After 22 years of caution, the FDA recently determined that defending the nation’s blood supply against prion disease is no longer necessary. Instead, we will now safeguard blood banks based on the honor system. In the age of bioterrorism, what’s wrong with this picture?

Thanks to the infinite wisdom of the FDA and other health agencies around the world, global prion policies for blood banks changed overnight. Thanks to the honor system, people once deemed at a higher risk of exposure to prion disease are no longer banned from donating blood. How did the U.S., Australia and the United Kingdom all reach the same conclusion at once?

Neurodegenerative disease is the fastest-growing cause of death in the world. Most forms are highly infectious. As such, protecting the blood supply and medical facilities from prion contamination is virtually impossible. Removing the few policies designed to safeguard public health is negligent at best.

This policy shift comes years after the United States took prions off the list of select agents, which meant that they were extremely dangerous and highly regulated. Today, policies regulating deadly prions are virtually non-existent anywhere in the world. The prion pandemic will continue to escalate.

After the outbreak of mad cow disease in the United Kingdom, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) imposed a ban on blood donations from anyone who spent more than six months in Britain from 1980 to 1997 because of the possible exposure to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Unfortunately, CJD is just the tip of the iceberg. Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and ALS also are forms of prion disease. Who is warning these families and caregivers about the dangers of prion contamination? What is preventing people battling these diseases from donating blood and organs?

CJD is an infectious, incurable disease. It has been transmitted from infected humans to patients through the transplantation of the covering of the brain, use of contaminated brain electrodes, and injection of growth hormones derived from human pituitary glands. It has been transmitted through dental procedures.

There is evidence that CJD can be transmitted from donors to patients through blood transfusions. In fact, CJD and other prion diseases are readily transmitted through bodily fluids and tissue—including skin. There is no test at present that can detect blood that is infected with CJD, and no method that can completely remove abnormal prion proteins from blood. The blood transfusion and transplant services ask anyone with an increased risk of any type of CJD not to donate blood, tissues or organs.

In 1987, FDA issued its first recommendations to blood establishments for deferral of individuals who received human cadaveric pituitary growth hormone injections to reduce the possible risk of prion transmission through blood and blood products. In 1999, FDA issued the first recommendations for CJD and vCJD.

FDA held several Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee (TSEAC) meetings between 1995 and 2015 to review scientific evidence. In 2016, FDA terminated TSEAC, but the prion threat isn’t going away.

Blood transfusion can be a highly efficient route of transmission for prion diseases, and show that RBCs, platelets and fresh plasma from infected individuals are all potentially infectious.

Evidence from a small number of case reports involving patients and laboratory animal studies that vCJD can be transmitted through transfusion–even if the donor shows no signs of the disease. It also has been transmitted through organ transplants, infected dental instruments and infected surgical instruments. Prion contamination is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to sterilize. After several lawsuits, hospitals now discard contaminated medical instruments to eliminate the risks of prion transmission and the associated liability. Dentists should follow that example.

Across the animal kingdom, this epidemic is called prion disease. In cattle, prion disease is commonly called mad cow disease, but the clinical term for the disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy—BSE. BSE is a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The operative word is “transmissible.”

According to the prion hypothesis, vCJD and BSE are caused by proteinaceous infectious particles— prions. Prion disease also includes Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, chronic wasting disease and more. It impacts most, if not all, mammals including deer, elk, reindeer, moose, whales, dolphins, camels, elephants, mink, sheep and cattle.

There is no test for vCJD in humans that could be used to screen blood and organ donors. Organ and blood donation programs must take special precautions to keep vCJD out of circulation.

Gary Chandler is the CEO of Crossbow Communications — an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Blood Transmits Prion Disease appeared first on Gary Chandler.

Thanks to a massive chemistry experiment that has gone horribly wrong, most people in the United States, and likely the world, have a harmful chemical in their bodies. A chemical cocktail designed to help housewives, firemen and others is now the focus of a massive industrial crime.

PFAS are a large group of manufactured chemicals that are used to make everyday products, including cosmetics, carpet, food packaging, Teflon and fire retardants. PFAS are used in aerospace, automotive, construction, electronics, and military. PFAS is often listed on products as PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene), perfluorooctyl triethoxysilane, perfluorononyl dimethicone, perfluorodecalin, and perfluorohexane. More than 9,000 different types of PFAS have been identified.

