Industrial Agriculture
Oklahoma Mom Tells Trump: Dumping Sewage Sludge on Farmland Won’t Make America Healthy Again
Paula Yockel, an Oklahoma mother and founder of Mission503, called on the White House to end a federal rule that allows treated sewage sludge to be spread on U.S. farmland near homes and schools. She said the policy exposes families to “massive volumes” of toxic chemicals, “betraying all of us and harming our great nation.”
America cannot be “healthy again” while the EPA continues to allow states to dump treated sewage sludge on farmland near homes and schools, said Paula Yockel, founder of the nonprofit Mission503.
Late last year, the Oklahoma mother posted an open letter to President Donald Trump on YouTube, urging him to address what she called a nationwide public health crisis enabled by a decades-old federal rule that allows toxic sludge to be spread on agricultural land.
The rule “is betraying all of us and harming our great nation,” Yockel said in her video.
At the center of Yockel’s campaign is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) biosolids regulation, Title 40 Code of Federal Regulations Part 503. The regulation governs the application of treated sewage sludge on farmland.
The rule allows municipalities to market sludge as agricultural fertilizer if it meets federal standards. Yockel said the practice directly contradicts national promises to improve public health.
She told The Defender that mothers in rural areas share posts on social media about their sick babies, but most people remain unaware of the causes.
“Those are fighting words to me,” Yockel said. “We cannot say we want to make America healthy again and continue to dump our sewage where millions of people live.”
The 503 rule enables the disposal of industrial and municipal waste — including human feces, pharmaceuticals, hormones, solvents and “forever chemicals” — onto farmland in communities where families live, work and play, she said.
“The 503 rule is spreading massive volumes of toxic chemicals and human pathogens into our communities, harming our people with illness and loss of freedoms, polluting our air, water, soil and food supply, and compromising our national security,” she said.
‘We don’t even know’ which foods are grown in sludge
Under the rule, sewage sludge is treated at wastewater plants and then applied to land as fertilizer. The EPA refers to the material as “biosolids,” though the agency notes the terms “biosolids” and “sewage sludge” are often used interchangeably.
The treatment at wastewater plants doesn’t make the material safe, Yockel said.
“The toxic gases, vapors and pathogens emitting from the sludge, and the stench and flies, will travel for miles,” she said in her video.
The foods grown on land treated with sewage sludge, and the livestock grazed there, enter the nation’s food supply without any disclosure. “We don’t even know which fruits and vegetables, beef, dairy and grains are affected,” she said.
Yockel is asking for a meeting with Trump to present research she said shows the practice is harming rural communities, contaminating the food supply and undermining national health goals.
The White House has not responded to her request for a meeting, Yockel said.
“There is a significant firewall in the way,” Yockel said. “People don’t want to touch this topic.”
Nausea, headaches and dizziness ‘were almost immediate’
In a January Substack post, Yockel wrote that she and her husband bought land outside Oklahoma City in 2004. Some days, she noticed a persistent, foul odor. In 2008, she watched trucks dump what she described as “black, oozing muck” on the farm next to her home.
“Nausea, headaches, GI [gastrointestinal] distress and dizziness were almost immediate,” Yockel wrote.
State regulators told her that the landowner had a permit and that the sludge was applied correctly. However, officials acknowledged the “odor is very bad and the flies have been worse than ever this year,” according to Yockel.
At the time, Yockel said, her family did not immediately connect their health problems to sewage exposure.
“When sludge was spread on farmland next to our home, we were convinced it made us sick,” she wrote. “But we didn’t really connect the dots between sewage exposure and the unusual illnesses we’d get.”
She described symptoms that included blistering rashes, heart arrhythmias, MRSA infections and severe strep throat.
“We definitely didn’t realize it may have caused the health problems during my pregnancy and the risky delivery of our son,” she wrote. “We assumed these things were just part of life. Plus, authorities were assuring us that spreading ‘biosolids’ on the land around us was safe and couldn’t harm us.”
Yockel and her husband eventually began working with researchers to test air, water, soil and clinical samples in sludged environments over roughly six years.
