Should WA test human waste fertilizer for PFAS?

By Conrad Swanson | The Seattle Times | February 14, 2025

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"Farmers across Washington already spread thousands of tons of fertilizer from human waste on their crops each year, but there’s a major blind spot when it comes to potential contaminants.

Fertilizers made from human waste are fairly common across the country. Depending on who you ask, they’re called “biosolids” or “sludge,” and they can be seen as a frontier of the agricultural world or a health hazard. Increasingly, the industry has a new specter: the slate of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which cause cancer and a host of other health problems. Contamination is so bad in some places that Connecticut and Maine have banned the use of biosolids on agricultural lands.

In Washington — particularly King and Pierce counties — experts say the PFAS problem isn’t nearly as pronounced. The contaminants are likely present, they’re even detectable in rainwater across the world, but probably not in such high concentrations as to be dangerous, they say."