Web Note from the Teamsters:
This not only a public health, food safety and environmental issue. It's also a workers issue. The Teamsters joined the campaign kickoff in San Francisco and made the following support statement:
TEAMSTER STATEMENT ON TOXIC SLUDGE SAN FRANCISCO CITY HALL, 3/4/10
Teamsters Local 853 is here today to offer our support and solidarity for the Organic Consumers Association. The Teamsters Union represents workers throughout the transportation supply chain- from airline workers to bus, truck and rail workers to sanitation and waste workers.
Our union is 100% behind the creation of good green jobs that will benefit the environment. We are committed to working with our allies in the environmental movement and the city to push for sustainable, healthy, safe, and environmentally friendly policies. In order to be sustainable, these policies also need to create jobs with high standards, good wages, benefits, workers safety and union representation.
Treating toxic sludge - the byproduct of polluted waste water treatment - as a fertilizer is not doing our community any good. It's bad for our food, it's bad for our environment, and it's bad for workers.
We applaud San Francisco's leadership in creating good green jobs for workers. But we urge the city to haul toxic sludge to hazardous waste dumps and stop giving it away. We shouldn't be using it on farms and gardens or hauling it to landfills.
Toxic sludge has serious effects on the workers who have to handle it. There are reports that workers who have handled the sludge post-treatment have been getting sick because they are subjected to e.Coli, salmonella, hepatitis B and other bacteria and viruses.
This isn't right and there's a clear solution. We join the Organic Consumers Association and our other allies here in calling on the City of San Francisco to treat sludge as what it is - that's toxic. Stop giving it away and create good green jobs that our economy needs and our environment needs and treat sludge as toxic waste.
Thank you.
Teamsters Union Supports OCA Campaign to Stop Dumping Sewage Sludge on Farms and Gardens
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The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, March 4, 2010
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