Land that has had sewer sludge applied in accordance with the 503 rule “is exposing Americans to pathogens like staph and strep, viruses, human parasites, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” she said.
The sludge also contains carcinogens, neurotoxins, endocrine disruptors and immune-disrupting chemicals.
Hospital data show ‘more than seven times the risk for bone cancer’
Publicly available Oklahoma hospital discharge data, which Yockel displays in her open letter to Trump, show stark disparities between one community where sludge has been applied for decades and the rest of the state.
“The community shows over 125 diagnoses with a statistically significant increased risk compared to the state,” she said. The diagnoses include infections, cancers, heart and lung disease, neurological disorders and birth defects.
The data show “more than double the risk for myeloid leukemia and more than seven times the risk for bone cancer,” she added.
Independent reporting has increasingly drawn attention to the issue. Investigate Midwest reported that sewage sludge can contain high concentrations of chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects. The health risks have prompted lawsuits and bans in parts of the country.
In Oklahoma, a major farm insurance provider recently excluded coverage for biosolids-related damages.
In 2025, the EPA acknowledged that biosolids containing elevated levels of PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, may pose risks to human health. The agency also warned that drinking water near application sites — common in parts of Oklahoma — can be dangerous.
However, the EPA hasn’t issued new nationwide regulations. Instead, the agency leaves the monitoring of biosolids for PFAS contamination to the states.
In Oklahoma alone, Investigate Midwest reported that more than 80% of wastewater sludge ends up on crop fields, with about 40% coming from Oklahoma City. The city permits biosolids application on roughly 11,000 acres and produces about 350 tons of sludge each day.
Since the early 1980s, applying sewage sludge to land has provided a low-cost disposal method. Farmers receive the material for free after it is treated with lime and tested for heavy metals.
“We’ve been doing this across our nation for decades and still are today,” Yockel said in her video letter to Trump.
She said the system misleads farmers and shifts long-term costs onto communities.
“Their lands and livelihoods are being destroyed because this rule allows sewage to be marketed as biosolids, and they’re told it’s cheap and a beneficial fertilizer,” she said.
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‘A lot of power and money supporting the myth that sludge is a good idea’
Maine offers a glimpse of what change can look like — and how complicated it can be.
In 2022, Maine became the first state to ban the use of sewage sludge on farmland after widespread PFAS contamination was discovered in soil, water and food, according to Inside Climate News.
Testing later showed elevated levels of the “forever chemicals” in farmers’ blood.
But Maine has struggled to manage the waste it can no longer spread on land, as it faces limited landfill capacity and high disposal costs.
Yockel said the challenge underscores the need for national infrastructure investment, not incremental regulation.
“Policy change alone doesn’t fix this problem,” she said. “We must have infrastructure solutions.”
She rejected landfills as a long-term solution and said managing individual chemicals like PFAS misses the broader risk.
“You cannot regulate sewage to safety,” Yockel said. “Managing PFAS does nothing but check a box and move on down the road.”
Instead, she said a secondary tier of infrastructure is crucial for managing sewage solids because today’s wastewater treatment plants focus on the water and are not engineered to dispose of solids.
“Hazardous waste cannot become fertilizer by the stroke of a pen,” she said. “It is time for courageous, honest facts around the 503 rule because we must have real solutions.”
That call for action runs up against entrenched interests that have kept the practice in place for decades, according to Yockel.
“There is a lot of power and money supporting the myth that sludge is a good idea,” she said.
Public outcry may be the most immediate path forward, she said.
“The results may be through public awareness. We are just trying to save our nation from the harm of this wretched practice.”
For Yockel, the stakes are clear.
“Once we understand the impact on our nation’s health, we’re going to have to make a choice,” she said. “When we recognize the cost of what we are doing today, the cost of change is small.”
Related articles in The Defender- PFAS Found in Sludge Used as Fertilizer Can Contaminate Milk, Eggs and Meat
- EPA ‘Asleep at the Switch’ When It Comes to Testing Sewage Sludge for PFAS
- Texas Farmers Sue Over ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Sewage Sludge Fertilizer
- She Moved to a Rural Town to Escape City Life. Now PFAS Chemicals May Be Making Her Sick.
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