Treated sewage sludge spread on farmland as fertilizer carries microplastics, PFAS 'forever chemicals,' and pharmaceutical residues into soil, and this review finds that current treatment methods mostly just redistribute these contaminants rather than destroying them.
1
Microplastics, PFAS, and pharmaceutical residues each behave very differently in soil: microplastics persist and fragment, PFAS varies by chain length and mobility, and pharmaceuticals vary widely in breakdown and plant uptake.
2
Conventional sludge treatment processes typically redistribute or alter these contaminants without achieving true destructive removal; only high-temperature thermal processes show potential for greater breakdown under the right conditions.
3
Current EU and US regulations for land-applied sludge still focus mainly on traditional pollutants, with PFAS-specific oversight still in early development and no unified monitoring framework yet in place.
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