Worm Digest - Re:Is it in the worms?

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2) Environmental Discussion Forum

ArkieGold

User

A Juvenile Earthworm

Posts: 42

Is it in the worms? - 2009/05/02 08:51 I recently attended a yearly conference for Arkansas Waste Water Association and Arkansas Water Environmental Association. As a WW operator, myself and others are required to attend to keep our license hours current.

One hourly topic was the affect of prescription drugs in the waste stream and it's affect on fishes. Seems the "acceptable" method of disposal for unused pharmicuticals is to flush them down the toilet. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality speaker listed several reasons why this is not an acceptable practice. Like everything else, it ends up killing fish and female birth control pill residual is changing male fish into female fish, thus causing an eventual extinction of species and longterm drastic effects to the food chain.

The following topic was "PyroMed". Small groups of like minded environmental concious people who are doing something to help lessen the amounts of unused drugs being introduced into our waterways.

Before the discussion began I somewhat embarrased myself in talking to the lady who was to speak about some of the previous topic. I explained I was conducting a pilot project with worms in our city sewage sludge and maybe the worms would be able to remove drug residue from the solids portion of the waste stream. She said..."The drug residues have been found in earthworms as well, what are you going to do with them?" My answer..."Well I suppose we could burn the worms and pollute the air"! Then she talked about PyroMed...

PyroMed groups use approved, efficient incinerators to dispose of unused medications like the Drug Terminator. They work in conjunction with local law enforcement to provide places people can bring their unused medications and have them disposed of along with when law enforcement disposes of confiscated illegal drugs. In one year, one group had successfully diverted 900lbs of unused medications from the waste stream.

So can worms remove drug/medication residues from wastewater solids? If yes, in doing so do they retain it in their bodies to die and return the residues to the soil? What about the castings from ingesting medications in the feedstock? Are they free from residues? Remains to be seen I suppose. So what do we do with the worms that have residues of chemicals in their bodies?

How does your local law enforcement dispose of evidence? Burning in an open top burn barrel is not acceptable and illegal. You might open a can of worms as I have in my local government by pointing out their error. The Drug Incinerator is not overly expensive and every little bit we can do to help stop soil and water contamination will have long term benefits.

Post edited by: ArkieGold, at: 2009/05/02 08:53 Arkie's Vermiculture

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Paratrooper

User

A Mature Breeder Earthworm

Posts: 83

Re:Is it in the worms? - 2009/05/02 13:00 Here in Northern Arizona a lot of stuff is disposed of by using a burn barrel . I would think that since a permit is needed the local Fire Department could store these drugs and visit a resident burning their garbage , leaves etc. and just place the drugs in the fire . I live just down the street from our local station and until the bell rings they don't have a bunch to do . I'm not saying that they do nothing but they do have a lot of free time . Tom
Kingman Arizona

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BigTexWorms
User

A Juvenile Earthworm

Posts: 50

Re:Is it in the worms? - 2009/05/03 13:21 Hubby is a firefighter, so let me jump in. They have very little "down time". At least not in our city. He rarely even gets to sit down to eat a meal. The city policy here it to dispose of meds at the pharmacy and I have no idea what would happen to them after that. So please dont go request the firefighters to dispose of your meds, they cannot do it.
Next, I am a nurse and cannot imagine burning meds. The residue could potentially be inhaled and absorbed into your system. Lung tissue is a very fast route to give medications. I would think buring medications is very hazardous. Please dont do that at home, YIKES!
Lastly, who cares if worms ingest the medications. THEY ARE WORMS for Petes sake. I would think however, in order to argue the worms can eliminate the medications from sewage that you would have to obtain testing of the sewage then the castings to prove this fact. And I personally would not want to use castings on my plants from sewage until I know for sure there are not antidepressants or birth control drugs in there. That is scary.
Just my 2 cents. Liz aka BigTexWorms
http://bigtexworms.webs.com

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ArkieGold

User

A Juvenile Earthworm

Posts: 42

Re:Is it in the worms? - 2009/05/03 22:44 Actually everyone should be concerned if worms are ingesting medications. If they are, then it's a sure sign the medications are entering water sources. The whole purpose of PyroMed is to keep medications out of the waste stream and ultimately out of the water and in the soil. The mentioned furnace provides a complete as possible clean burn. Open barrels are illegal for that very reason and should be stopped by all law officials or otherwise.

Sadly though, as sure as there is sludge from wastewater, there is going to be medications and a host of other chemicals in it. What are we to do with sewer sludge? Often it is too toxic to landfill. We can't store it or burn it.

Thermophilic composting seems to be a somewhat viable metod of destruction of pathogens but evidence shows it is not 100% effective.

Vermiculture also shows promise in reduction of pathogens in sludge in EPA pilot programs and worms are being used to reclaim heavily toxic soils in India and other countries from heavy metals and industrial chemicals.

Due to variances in waste streams, there is no "one" method that is acceptable. One city will have a whole different set of substances to deal with than the next. All I can do is work with what I have to deal with and hope vermiculture in conjunction with thermophilic composting will produce a clean casting and hopefully be a model for other wastewater systems. A full analysis is being done on our sludge at this time. Another will be performed in the future after our project processes are performed.

Be it drug residues or just plain bad bacteria, as long as we are eating, defecating and flushing, sewer sludge is a problem we are going to have to figure out how to reduce and reuse or we will effectively destroy ourselves with our own wastes.

Who is to blame? Everyone and nobody. We just messed up a long time ago and figured the best way to treat our wastes was with miles of underground pipes and millions of gallons of fresh water instead of everyone taking care of their own with composting, sun and air, BSFL and earthworms. We've stripped our nutrients from our soils and worsened that with application of synthetic fertilizers.

I hope it is in the worms and they somehow keep it and pass on the good to us. That would be something. Arkie's Vermiculture

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