Like many health-minded Americans, I’ve long sought out organic food as much as possible, especially vegetables, fruits, and dairy. Even the corporate organic produce, I figured, had lower odds of contamination from pesticides and other chemicals than conventional stuff.
But then I read a story about a farm in Maine owned by an idealistic couple dedicated to producing high-quality organic produce. The couple, Adam Nordell and Johanna Davis, had bought their land in 2014 from an older part-time farmer who was selling the land because he was dying of cancer and wanted to move on. The two newbies were so successful commercially selling their veggies that they were planning to invest in a bakery to incorporate the grains they had begun growing.
Then late last year, a customer alerted them to elevated levels of PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals,” found in deer that had been killed nearby. The couple began researching and testing, and found very high levels in their soil, crops…..and in their bodies. They had more than 250 times the recommended limits; they were very worried about not just themselves, but their young daughter. They have since shut the farm down.
But not only is that not the end of a very sad story, it’s likely just the beginning of a huge national problem, suggests the Washington Post article: “It would be comforting to dismiss the story of Songbird Farm as a one-off calamity — a confined case of PFAS contamination. The reality is far more disturbing. According to the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, more than 2,800 sites nationwide are contaminated by PFAS — and that’s only what’s documented. The real total is unknown, and possibly much higher. In Maine alone, the state Department of Environmental Protection is investigating 700 sites once fertilized with the same sort of sludge that likely contaminated Songbird Farm. Many cases are lurking beneath the surface, undetected and often unregulated by an official watchdog.”
Another example of the devastating effects of these chemicals was highlighted in this account of the death of an avid organic gardener in neighboring Vermont who happened to live near a plant that used PFAS chemicals.
I asked long-time friend and organic farming expert Elliot Coleman, who has been innovating organic farming practices for more than fifty years from his farm on Maine’s coast, what he made of the situation, and he concurred with the Washington Post article. “As a card carrying ‘Suspicious Old Hippie,’ I have always been very careful about what I bring on to the farm. Sludge is an obvious no-no even though the USDA tried to sneak it in to the early organic standards because they were pressured by the sludge industry worried about trying to get rid of it. The early sludge objectors were concerned about heavy metal contamination. Who ever heard about PFAS? I think the situation in Maine is just the tip of the PFAS-in-sludge iceberg because the first tests were done here. I think it will be a scandal all over.
“The only compost we have been buying comes from an organic dairy farm. Very expensive but they guarantee its purity. We ended that last year and are now getting our fertility from an extensive grown on site green manure program. I like the independence of not relying on inputs not to mention the financial savings. There was an article in the Bangor paper recently that the Indian reservation up above Bangor on the Penobscot river is advising its people not to eat fish from the river because an upstream landfill is leaking PFAS in to the river. What the hell? That same river runs past the beaches of Cape Rosier where I collect seaweed for my home made compost. I am having a PFAS test done on the seaweed this week, I hope. The local seaweed was tested for heavy metal contamination when there was a zinc/copper mine on the Cape years ago but only zinc and copper levels were above normal and since those are beneficial trace elements I have continued using seaweed up till now. Damn but it is hard to stay pure.”
In other words, all land and food is potentially at risk, including that owned in distant rural areas by individuals thinking they can escape health problems by growing their own food. Life just isn’t so straightforward any more.
What to do? I suppose I’ll continue to buy organic. But increasingly, it will feel like playing Russian roulette. It’s one thing to inquire with farmers if they let their chickens or dairy cows out on pasture, but quite another to try to get them to document whether there’s PFAS contamination of their soil. It’s been convenient to blame the standard American diet or GMO food for the high rates of cancer in our society, but perhaps we’ve been beating the wrong horses.
A number of countries in the European Union, including Germany and Norway, have begun the process of banning PFAS chemicals. In the U.S., it’s difficult to imagine a united approach on pretty much anything suggesting regulation.. Therefore, any meaningful actions will likely be up to individual states. Anyone have advice for detoxing? Do hydroponically-grown foods have more of a future than imagined?
It’s a big plus for hydro and makes the main objections which it does help improve the soil which is so important.but based on current findings of soil that can’t be can’t be made organic I would consider using hydro unless the soil has been cleared of not having any “forever” chemicals.and I think going forward all soil should be tested.
Thank you for exposing what most thought was safe places like organic farms and streams. The USA EPA isn’t doing its job and we the people are allowing the corporations to poison us and payoff the regulators to look the other way. I am also guilty of thinking someone else will take care of our problems. Life is always challenging and we must be aware and fight continuously for our survival.