Thanks to negligence and fraud, the vast majority of Americans of all ages are now part of this chemistry experiment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found PFAS in the blood of 97 percent of Americans. PFAS is commonly found in breast milk. It’s safe to say that PFAS has contaminated most of the food and water supplies around the world. The contaminant also threatens fish, wildlife and livestock.

The problem is that PFAS molecules are composed of carbon and fluorine atoms. The carbon-fluorine bond is extremely strong, which means that these chemicals do not degrade in the environment or in our bodies. In fact, scientists are unable to estimate an environmental half-life for PFAS. The industry admits that there are several gaps in research that need to be filled.

PFAS are called forever chemicals because they remain highly toxic forever. Forever chemicals have leached into our soil and water, which means that food supplies have been contaminated.

People are most likely exposed by consuming PFAS-contaminated water or food, using products made with PFAS, or breathing air contaminated with PFAS.

Since PFAS don’t break down, they accumulate in the tissue of humans, wildlife and livestock. PFAS causes cancer, liver, thyroid, and kidney disease. They weaken the immune system, alter the metabolism, and disrupt the reproductive system. They cause infertility, miscarriage and birth defects. They cause neurological disorders. It also can blacken the teeth of those exposed. Much more research is needed to fully understand the public health and ecological impacts. Unfortunately, Pandora left the box long ago.

Thanks to one very tenacious lawyer named Robert Bilott, legal battles are gaining momentum. The movie Dark Waters summarizes Bilott’s courageous work and it documents the horrors of Dupont’s deceit. The movie is based on an article written by Nathaniel Rich, a reporter for the New York Times.

Bilott is an environmental attorney from Cincinnati. He is known for the lawsuits against DuPont on behalf of plaintiffs from West Virginia. Bilott has spent more than twenty years litigating hazardous dumping of these forever chemicals.

Thanks to Bilott’s groundbreaking work, San Diego is suing more than 20 companies over water contamination caused by PFAS. The lawsuit claims that 3M, DuPont, Raytheon and others made firefighting foam that contained PFAS and alleges the companies were aware of the toxic nature of the chemicals, but concealed the environmental and public health dangers.

Read the full story about PFAS and public health

Gary Chandler is the CEO of Crossbow Communications — an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post PFAS A Public Health Disaster appeared first on Gary Chandler.

Hazardous chemical sites in the United States are at risk from climate-driven floods, storms and wildfires, according to a new analysis by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO claims that more than 11,000 facilities across the nation, including factories, refineries, water treatment plants, have extremely hazardous chemicals in amounts that could harm people, property, or the environment if released accidentally.

More than 3,200 of the sites face damage from sea level rise, hurricane storm surge, wildfires or flooding. Such events already have released chemicals into surrounding communities.

Storms have damaged numerous chemical plants, refineries and water treatment plants.

The most extreme toxic releases have happened during hurricanes. Hurricane Ida caused leaks and power outages at facilities from Louisiana to New Jersey. Hurricane Laura forced tens of thousands of people near Lake Charles, La., to shelter in place after a local chemical plant began leaking chlorine gas. In 2017, flooding from Hurricane Harvey caused massive sewage leaks from wastewater treatment plants, and caused at least one chemical plant to catch fire.

Flooding is the most widespread threat. Of the 3,219 facilities in harm’s way, more than 2,400 are at high risk for flooding. The facilities analyzed in the new report are located in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. They are concentrated in the industrial core of the country. Nearly 40 percent of facilities are located in the Midwest or Great Lakes regions, and about 30 percent are located in the 14 southern states between North Carolina and New Mexico.

Gary Chandler is the CEO of Crossbow Communications — an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Extreme Weather Spreading Toxic Chemicals appeared first on Gary Chandler.

Six former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrators are calling for reform at the agency. Although most of the former EPA leaders were critical of the current management, they were optimistic about the EPA’s future in an open letter published Wednesday. The letter reads:

As former leaders of the Environmental Protection Agency serving both Democratic and Republican administrations, we take great pride in the agency’s many successes improving the quality of the air we breathe, safeguarding the water we drink, and protecting the environment that sustains us and our economy. As EPA approaches its 50th anniversary this December, we believe the time has come to reset the future course for EPA to address the environmental challenges we face today.

