UK Environment Agency Insider Alleges Years Of Lies, Cover-Up Of Risks Of Sewage Sludge Use On Farmland
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Sewage sludge – the solid byproduct of wastewater treatment – is promoted as a sustainable fertiliser that returns nutrients to the soil, but it can also carry toxic substances from industrial and domestic waste. Before the practice was banned in the 1990s, sludge was routinely dumped at sea; now it is spread on land. Rules since 1989 only require the sludge to be tested for a narrow range of heavy metals. Other substances, including pharmaceuticals, PFAS “forever chemicals”, flame retardants, microplastics, endocrine disruptors, are neither regulated nor tested for.
Voluntary guidance drawn up in 1998 by the water industry, the safe sludge matrix, sets out what types of treated sludge can be spread and where. “The matrix is still in use,” the insider said. “It was written by the water companies and simply accepted by the Environment Agency.” An industry expert agreed, saying: “It’s a PR exercise. The treatment doesn’t remove a huge range of pollutants, just pathogens.” A second EA source said the matrix was designed to “protect [companies’] access to the land bank” – to reassure farmers and fend off regulation.
The EA has long known sludge is a problem. In 2017, it commissioned a study to investigate. The insider said that although the study was praised internally, it then disappeared. “It was wiped. When journalists asked about it, the agency said it didn’t exist.”
Greenpeace’s Unearthed team uncovered the study through freedom of information legislation. It revealed flame retardants, dioxins and microplastics had been identified in sludge samples. “The EA denied its existence until the evidence was overwhelming. Then they said, ‘OK, it exists, but we’re not giving it to you,’” the insider said. After the report’s exposure in 2020, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the EA announced a new sludge strategy to modernise the system and bring it under environmental permitting, with promises of better tracking, data and enforcement. But nothing has been delivered.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/09/environment-agency-insider-alleges-cover-up-sewage-sludge-farmland