Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2008-04-17 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

And so, just when everybody thought the news out of certain parts of East Baltimore couldn’t get much worse, it does. Maybe. Tacked on to the routine violent crime and needles in arms and blighted housing around the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Kennedy Krieger Institute, we can now add the hazards of sewage sludge. Maybe.

What we know for certain is that Gerald Stansbury, head of the state’s NAACP, is comparing the scientific spreading of sludge in poor black neighborhoods to the murderous, long-ago Tuskegee experiments, in which syphilis treatment was denied to African-American men in order to study the illness. Stansbury told The Examiner he has asked Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler to conduct criminal and civil rights investigations.

What we also know for certain is that U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, of California, was alerted to the study and says her Environment and Public Works Committee will hold hearings this summer on the use of sludge as fertilizer.

And what we also know for certain is that this is not what anybody had in mind when scientists here, using nearly half a million dollars in federal grants, spread fertilizer from human and industrial waste on yards in poor, black neighborhoods.

They wanted to see whether it would protect children from lead poisoning in the soil, whose effects have attacked the brains and nervous systems and cognitive development of untold numbers of victims over the years.

Researchers went to nine low-income families in East Baltimore row houses adjacent to the Kennedy Krieger Institute (and a similarly poor African-American neighborhood in East St. Louis, Ill.) and assured them the sludge was safe. The families, who were given food coupons for helping with the study, let the team rake the sewage sludge into their yards.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said the chemical elements in the sludge — phosphate and iron, mainly — could bind to hazardous metals in the soil and put children at lower risk from lead. Today, the scientists believe the two-year study was a success, and the lives of many children ultimately saved by the study.

Maybe.

The “maybe” comes from families who reportedly were not told there have been some health concerns over the use of sludge. And “maybe” comes from reaction by the NAACP’s Stansbury. And “maybe” also comes from Thomas Burke, a Hopkins professor, who told The Associated Press that epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe.

“There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe,” Burke told the AP. “What’s needed are more studies on what’s going on with the pathogens in sludge — are we actually removing them? The commitment to connecting the dots hasn’t been there.”

Again, maybe.

Rufus Chaney, an Agriculture Department research agronomist who co-wrote the Baltimore study, issued a lengthy statement this week insisting to The Examiner the families were provided with information about lead hazards and assured that the fertilizer was safe.

And not only safe — but store-bought.

In fact, the compost is sold in hardware stores everywhere and is approved by the federal government for a variety of uses.

Which means that this dispute seems to have gone beyond pure science to ancient questions about race and class. That’s the message implicit in Stansbury’s comparison of the sludge study to the infamous Tuskegee experiments.

Why did they have to spread sludge in poor, black neighborhoods?

Because those who live in such neighborhoods have no political power to fight any injustices that might have been perpetrated? Because poor people would risk their lives if bribed with food coupons? Because such people’s lives, like the Tuskegee victims, are considered expendable?

Or is it something simpler, something closer to the classic utterance offered by Willie Sutton, when he was asked why he robbed banks.

“Because that’s where the money is,” Sutton allegedly said.

Why experiment with sludge in the area around the Kennedy Krieger Institute? Because that’s where there’s been a high incidence of lead poisoning. Researchers could have gone to some wealthy white area in Montgomery County — but that’s not where children are suffering. They’re suffering in East Baltimore.

So the news out of that troubled community gets worse today — maybe. Or maybe researchers actually managed, as they believe, to open a door to defeating lead poisoning. If we can get past the politics of the moment, drawn from America’s history of racism and our modern suspicions of government and other powerful institutions, maybe we can judge this effort on its raw science.

Michael Olesker can be reached at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com