The nature of the environmental and health challenges our nation faces have changed. Fifty years ago, pollution was visible and unrelenting throughout our country. Today, less visible but equally dangerous environmental hazards threaten communities in ways that differ from place to place, person to person.

Climate change is having far-reaching impacts on air quality, infectious diseases, and water quantity and quality, as well as intensifying destructive climate events such as floods, storms, wildfires, and droughts. Environmental injustices are putting lower-wealth communities, communities of color, and indigenous communities at disproportionately high levels of exposure, risk, and vulnerability to toxic pollution, not to mention the pandemic we are now facing.

Speedier, more effective assessments and responses are needed to face pandemics, new toxic hazards, and other emerging or unmitigated health risks. The Environmental Protection Network (EPN) and its over 500 EPA alumni have developed detailed recommendations for setting new directions at EPA. We invite everyone to review this important report http://www.environmentalprotectionnetwork.org/reset.

Not everyone will agree with every recommendation, for there is no single roadmap for the way forward.

We agree with EPN that the following overarching recommendations for EPA are essential to meet the environmental challenges of the 21st century and improve people’s lives and our economy.

1. EPA must reaffirm its commitment to fully protect public health and the environment.
2. EPA must conduct its scientific and economic analysis free from political interference.
3. EPA must incorporate environmental justice in every aspect of its work in order to address and resolve inequitable environmental conditions.
4. EPA must focus on the most significant and pervasive public health and environmental risks, prioritizing actions that provide the greatest health benefit for the greatest number of people, including vulnerable populations.
5. EPA must innovate and collaborate with states, tribes, local governments, and federal agencies as co-regulators, as well as with stakeholders, including the private and non-profit sectors and community groups, to build an effective and resilient system of public health and environmental protections.
6. EPA must earn and maintain broad public trust by demonstrating the best ethical behavior, transparently considering all stakeholder viewpoints, and providing objective environmental information. To do the job well, EPA will need additional resources. As new threats to the health and environmental needs of a growing population have multiplied, EPA’s budget has declined. In inflation-adjusted dollars, EPA’s budget was more than 50% higher under President Ronald Reagan than it is today. The steady deterioration of resources has undermined EPA’s readiness for the challenges ahead and the agency’s ability to adapt and respond to emerging needs.

While we are concerned about the current state of affairs at EPA, we are hopeful for the agency’s future. EPA has a strong foundation on which to build. Capable and talented staff members are ready to answer the call. They have labored in good faith across administrations of both parties to fulfill EPA’s mission by following the law, applying the best available science, and displaying openness and transparency with the public. America’s bedrock environmental laws have delivered enormous health and economic benefits to the American public, as documented by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

The public values clean air, clean water, and a healthy natural environment, notwithstanding differences in priorities and approaches. The years ahead will bring new and often far-reaching environmental and health risks. They also hold great potential for new approaches, new opportunities, and new technologies to confront environmental problems.

Growing ranks of companies are showing internal leadership on sustainability without waiting for regulations. New technologies and data tools can pinpoint and help solve environmental threats. State and local governments, farmers and other landowners, community-based groups, universities, and others have pioneered new approaches to getting results. We have successfully risen as a nation to confront past threats to our health and environment. We are at an environmental crossroads, and we are hopeful that America will again muster the resolve, the will, and the action needed to protect public health, the environment, and our economy.

Sincerely, Hon. Lee Thomas EPA Administrator, 1985-1989

Hon. William Reilly EPA Administrator, 1989-1993

Hon. Carol Browner EPA Administrator, 1993-2001

Hon. Christine Todd Whitman EPA Administrator, 2001-2003

Hon. Lisa Jackson EPA Administrator, 2009-2013

Hon. Gina McCarthy EPA Administrator, 2013-2017

They endorsed the broad goals of new recommendations for the agency from the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), a group of hundreds of former agency employees, which also calls for “resetting the course” of the agency.

These goals include conducting analyses that are free from political interference, resolving inequitable environmental conditions faced by disadvantaged communities and prioritizing actions that provide the greatest health benefits to the most people.

