of industrial detergents and are beginning to be regulated in Europe ..... chemicals are believed to disrupt endocrine gland functions.
"I'm not in a position to say there's necessarily an environmental of human health risk,........folks should be aware of the chemicals'existence, Hale told the supervisors.
The supervisors appointed a five-member task force last fall to study sludge use after J......, complained that contractors were applying sludge to waterlogged fields in violation of the.......... ordinance.
The task force recommended the county take an active role in monitoring sludge ingred .......ensuring it is applied to fields correctly.
"We will come up with a good solufion,' Supervisor Darryl Fisher told Jenkins. He said ........will use the recommendations "hopefully to come up with a better ordinance as well as...........of how we use bio-solids."
CAUTIONARY NOTE: this page was cropped too much at the right margin, whence the symbol ...... for missing words
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