Question
What is your opinion on sewage sludge being spread on land and being made into fertilizer?  Do you believe it is hazardous to our health?

Answer
Sewage Sludge -- aka 'Milorganite' among other things -- is (only in my opinion) a decent attempt to think outside the Scotts box.

Is it safe?  I've used it, and I'm not frankly crazy about that, because I am concerned about what's in Milorganite that we haven't been told.

Heavy metals?  Toxic Waste?  Nasty Chemicals?

I'm not convinced there's not more to this than we've been told. Unless I am making it in my own kitchen or growing it in my own clean soil, with the ingredients in front of me, I just don't trust the anonymous author of the Ingredients Labels.

I know that 100 percent Beef does not have to be 100 percent Beef.

I know that Half and Half does not have to be Half Milk, Half Cream.

I know that if you enrich something with Vitamin D, and due to processing it's not still there when you put it in the box to sell it, you can still put Vitamin D on the label like it never left!

I know that Horizon Organic Milk comes out of a lot of very unhappy Cows.  And that 'Organic' is no longer necessarily very Organic.

I know you don't have to list ALL the ingredients you put in food, even while the label is MANDATORY.

Does it make sense?  Not to me.  But more important, if they don't tell you what's in your food, why would they tell you what's in your fertilizer?

So I compromise, and once every 10 years, I give Milorganite a shot.  I want to be wrong about my distrust.  I want them to prove me wrong.  I'd love to wake up tomorrow and see a headline in Newsday, Long Island Gardener Makes Mistake!  But I have never felt good about Milorganite.  And so, for the other 9 years I don't use it, there's plenty of other stuff instead.  Unfortunately, under current Washington anti-EPA attitudes, what we don't know won't hurt us, and we are not on a 'need to know basis' with them.  Until we get a pro-environment Administration, a lot of sneaky things will be going on.  And Milorganite might be one of them.  Or it might not.  There's worse things to worry about in the meantime.

Now, what's YOUR opinion of Milorganite?