The report from the EPN also made more specific policy recommendations to the agency, such as suspending its rollback of Obama-era water protections and affirming California’s authority to set its own vehicle emissions standards, both of which have been major points of contention. The EPA has also rolled back many other environmental rules in recent years like regulations governing fuel efficiency standards and power plants. The agency has lost hundreds of staff under the current administration. The letter prompted an immediate response from the EPA.

For example, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has confirmed that deadly prions are in sewage and that there has been no way to detect them or stop them. As such, the EPA has never issued guidance on prion management within wastewater treatment plants. Unfortunately, the EPA’s risk assessment on sewage sludge (biosolids) was prepared before the world of science knew about prions. The agency clung to its antiquated sludge rule crafted back in the dark ages until recently. All along, it considered prions as an “emerging contaminant of concern.”

The risk assessments prepared by the U.S. EPA for wastewater treatment and biosolids are flawed and current practices of recycling this infectious waste are fueling a public health disaster. Many risks are not addressed, including prions and radioactive waste. They don’t mention prions or radiation because there is no answer. Most nations are making the same mistake. We’re dumping killer proteins on crops, parks, golf courses, gardens, ski areas, school grounds and beyond. Wind, rain and irrigation spread these contaminants and many more throughout our communities and watersheds.

Meanwhile, its outdated risk assessments are still in use. They are promoting a public health disaster. The neurotoxins found in sewage, including heavy metals, also are contributing to the global spike in autism, which follows the same timing and trajectory as the spike in neurodegenerative diseases.

“Since it’s unlikely that the sewage treatment process can effectively stop prions, adopting measures to prevent the entry of prions into the sewer system is advisable,” said the Toronto Department of Health, November 2004.

Once unleashed on the environment, prions remain infectious. They migrate, mutate and multiply as they infect crops, water supplies, wildlife, livestock, sea mammals and humans. According to prion researcher Joel Pedersen at the University of Wisconsin, prions in soil become up to 680 times more infectious. From there, they migrate, mutate and multiply. It’s a real world version of Pandora’s Lunchbox.

“Our results suggest that if prions enter municipal wastewater treatment systems, most prions would bond to sewage sludge, survive anaerobic digestion, and be present in treated biosolids,” Pedersen said. “Land application of biosolids containing prions represents a route for their introduction into the environment. I emphasize the importance of keeping prions out of municipal wastewater treatment systems.”

Pedersen also found that sewage treatment does not inactivate prions. Therefore, prions are lethal, mutating, migrating and multiplying everywhere sewage (biosolids) is dumped.

Prions could end up in sewage treatment plants via slaughterhouses, hospitals, dental offices and mortuaries just to name a few of the pathways. The disposal of sludge represents the greatest risk of spreading prion contamination in the environment. Plus, we know that pathogens, pharmaceutical residue and chemical pollutants found in sewage sludge are taken up by plants and vegetables.”

Thanks to the mismanagement of infectious waste, including sewage, the animal world is contracting prion disease from humans. They also are passing it among themselves via their own bodily fluids. When it comes to prion disease, species barriers are a myth.

Unfortunately, prions linger in the environment, homes, hospitals, nursing homes, dental offices and beyond infinitely. Prions defy all attempts at sterilization and inactivation. If they can’t stop prions in the friendly and sterile confines of an operating room, they can’t stop them in the wastewater treatment plant.

Dr. Claudio Soto confirmed that plants uptake prions from the soil and water. The plants become fatally infectious when consumed. Even wildlife and sea mammals are contracting brain disease from people because of the dumping of infectious waste on farms, ranches and forests. Humans, wildlife and livestock are vulnerable to prion disease via crops and plants grown on land treated with infectious waste (sewage sludge, biosolids and reclaimed wastewater).

Crops for humans and livestock grown in sewage sludge absorb prions and other neurotoxins. They become infectious. We’re all vulnerable to neurotoxins right now due to widespread denial and mismanagement. It’s time to stop the land application of sewage sludge (LASS) in all nations. Safer alternatives exist.

Prion disease is highly contagious, incurable and fatal. Despite all of the smoke and mirrors, prion disease is prion disease. It’s killing more and more mammals, including humans, every year. The hype about species barriers is ridiculous, reckless and irresponsible.

