According to the Associated Press the government has been underwriting studies where scientists will place fertilizer made from toxic substances in poor black neighborhoods determining if it has any beneficial effects.

Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

The Associated Press reviewed grant documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewed researchers. No one involved with the $446,231 grant for the two-year study would identify the participants, citing privacy concerns. There is no evidence there was ever any medical follow-up.

Bribed with food stamps and all lawn.

No medical follow-up.

Maybe it's not a big deal right? Maybe they've determined that this is completely safe, right?

Maybe not.

In a 1978 memo, the EPA said sludge "contains nutrients and organic matter which have considerable benefit for land and crops" despite the presence of "low levels of toxic substances."

But in the late 1990s the government began underwriting studies such as those in Baltimore and East St. Louis using poor neighborhoods as laboratories to make a case that sludge may also directly benefit human health.

Meanwhile, there has been a paucity of research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.

Bribed with food stamps and a lawn.
No medical follow-up.
No studies on the safety of the practice.

It gets better.

"There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe," Burke told the AP. "What's needed are more studies on what's going on with the pathogens in sludge -- are we actually removing them? The commitment to connecting the dots hasn't been there."

That's not what the subjects of the Baltimore and East St. Louis research were told.

Rufus Chaney, an Agriculture Department research agronomist who co-wrote the Baltimore study, said the researchers provided the families with brochures about lead hazards, tested the soil in their yards and gave assurances that the Orgro fertilizer was store-bought and perfectly safe.

"They were told that their lawn, as it stood, before it was treated, was a lead danger to their children," said Chaney. "So that even if they ate some of the soil, there would not be as much of a risk as there was before. And that's what the science shows."

Bribed with food stamps and a lawn.
No medical follow-up.
No safety studies.
Lies.

But there's more!

Another study investigating whether sludge might inhibit the "bioavailability" of lead -- the rate it enters the bloodstream and circulates to organs and tissues -- was conducted on a vacant lot in East St. Louis next to an elementary school, all of whose 300 students were black and almost entirely from low-income families.

In a newsletter, the EPA-funded Community Environmental Resource Program assured local residents it was all safe.

Soil chemist Murray McBride, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute, said he doesn't doubt that sludge can bind lead in soil.

But when eaten, "it's not at all clear that the sludge binding the lead will be preserved in the acidity of the stomach," he said. "Actually thinking about a child ingesting this, there's a very good chance that it's not safe."

McBride and others also questioned the choice of neighborhoods for the studies and why residents were not told about other, possibly harmful ingredients in sludge.

"If you're not telling them what kinds of chemicals could be in there, how could they even make an informed decision. If you're telling them it's absolutely safe, then it's not ethical," McBride said. "In many relatively wealthy people's neighborhoods, I would think that people would research this a little and see a problem and raise a red flag."

If only he was one of the scientists conducting the study.  He seems to view fellow Americans as human beings.

What about the other scientists?

"What we did was make the yards greener," said Pat Tracey, a Johns Hopkins University community relations coordinator who recalled helping with the lawn work. "They were bald, bad yards. It was considered sterile fertilizer."

Bribed with food stamps and a lawn.
No medical follow-up.
No safety studies.
Lies.
No sense that anything wrong was done.

These so-called scientists treated these African-Americans like cattle, like lab rats, like nothing more than animals. All on the taxpayer's dime.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.