Fateful Harvest

by Duff Wilson 

Duff Wilson, an investigative reporter for the Seattle Times, wrote “Fateful Harvest” in 2001 as a summary of the complex and shocking story about the use of toxic waste in American fertilizer. Yeah, it sounds too ridiculous to be true, but it happened, and is happening today, mostly because so many people make money doing it and it solves two real problems: what to do with toxic waste and how to make cheap agricultural fertilizers.

The book also reads like a science fiction nightmare—after all, what kind of society would poison itself by recycling toxic waste from steel mills, foundries, and manufacturing plants into fertilizer?

And the book reads like a heroic feminist novel—since the person who first raised the issue, and who never backed down despite all the formal and informal pressure brought against her to push her to silence, was the mayor of Quincy, Patty Martin.

Duff Wilson is a good enough writer that his readers, even his cynical readers, are dragged along as he learns about Martin’s crusade, and finally becomes a believer, and then writes a series of investigative articles for the Times that almost got him a Pulitzer.

The point of the book is that manufacturers were stuck with piles of toxic by-products containing heavy metals and dioxin, among other very nasty things, and needed a way to legally get rid of the junk. They found their solution in fertilizer companies who bought the hazardous waste and called it an ingredient (thus circumventing waste recycling rules) and then spread the waste material on farmers’ fields. The result was cheap fertilizer, but with the toxic consequence of soil buildup of heavy metals, plus the serious problems of poisons that migrated to plants, animals, and people.

Yes, this crazy waste recycling process continues today. And Patty Martin is still involved in fighting it (see her Web site).

If you care about what people eat or what is splattered across America’s farmland, this is a book worth reading.

“Fateful Harvest” is available at BookPeople and at the public library in Moscow.

Bill London edits this newsletter and would prefer to have no heavy metals in his oatmeal.