Read The Full Story About EPA Reform

Gary Chandler is the CEO of Crossbow Communications — an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post EPA Reform Long Overdue appeared first on Gary Chandler.

High winds in dry places such as Arizona and California have become toxic events thanks to reckless sewage dumping. These powerful dust storms now carry lethal doses of pathogens in the form of particulates, which are swept away from farms, ranches, parks, gardens and golf courses. Thanks to reckless sewage treatment policies and practices, these poisonous particulates are now contributing to a spectrum of ailments, including the dreaded valley fever and even Alzheimer’s disease.

Prior to the 1990s, valley fever was a fairly rare disease. However, thanks to the U.S. EPA’s reckless science and policies, the desert began filling with sewage sludge around 1993. The sewage brought in a host of toxins, and pathogens, including radionuclides, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, dioxins, fungus, bacteria, prions and other threats to public health. The nitrogen and carbon in the sewage sludge fuels a fungus in the sand and soil that causes valley fever. The sludge also provides a new medium to help transport the toxic mold spores far and wide.

Thanks to the U.S. EPA’s reckless policies on sewage treatment and sewage sludge (also known as the sludge rule in industry circles), toxins and pathogens that aren’t soaked up by plants, streams and rivers are now swept up by windstorms and dumped over large metropolitan areas, including Phoenix and Tucson. It’s in the soil. It’s on everything. Waves of sickness and death follow in each storm’s wake.

Valley fever kills more than 100 people per year just in Maricopa County (Phoenix).

Some estimate that there are about 150,000 cases of valley fever every year just in the U.S. Only forty percent of the people infected are symptomatic. Even fewer seek treatment because milder symptoms are difficult to distinguish from the flu. Therefore, the actual scope of the epidemic is merely a guess.

Two-thirds of all valley fever cases in the world are contracted in Arizona, where valley fever has been at epidemic levels since the state began keeping records in 1997. Today, there about 50,000 known new cases in Arizona each year. More than half of those cases are in Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties.

“That area is the ‘Valley Fever Corridor,'” said Dr. John Galgiani, who directs the Valley Fever Center for Excellence, at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

That’s a polite way of describing the danger zone. The desert regions of Arizona and California are buried in sewage dumped from places such as Phoenix, Tucson, Oceanside and Orange County, California. Thanks to these industrial-scale sewage dumps, dust storms carry much more than soil and sand. These microscopic sewage particulates are inhaled. Those that aren’t settle in homes, offices, gardens, streams, rivers, lakes, and beyond where they can do their damage at a later time. These particulates are so toxic that they are killing people, animals, landscaping and more as they settle in highly populated communities and rural ones alike.

In 2008, the Arizona State Department of Health Services claimed valley fever as “Arizona’s Disease.” In 2012, valley fever was the second-most-reported disease in the state even though only about two percent of all cases are diagnosed and treated.

“If Arizona doesn’t do something, no one will,” said Rebecca Sunenshine, MD, Epidemiologist from the Centers for Disease Control.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes valley fever as a “silent epidemic” because the number of cases has been increasing by about 15 percent per year. Even its conservative count has grown tenfold since 1998. It counted 2,265 cases in 1998 and more than 22,000 in 2011. Public awareness and aversion efforts have not gone up accordingly. The surge might be much larger because some states, including Texas, do not require public reporting of confirmed cocci cases. Valley fever is endemic in Texas along the Rio Grande River.

Symptoms of valley fever include fever, respiratory distress with coughing, chest pain and shortness of breath. Other common symptoms include muscle and joint aches, a skin rash, weight loss and lack of appetite and intense fatigue. A small subset of patients will suffer long-term health problems; in fewer still, cocci will disseminate from the lungs into other tissue—skin, bones, and, often fatally, the meninges of the brain. For those with cocci meningitis, the treatment can include a series of painful injections into the neck and spinal cord.

Though it sickens many times more people than West Nile virus, which affects much of the country, it has received only a small fraction of the funding for research.

“The impact of valley fever on its endemic populations is equal to the impact of polio or chicken pox before the vaccines,” said Galgiani. “But chicken pox and polio were worldwide threats.”

