COLUMN ONE : Some Food Trucks Put Out Trash : The same trucks that carry edibles to cities in the Northeast often carry waste on the trip back, posing what regulators say is a serious risk to health.

When a refrigerated food truck, on its way back to the Midwest from delivering fresh produce to New York City, crashed and overturned in July on a Pennsylvania interstate, police were appalled to discover what was inside.

Garbage. Tons of it.

As the police opened the cargo doors, methane gas fumes from the rotting waste billowed out, scattering frightened onlookers who were unsure of what was inside.

After the fumes dispersed, authorities discovered bale after bale of municipal waste from New York City inside the truck destined for a landfill in the Midwest.

The Pennsylvania crash helped to highlight what government and industry leaders say is a scandalous and hazardous new trend--the use of trucks that often carry food to haul a “witch’s brew” of garbage as well. Truckers have jokingly dubbed their new cargo “New York produce.”

“Most of us don’t dine out of garbage cans, and we shouldn’t eat food hauled in garbage trucks either,” said an outraged Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.), who is sponsoring legislation to prohibit most trucks from switching back and forth between cargoes of edible products, and garbage or chemicals.

Officials warn that the little-known practice, apparently widespread in the Northeast and Midwest, poses a serious threat of food contamination and of the rapid spread of contagious diseases.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department have not found any evidence that the trucking abuses have led to food contamination. But trucking experts warn that, once traces of waste get into the refrigerating systems of produce trucks, it is almost impossible to clean them out.

Meanwhile, regulators have become even more concerned by reports of another ominous kind of cargo-switching--tanker trucks that alternate between hauling juice and dangerous chemicals.

Yet despite the danger posed to the nation’s food supply, Congress and industry leaders have been stunned to find that there are no laws on the books that can stop truckers from alternating between loads of edible products and garbage or chemicals. Trucks don’t even have to carry a sticker or notice that they are carrying municipal waste.

“It’s just disgusting,” said David Fuscus, Clinger’s spokesman. “But there is no law against it. There is a loophole in the law big enough, literally, to drive a tractor-trailer through.”

“No trucker has even been given a ticket for this,” said Lana Botts, a senior vice president at the American Trucking Assn. “There’s nothing in the rules or regulations to prevent it.”

The revelations of what truckers call “garbage backhauling” over the past few weeks have sparked a flurry of activity in Congress and in the food, trucking and waste management industries; leaders on all sides agree that the worst of the abuses must quickly be brought to a halt.

In response to congressional hearings earlier this month and in August, many food companies, which were unaware of the practices, have imposed new rules prohibiting garbage hauling by trucks that also haul their produce. In recent weeks, some major waste management firms have also banned refrigerated food trucks from their landfills.

“Our view is that trucks that transport garbage should not be used to transport food, period,” said Richard Goodstein, vice president for government affairs for Browning-Ferris Industries, the nation’s second-largest waste disposal company.

Yet industry officials and congressional leaders acknowledge that despite the congressional hearings, at least some trucks are still hauling garbage in between loads of food, and that new federal legislation is needed to stop it. “There is clear evidence that it continues,” Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said.

No one thought of trucking New York’s garbage to the Midwest until the mid-1980s. But over the past three years, the major landfills in New Jersey have begun to fill up and close down, and disposal fees at the remaining landfills in the New York metropolitan area have soared.

Cities throughout the region, especially those in northern New Jersey, quickly discovered an alternative--landfills in less densely populated states like Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. To their dismay, Midwestern states now find their landfills are filling up with New Jersey’s garbage, and there are no laws to prevent it from continuing.

Now, 55% of New Jersey’s municipal solid waste is shipped out of state, compared to just 15% five years ago, said Myron LaVake, an environmental expert with the Monmouth County, N.J., Health Department.

Truckers, under mounting economic pressure in the wake of federal deregulation of the trucking industry, have been happy for the new business. They see it as the solution to the costly problem of running empty trucks back after hauling food and produce into the New York area.

“It’s very easy to find products to bring to the Northeast, but it’s hard to find things to take back west,” observed Bill Prentice, a spokesman for Mitchell Environmental, a New Jersey company that contracts with truckers to haul municipal garbage from northern New Jersey to Michigan, Ohio and other states. “That’s what makes solid waste such a valuable commodity to truckers.”

Trucking companies and landfill operators apparently looked the other way until the recent spate of publicity. Goodstein acknowledges that as many as 15 to 20 refrigerated food trucks were dumping garbage each week at the Browning-Ferris landfill in Poland, Ohio, before the congressional hearings. “We started to see signs of this about a year ago,” he said.

To fool their food customers, some truckers started sprinkling coffee grounds and other scents in their trailers to disguise the garbage smell. While many also washed out their trailers after hauling garbage, there was often no inspection process to ensure that the trucks were clean enough to carry food once more.

Although the fallout from the congressional hearings seems to have temporarily curbed the use of refrigerated food trucks to haul garbage, officials in the trucking and waste disposal industries say non-refrigerated trucks that carry packaged foods are still routinely hauling garbage after they unload their food cargoes.

The trucking industry thinks it should be allowed to keep doing that, and Congress may agree. Clinger’s legislation calls for a Transportation Department study to determine whether in some instances, packaged foods can be carried by trucks that haul properly bagged garbage.

“You don’t want to carry garbage in trucks that carry unprotected foods,” said Botts, of the trucking association. “But what’s wrong with hauling canned peaches in boxes after a truck has carried computer paper trash on the front end?”