From time to time we report on some substance that is in our food supply but has no place being there. Examples include fluoride, chlorine, aspartame, MSG and even human waste. It’s what you can expect if you don’t eat organically. Now it’s coal dust.

A recent report came out that the federal government is encouraging farmers to use the waste byproduct of the coal industry to incorporate into their soil. The report reads: “The material is produced by power plant “scrubbers” that remove acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide from plant emissions. A synthetic form of the mineral gypsum, it also contains mercury, arsenic, lead and other heavy metals.”

The problem as I see it is that toxic waste has no place to go. Instead of just finding cleaner solutions to farming and other industries, the big corporations who own them don’t want to cut into their profits, so they use cheap methods then try to hide their waste. The federal government is in cohoots and goes along with even the most outrageous plans that threaten health.

The Washington Post stated: “With wastes piling up around the coal-fired plants that produce half the nation’s power, the EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture began promoting what they call the wastes’ “beneficial uses” during the Bush administration. Part of that push is to expand the use of synthetic gypsum — a whitish, calcium-rich material known as flue gas desulfurization gypsum, or FGD gypsum. The Obama administration has continued promoting FGD gypsum’s use in farming….Since the EPA-USDA partnership began in 2001, farmers’ use of the material has more than tripled, from about 78,000 tons spread on fields in 2002 to nearly 279,000 tons last year, according to the American Coal Ash Association, a utility industry group.

“About half of the 17.7 million tons of FGD gypsum produced in the United States last year was used to make drywall, said Thomas Adams, the association’s executive director. But he said it is important to find new uses for it and other coal wastes because the United States will probably rely on coal-fired power plants for decades to come.”

Merry Christmas. Hope you enjoy that lump of coal in your stocking…errr, cereal bowl.

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