In July 2013, The New Yorker quoted a Bakersfield physician who described it as “a hundred different diseases,” depending on which toxin is inhaled and where the infection rests. Fortunately, cocci cannot spread from person to person, but other forms of sickness caused by sewage mismanagement are a different story.

The elderly and the immune-compromised—including pregnant women—are most susceptible; for unknown reasons, otherwise healthy African-Americans and Filipinos are disproportionately vulnerable to severe and life-threatening forms of the disease. (In one early study, Filipino men were estimated to be a hundred and seventy-five times as likely as white men to get sick from cocci, and a hundred and ninety-two times as likely to die from it.)

Official statistics do not include animals such as dogs, cats, horses and wild animals that have been stricken. Dogs are hit the hardest.

The History Of Valley Fever

Valley Fever derives its name from its discovery in the San Joaquin Valley of California, where it was also referred to as “San Joaquin Valley Fever” or “Desert Rheumatism.” The medical name for Valley Fever is coccidioidomycosis (often shortened to “cocci” caused by the fungus coccidioides, which usually enters the lungs of victims.

Area of Distribution:

• Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico.
• San Joaquin and Central Valleys of California
• Southern Arizona (especially in the Phoenix and Tucson areas).
• Southern parts of Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Western Texas (especially around El Paso)
• Mexico (in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua).
• Also found in semiarid and arid soils of Central and South America.

Valley fever is a fungal infection caused by coccidioides (kok-sid-e-OY-deze) organisms that enter your lungs. In soil, C. immitis exists in chains of barrel-shaped units called arthroconidia; airborne, these fragment easily into lightweight spores. C. immitis is adapted to lodge deep: its spores are small enough to reach the end of the bronchioles at the bottom of the lungs. We can breathe them in, but we can’t breathe them out. Today, airborne dust includes much more than dust and mold, though.

Once in the lung, the spore circles up into a spherule, defined by a chitinous cell wall and filled with a hundred or so baby endospores. When the spherule is sufficiently full, it ruptures, releasing the endospores and stimulating an acute inflammatory response that disrupts blood flow to the tissue and can lead to necrosis. The endospores, each of which will become a new spherule, travel through the blood and lymph systems, allowing the cocci to spread anywhere the wind takes it. In people with weakened immune systems, cocci can overwhelm their bodies.

The first recorded case of cocci involved a soldier in Argentina in 1891. Ulcerated, cauliflower-like nodes deformed his face. Doctors initially thought that he had an infectious form of cancer. Two years later, doctors in the San Joaquin Valley saw their first case in a field worker. He was blinded by lesions on his face and riddled with abscesses. Unfortunately, this case would not be the last.

“In the nineteen-fifties, both the U.S. and the Russians had biowarfare programs using cocci,” said John Galgiani at the University of Arizona. “Generals can’t control agents that rely on air currents to disperse them, and it was difficult to use the vector precisely, so it fell out of favor. But terrorists don’t care about control—all they care about is perception. A single cell can cause disease, and you can genetically modify it to make it more powerful.”

Arizona also has one of the highest rates of Alzheimer’s disease in the U.S. Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a deadly form of protein called a prion. Prions also are in wastewater and unstoppable in wastewater treatment plants. When sewage particles are swept into the air, so are the highly contagious prions.

Parts of neighboring California, especially the San Joaquin Valley, also have produced a steady flow of valley fever victims since the early 1990s. Ironically, this is after rural America became an industrial-scale sewage dump thanks to the EPA’s controversial new sludge rule. The sludge rule opened the floodgates to sewage contamination in our watersheds and communities. Other nations have followed the same policies on wastewater treatment and sewage sludge disposal because of their trust in the U.S. government. The sludge rule has been crammed down the world’s throat along with tons of deadly sewage.

Land Application of Sewage Sludge Connected To Many Diseases

In addition to the fungi behind valley fever, windstorms can carry other pathogens from sewage and inject them into our daily lives. Wastewater treatment can’t stop prions or most other pathogens, which means that they thrive in wastewater treatment plants, sewage sludge, reclaimed water and effluent. Applying sewage to cocci growth sites is not a good idea. Cocci requires moisture, carbon and nitrogen, which sewage provides.

