NEW YORK, October 7, 2015 / PRNewswire-USNewswire / – The company that gets rid of highly toxic waste by selling it as a “product” to municipal water departments across the country because of the fine of cheap fluoridation chemicals $ 2 billion the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) reports on gross violations of the Federal Law on Conservation and Restoration of Resources (RCRA).
Mosaic Fertilizer, LLC, is one of the largest sellers of a toxic fluoride chemical, “fluorosilicic acid,” that cities are adding to public drinking water. Fluorosilicic acid is described by the EPA in the consent regulations as “hazardous waste” generated at Mosaic’s fertilizer plants. More than 200 million Americans drink this waste every day.
Mosaic has sold fluoridation chemicals to public drinking water systems in the United States for decades. This EPA-approved Kafkaesque program benefits the polluter as it helps the teeth of the poor, according to FAN.
The fine was levied October 1 from the EPA and the US Department of Justice. This waste is produced in Mosaic’s six phosphate fertilizer plants Florida and two in Louisiana.
“It is outrageous that Mosaic is allowed to sell EPA ‘hazardous’ waste to be dumped into the drinking water used in most major US cities,” says FAN scientist Dr. Neil Carman.
DR. William Hirzy, also with FAN, added, “This loophole needs to be addressed by the EPA. It has not been addressed in the consent regulations that allow Mosaic to continue selling hazardous waste to the public disguised as a means of promoting fluoride in drinking water are.”
The RCRA laws regulate the storage, treatment and disposal of hazardous waste. Mosaic’s 60 billion pounds of improperly handled hazardous waste reported by the EPA is the largest amount ever covered by an RCRA settlement. Mosaic’s waste has also caused major local environmental problems, mainly due to its high fluoride content. The fluoride that is not caught in pollution control equipment and sold to fluoridate water ends up in its liquid and solid wastes. Other toxic components include arsenic, lead, cadmium, uranium, and radium. Enormous amounts of this waste have been stored in so-called plaster stacks for years. They never become non-toxic, and these open hazardous waste piles have regularly found their way into rivers and groundwater, causing major fish deaths and other problems.
An overview of the phosphate fertilizer industry can be found at http://fluoridealert.org/articles/phosphate01/
SOURCE Fluoride Action Network
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