Farmers who allowed sewage sludge from the City of Ottawa on their fields will likely never know if it contains the same radioactive material that wasn’t allowed into the United States recently.
Some of Ottawa’s biosolids are shipped to a location in upstate New York, where it is used to make compost. Two truckloads were turned away by American border authorities on Jan. 29. A few days later, the city of Ottawa tested two more loads before shipping and again found “background level” radiation. The city says that the loads were safe, but the trucks were quarantined anyway, like the others.