Other examples of recently emerging and reemerging soil-borne pathogens include clostridium, spp. bacteria, which cause a variety of diseases and are likely a permanent soil resident, transmitted by the fecal-oral route and through skin trauma; Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium, which causes listeriosis and is a permanent soil resident transmitted by contact with soil contaminated with infective feces and also by inhalation of the organism; Sin Nombre virus, a hantavirus, which causes hemorrhagic fever, is a transient soil resident, and is transmitted by inhalation of dust containing aerosolized rodent urine and feces; rotavirus spp., which causes diarrhea and enteritis, an incidental or less commonly, transient soil resident, transmitted by the fecal-soil-oral route also by the fecal-respiratory route; and, as stated above, prion disease, which includes Alzheimer’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, mad cow disease and many other neurological diseases (Essentials of Medical Geology: Revised Edition, page 501).

Wastewater treatment technology also fails to keep radionuclides, carcinogens, pharmaceuticals and other poisons, including the coccidioides (cocci) fungi out of the sludge produced in the process. Plus, any fungus already on the desert floor gets supercharged with the fuel in sewage sludge. Thanks to sewage mismanagement, we’re injecting these pathogens directly into our lifecycle on an industrial scale. As such, valley fever, Alzheimer’s, autism and other maladies have become industrial diseases as pathways are expanding daily.

All sewage toxins are capable of going airborne once the sludge is dried and agitated into fine particles. Once airborne, the smallest of particles can travel thousands of miles. Unfortunately, the EPA failed to account for prions when it faked its science on the safety of biosolids. The EPA also failed to account for airborne pathways. Such oversights are reckless and incompetent at best. Given the damage that is stacking, and the lack of responsiveness from government and industry, modern sewage dumps are an aggressive form of bioterrorism.

Today, U.S. industry alone uses more than 60,000 chemicals. Most of them find their way into the sewer system and municipal sludge. These chemicals interact to form new chemicals, which can be even more toxic than the original form. These toxins and a deadly list of pathogens are all contaminating our food, water and air. Some are more deadly than others. Thanks to government collusion, many industries are making a killing.

We may not know the full scope of valley fever because some physicians don’t think of testing for the infection in patients with common flu-like symptoms (fever and cough, fatigue, headache, rash, muscle aches and joint pain). A 2010 survey by the New Mexico public health department revealed that 69 percent of clinicians responding did not consider valley fever in patients with respiratory problems. If you live in or visit an area where the fungus is found and develop persistent flu-like symptoms, ask your physician to test for cocci.

A study by the Valley Fever Center for Excellence at the University of Arizona shows that two-thirds of patients with valley fever in Arizona were misdiagnosed. According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control in 2006, one in three Arizona patients diagnosed with pneumonia and treated with antibiotics may be misdiagnosed and treated with the wrong drugs. The federal report said the patients may have had a valley fever, a fungal pneumonia, although most of the patients were managed as if they had a bacterial infection with antibiotics. Valley Fever is caused by a fungus and would not be treated by drugs directed at bacteria, according to the Arizona center’s study.

Valley Fever In California

California’s San Joaquin Valley is another hot spot for valley fever. Kern County and the Bakersfield area are ground zero for the disease. Kern County also is where Los Angeles dumps the majority of its sewage. The highest rate of infection is in Antelope Valley, a rapidly developing outpost of the county that adjoins the southern edge of the San Joaquin Valley. In the past decade, the number of cases there has increased 545 percent.

The community of Antelope Valley has seen its population double in thirty years. It has been transformed from a sleepy agricultural zone to a dense residential area. Fields that once grew alfalfa now grow residential developments. New families have moved into the neighborhood. Many are vulnerable to the threat of valley fever.

As it turns out, the San Joaquin Valley is a hot spot for clusters of valley fever. According to the CDC, during 1991, reported cases of Coccidioidomycosis (i.e., valley fever) in California increased more than three-fold over the annual number of cases reported since 1986; during 1992, the number of reported cases increased 10-fold.

In 1991, 1208 new cases of coccidioidomycosis were reported to the California Department of Health Services (CDHS), compared with an average of 450 cases per year
during the previous 5 years. Of these cases, 959 (80%) were reported from Kern County, where coccidioidomycosis is known to be endemic and where the county health department serves as a referral laboratory for coccidioidomycosis serologic tests. Kern County also is where California once dumped much of its sewage sludge.