This has all the hallmarks of a sophisticated operation against private landowners and regional food security. Did you know that the tests they are using for PFAS, are the same family of tests used for Covid and another clandestine operation against food – Avian flu? Yes, it’s the PCR test, you know the one about which its inventor Gary Mullis said, “anyone can test positive for practically anything with a PCR test, if you run it long enough”. Another strong clue is the involvement of the land trusts, the land acquisition arm of the international financiers.
John, do you have a source for the information on the PFAS tests being done by PCR? How would a process that copies DNA work when the chemical being tested for is a PFAS?
You are right. It isn’t the PCR test. I have just been doing a bunch of work with Covid, and the local sewage tests they have been running. I apologize. The PFAS operation does have all the hallmarks of an over the top operation, and I’m pretty sure that the land trusts are wanting to fill their quotas on communizing more land for the great reset. I should have just posted concerns of other scientists that this “scare” is way too premature. One here: https://truthinscience.org/issues/pfas
Just about everyone, including the EPA, says that there is insufficient information to ascertain that PFAS is really harming people, and at what levels. “What We Don’t Fully Understand Yet…How harmful PFAS are to people and the environment” EPA.
I’m certainly not worried about it, but I am in the process of finding new supplies for farm products around me. My major farm went way over the top, tested everything, ran a fund raiser, and then let the land trusts produce a film documenting their “turmoils”. That’s just one gullible farmer, so I am looking elsewhere.
This is heartbreaking for all. I remember years ago at a survival job at a trade show a guy there from upstate NY told me that the so called organic farmers there were not organic at all and that it was too hard to get rid of pests naturally and so they reverted to toxic chemicals. Also I suspected it was a possibility recently when I learned that very little of the so called organic cotton from India was toxin free. Turns out using organic cotton seeds and organic safe ways of getting rid of bugs and such produces much less of a cotton yield and so the growers cannot make a profit and there is no good system in place to make sure the cotton sold is really organic and pesticide free and the gold standard label of organic cotton, GOT’S, is meaningless. They do not check to see that every requirement for organic cotton is fulfilled and it is very easy for so called organic cotton farmers to bolster their outputs with tainted cotton. Eileen Fischer clothing has taken some action on this finding, I don’t know what though. This is world wide not just in India. When I think of the money I wasted for years buying only so called organic cotton products, Of course some may have actually been completely organic I have no way of knowing, but I was duped by the GOT’s label for probably for some of that so called organic cotton. . .
Sounds like a classic example of the fox guarding the hen house
It’s just sickening how PFAS has poisoned so many places in the United States. There is so much work to do to clean up our environment. Thank you for bringing some coverage to this sadly current issue.
Application of waste materials to farmland and soil contamination is a problem as documented in these books:
Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits
by David L. Lewis
Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret
by Duff Wilson
as of this point in time > only a rumor
beginning June 2023, farmers will not be able to buy ANY over the counter medications for their animals.
what farmers need to know about FDA guidance about ending OTC anti biotics
https://www.farmanddairy.com>news
perhaps this is a good thing, for farmers who are dedicated to genuine Organics?
It would be inconceivable for Psaki to suggest that a mother call an organic dairy farmer for some raw milk to make her own formula???
https://twitter.com/i/status/1524850399118868487
Facebook too!https://www.facebook.com/support/?item_id=10223093877878787¬if_id=1652456854679196¬if_t=misinformation_share&ref=notif
Forget the “Nanny State”– they’re now handing off to the “Granny Industry”!
Dupont invented teflon in 1945, in 1947 3M invented PFOA. Dupont bought PFOAto use in their teflon manufacturing in 1951.
Essentially Dupont/3M has been poisoning the US and probably the world since 1950.
Snippet of the lawsuit that ended PFOA below. But wait, Dupont being the evil geniuses they are just switched the formula. The new GenX and PFBS are being used as replacement chemicals for PFOA and PFOS and are worse.
These people somehow think they can excuse their corruption by claiming they improved lives with their invention. The Harvard prof who invented Napalm suffered the same delusions, his comments paraphrased “we didn’t know what they would do with it, we’re innocent”. The whole point of Naplam was to incinerate, WTF did you think the military would do with it?
These are the types of people and their ego’s you’re dealing with which is why the US is poisoned and nothing is ever done about it.
snippet:
The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible…..