Richard C. Honour, PhD, Executive Director, The Precautionary Group, Kenmore, WA
Dr. Honour is a graduate of the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside, CA. His professional work focuses on Environmental Toxicology, Infectious Diseases and Cancer.
Dr. Honour works to abolish the Land Disposal of Toxic Sewage Sludge from Washington State’s Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) on farmlands and in forests adjacent to Puget Sound, all of which impact adversely the greater Salish Sea.
Dr. Honour’s work emphasizes sampling, analysis and reporting the practice and adverse environmental impacts of Land-Disposed Toxic Sewage Sludge in the Puget Sound and Central Washington agricultural regions of Washington State. The focus of his work includes sampling and evaluation of Toxic Sewage Sludges, and the resulting adversely-impacted air, foods, soils and waters, for the presence and concentration of many toxic chemicals, including Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether (PBDE) Flame Retardants, Dioxins & Furans, Triclosan, Nitrates and several Toxic Metals.
Dr. Honour is also investigating the growing repertoire of newly-identified volatile toxic gasses generated and released into the environment by the Land-Disposal of Toxic Sewage Sludges. These volatile gasses contribute directly to air pollution, including the emission of identified GreenHouse Gasses (GHGs) of global environmental concern.
Land-Disposed Toxic Sewage Sludge is proving to be a major contributing source of toxic volatile GHG chemicals, i.e., toxic volatile chemicals of the Toxic Sewage Sludge Volatilome. Initial results reveal high levels of carcinogenic and neurotoxic volatile chemicals in the parent and Land-Disposed Sludges, as well as in the adversely impacted receiving forest and agricultural soils, sediments and waters.
This work is supported by local environmental organizations representing minority, indigenous and other disadvantaged communities, plus environmental groups and universities out of the State of Washington that seek to continue this work.
Patricia Martin, BS, Executive Director, Safe Food & Fertilizer, Quincy, WA
Ms. Martin graduated from Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology.
Ms. Martin is a former mayor of Quincy, WA, a low-income, minority agricultural community in Central Washington State and was integral in exposing the illegal use of hazardous and other industrial wastes in fertilizer, soil amendments and animal feed. Her plight and that of local farmers standing against the agrichemical industry was first chronicled in a Seattle Times’ investigative series “Fear in the Fields: How Hazardous Waste Becomes Fertilizer” (1997), and then in “Fateful Harvest, the True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry and a Toxic Secret” (Harper Collins, 2001). Martin initiated a cooperative effort with Greenpeace International and with farm organizations to assess fertilizer contaminants on a global basis, and arranged for the analysis of fertilizers for sale on the Hawaiian Islands.
In 2003 Safe Food and Fertilizer challenged the EPA’s Zinc Fertilizer Rule in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Ms. Martin has successfully stopped enabling legislature in several states.
Christian Stalberg, MS, Co-Founder, Sewage Sludge Action Network, Oakland, CA
Mr. Stalberg has an MS in Biomimicry from ASU, and a BA in Environmental Studies from CSU Sonoma.
Mr. Stalberg co-founded Sewage Sludge Action Network in 2009 and has worked with the group educating the public about the dangers of municipal, industrial and hazardous wastes contained in land-applied pseudo-fertilizers, composts and soil amendments. He maintains the organization’s website and its growing repository of publications.