In the years leading up to the 2006, one third of California’s sewage sludge was applied to land in Kern County. Orange County, Los Angeles County, Oxnard and Ventura all sent their sludge to Kern County. On June 6, 2006, the Kern County ballot initiative to ban sludge application passed with 85 percent of the vote.

Of all cases reported to CDHS in 1991, 765 (63%) were reported from October through December. In 1992, 4541 cases of coccidioidomycosis were reported to CDHS (Figure 1). Of these, 4198 (92%) were reported from the central valley and southern California, including 3027 (67%) from Kern County. Reports from the coccidioidomycosis Serology Laboratory of the University of California at Davis, a reference laboratory that receives specimens from areas of California other than Kern County, also documented an increased incidence in 1991 and 1992.

Antje Lauer, an environmental microbiologist who teaches at the university in Bakersfield, has been tracking the issues for years. In an article in The New Yorker by Dana Goodyear, she explained that the arthroconidia fungus is notoriously hard to find in the ground. A spot that tests positive once may subsequently come up negative; a positive site can be separated from a negative one by a matter of yards. Little is known about where the fungus thrives and why. Several years ago, Lauer began trying to discern some pattern to its presence. Initially, she said,

“I just drove around Bakersfield and used my intuition. I sampled here, I sampled there.” On Coles Levee Road, a desolate strip owned by Los Angeles County, which uses part of it as a sewage dump, she found the fungus nearly every time she looked, she explained to the reporter.

Another California outbreak happened in 1994 in Ventura County following an earthquake that struck the region. During the two months after the earthquake, 170 people were diagnosed with acute coccidioidomycosis because of the airborne dust. During all of 1993, there were only 52 cases reported in the county.

Green Valley, Arizona resident Ron Brill said he began experiencing Valley Fever symptoms in 2006 when he and his wife were cruising Europe.

“I started getting pains in an area at the top of my lungs which I was certain couldn’t be a heart attack,” Brill recalled. “I eventually was hospitalized in Austria where they have no idea about Valley Fever. There I started having severe chills and uncontrollable shaking. My daughter had to get me to the emergency room in Boston, and still they had no idea what it was.”

Brill returned home where he was eventually diagnosed with Valley Fever, but his visual diagnosis until he was tested for the illness was pneumonia.

“I had most of the major risk factors for Valley Fever, but went through weeks of feeling ill before that was diagnosed,” he said. “Had I known what to look for as far as the risk factors are concerned, I would have asked much earlier to be tested for Valley Fever.”

Thanks to the EPA’s infamous sludge rule of 1993, Americans are choking on sewage. Parts of Arizona and California are feeling the brunt of the epidemic. Arizona not only dumps its own sewage sludge on crops, parks, golf courses and gardens, it imports tons of it from California, too.

The sewage is dumped on crops throughout rural regions and open spaces in metropolitan areas, including city golf courses in the Phoenix metropolitan area. I can personally attest that sewage sludge from the Encina Wastewater Authority in Carlsbad, California is being trucked across state lines, where it is dumped within 50 feet of private residences–without consent and without notice. The golf course workers sprayed the crap into my backyard as collateral damage. The toxic crap is being peddled under the name “Pure Green.”

The dose put on the Ken McDonald Golf Course in May 2015 killed massive sections of the fairways for months. It killed landscaping in my backyard that borders the 17th hole. Who knows what damage was done to local residents, pets and wildlife. It’s dumped without consent and without notice. It goes airborne. It causes sickness and disease. It’s bioterrorism. These “dirty bombs” are being dropped around us every day.

If you live in or visit areas where valley fever is common, take common sense precautions, especially during the dry, dusty summer months when the chance of infection is highest. Consider wearing a mask, staying inside during dust storms, wetting the soil before digging, and keeping doors and windows tightly closed. Contact us and join our campaign for reform. Please join us in our quest for truth and reform of reckless sewage dumping practices around the world.

Gary Chandler is connecting the dots to the global surge in neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, chronic wasting disease and other forms of prion disease. 

The post Valley Fever Caused By Infectious Waste appeared first on Gary Chandler.