Green campaigners have launched a legal challenge against the government over its decision to axe a commitment to test agricultural sewage sludge for microplastics.
Campaign group Fighting Dirty has launched the challenge after the Environment Agency dropped its pledge to bring the regulation of sewage sludge into the Environmental Permitting Regime by 2023.
This would have required sewage sludge to be tested for microplastics and chemicals before being applied to agricultural land as fertiliser.
The regulation of sludge was going to be brought in this year, but there is now no timetable for its introduction.
Fighting Dirty, which comprises of campaigners such as George Monbiot, is being represented by the environment legal team at Leigh Day.
Sewage sludge is the solid matter left over from the process of treating sewage at treatment plants and in septic tanks.
Contaminants that have not been removed by the sewage treatment process are contained in the product that is sold to farmers by water companies for use as fertiliser.
Campaigners at Fighting Dirty say these contaminants are harmful to both the environment and humans.
A report by the Environment Agency in 2017 found crops contaminated with dangerous organic contaminants including dioxins, furans, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at “levels that may present a risk to human health”.
Physical contaminants were also found in crops, including plastics that could result in “soils becoming unsuitable for agriculture”.
In 2020, the EA published a strategy for safe and sustainable sludge use stating that regulations would be introduced by mid-2023, bringing testing and regulation of sludge into the Environmental Permitting Regime (EPR).
However, the 2023 deadline was removed from an updated version of the strategy published in August 2023, with no alternative timescale introduced.
Leigh Day solicitor Julia Eriksen said: “The EA has known about the dangerous level of contamination that exists in sludge since 2017 and has acknowledged that doing nothing is not an acceptable option.
"In these circumstances, our client says removing any target date for implementing regulatory change is unacceptable.
"Our client is deeply concerned by the continued delay to taking necessary regulatory action to mitigate the harm this practice is causing to our agriculture land, the wider environment and human health.”
