Manure and urine from livestock is not flushed down toilets and treated either in septic systems nor sewage treatment plants, rather it lays on the ground to evaporate into the air we breathe, washed into the earth entering the food we eat, and into the freshwater we drink untreated.

Livestock manure and urine contain pesticides, herbicides, pathogens, heavy metals, hormones, antibiotics, ammonia, organic matter, sediments, and volatile chemical compounds. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus from livestock excrement can result in or contribute to low levels of dissolved oxygen (anoxia), eutrophication, and toxic algae blooms. These conditions may be harmful to human health and, in combination with other circumstances, have been associated with outbreaks of microbes such as Pfiesteria piscicida.

Animal wastes flushed into fresh and saltwater can reduce oxygen levels known to cause fish kills. Pathogens, such as Cryptosporidium, Ecoli, Salmonella and other drinking water pathogens in manure can also create a food safety concern if manure is applied directly to crops, or washed into water supplies like most recently in Walkerton Ontario. In addition, pathogens are responsible for some shellfish bed closures. Nitrogen changed into the form of nitrate, can contaminate drinking water supplies drawn from ground water.

Agricultural chemicals (or agrichemicals) refer to the wide variety of chemical products used in agriculture, such as pesticides (including insecticides, herbicides and fungicides), as well as synthetic fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics. Farmers spray agricultural chemicals onto food grown for animals in order to kill bugs, rodents, weeds, and other organisms that would otherwise supplant or eat the grain grown for the animals. They also apply these substances directly to animals’ skin, fur or feathers to combat insect infestation.

Many of the agricultural chemicals used by ranchers and farmers contain ingredients that are known carcinogens, while others cause severe allergies, birth defects and various health problems. Livestock manure and urine also contain residues from the massive doses of non-therapeutic antibiotics and artificial growth hormones that animals are routinely fed or injected with to prevent illness and accelerate weight gain.

Hydrogen sulfide gas released from livestock manure, and urine as it lays on the ground, which in sufficient quantity cause headaches, dizziness, and respiratory or cardiac or pulmonary distress, and even death. Particulate matter and bacterial toxins also have been found in high concentrations at and around animal facilities. Ammonia from waste slurry lagoons breeds bacteria, which creates acid that evaporates and combines with nitrous oxide from fertilizers and industrial pollution to form nitric acid rain which in turn leaches nutrients from the soil, despoils forest habitats, and kills fish by releasing toxic minerals from the earth that flow into aquatic ecosystems. Even though agricultural fertilizer emissions are the leading cause of nitric acid rain (after motor vehicles and coal plants), they remain virtually unregulated in the U.S.

In addition, animal agriculture is responsible for more than half of humanity’s total greenhouse gas emissions largely created by using arable land to grow food for animals, animal belching and flatulence, and chemical emanations from manure). This includes 37 percent of anthropogenic (i.e., human-made) methane, and methane gas is 23 times more potent a climate change agent than carbon dioxide.

 A pipefull of biodegradable oil that has been freshly bathed in warm, soapy water certainly doesn’t seem to be toxic at all. In fact any of the minute traces of what may be considered toxic are steamed out, contained, and treated back at the oil sands mine sites where there already has been at least 7.5 million new trees planted. How many new trees have been planted in your state recently?