toxic metals in cheap fetilizers

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Last weekend I went to the "Country Living Expo". One of the presenters there mentioned in passing something about a group a local cenex dealer pushing a bunch of toxic metals with chemical fertilizers. Since I was just days away from doing the chemical fertilizer thing, I felt I should get educated about this.

Here's the deal. I have about 35 acres of pasture and 45 acres of "other" (mostly timber). I want to go organic, but it's going to take years. I've decided that the best approach is to try and push about five acres of the current pasture into "organic-ish" this year. Since the soil is so bad on the rest (low or no microbial life) I would just chem fertilize it this year.

Now that I'm alerted to this toxic metal thing, I want to be sure that I don't get any of that. I need to get educated, and quick!

Does anybody know what I should be looking out for? What questions to ask?

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), March 28, 2002

Answers

This was an issue about 10 years ago. CENEX especially wants nothing to do with it any more, so that would probably be a safe source now.

N, P, & K is generally mined/manufactured stuff especially for fertilizer. What happened is that a few zinc mines out west had a lot of low-value mining tailings. They found they needed to handle it as hazardous waste, OR they could sell it to fertilizer companies as a zinc supplement. Originally the environmental clan was even on board with this plan - reduce, reuse, recycle. Turns out there were some heavy metals involved that were not regulated - fell through the legal cracks of regulation.

In general, this has all been cleared up, was an issue in western areas of the USA, and only applied to micro nutrients, not the basic N,P, & K fertilizers.

I realize some here will be totally against anything other than organic. I personally consider you to be on the right track in improving your land, with good practices and good goals. You need to get your soils balanced back to health. Doing this with only organic is a long, long road. Once you get the soil back to fertility, then it is far easier to maintain using organic ways. My opinion.

I would not worry much about the heavy metals issue any more in 2000+, unless you are in the West, are getting zinc in your fertilizer, and want to check it out fruther. You could probably find info on this on the CENEX web site even.

I personally would consider that the other fert dealer is using this issue as a scare tactic to get you to buy his product. There is a chance he is correct, but I believe he is using a 10 year old story as his sales pitch...

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), March 28, 2002.


Me again. Seems this was an issue in Oregon about 5 years ago, not 10 - as well as other areas of the country to lesser degrees.

You can find info on the 'net to 'prove' your opinion either way on this, but I found a Washington state site that explains things fairly down the middle, what happened, what was done, what is being done, and links to fedral issues about it.

I'd stand by my previous message if you are going with basic N,P,& K fertilizer.

If you are getting zinc or other additives, then I would want to know where the _other_ fert dealer gets _his_ additives too, and why his is _safer_? It all comes out of the same mines....

http://www.wa.gov/agr/pmd/fertilizers/metals.htm

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), March 28, 2002.


I guess one wound wonder why when your putting toxic fertilizers on your ground you care about toxic metal in your fertilizers? -:(

-- Gary in Ohio (gws@columbus.rr.com), March 28, 2002.

We live in a world of grey, Gary, and you seem to be expressing a very black & white view. :) It would all depend on what you determine to be 'toxic' I guess. After all, seaweed & kelp are kinda elevated in salt also, coming from the ocean. So are animal manures. Water can be quite lethal to humans even! :)

Just depends on what you want to accomplish, and how you view things. Like I said, some folks are totally anti anything manmade. That's fine, go organic, eat organic. N & P & K are all the same to the plants, but if it matters to you for some reason then do things your way.

For the enviornment, we need to watch the levels of fertilizer we apply, regardless of the source. It's not good vs bad, so much as being responsible as to the amounts & application methods.

But, really, everything has a 'toxic' level to any growing thing. We need to keep some perspective on the grey shades we live in. Pure oxygen is bad for humans, while less than 8% or so oxygen is also dangerous to humans. We live in that grey area in between. Life is not an all or nothing proposition, 100% yes or no.

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), March 28, 2002.


Very well written, Paul! I am a professional soil scientist/agronomist who works on environmental issues....I couldn't have said it any better.

-- Cabin Fever (cabinfever_MN@yahoo.com), March 28, 2002.


yea,, plants cant tell the differance between organic and "chemical" fertilizers,

-- Stan (sopal@net-pert.com), March 30, 2002.

Good one, Paul.

Nitric (and nitrous) acid is a completely natural fertilizer. Not organic, and who'd think of using it as a fertiliser, but it gets formed as oxides in the air by lightning, then gets washed down in rain. Has done for quite a few million years. An old Chinese market gardening practice used to be to spray water high and fine when watering gardens - gave it plenty of time to absorb whatever from the atmosphere.

Urea, strictly speaking, by definition, is not an organic fertiliser, because it contains no carbon - but it can be derived from life - or not - it can also be transformed from ammonium nitrate. Conversely, ammonium nitrate, which is fairly unambiguously inorganic, can be simply transformed from urea. Sodium nitrate - saltpetre - is straight inorganic, and they used to gather it from manure heaps.

Life is about 1% nearly black and maybe 1% nearly white - there are a lot of shadings in between, and only some of them MAY contain toxic elements. Of course, it's bad when they do, so we need to maintain awareness.

However, I don't think you'd find those heavy elements (say particularly cadmium) in fertilisers in the USA today. They ship them to third-world countries to poison them instead. Some of it went to China, who remanufactured it and shipped it to Australia. Our people were onto it pretty quickly, but some of it got spread. Happy days.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), March 30, 2002.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/special/fear_fields.html

Seattle Times, Fear in the Fields---July 3 - September, 17, 1997

Very good investigative reporting which changed the laws in Washington state. Can you imagine disposing of lead and other toxic heavy metals in fertilizer simply because they could? A must read for anyone purchasing fertilizer.

-- Laura S. (LadybugWrangler@somewhere.com), March 31, 2002.


I got an e-mail with the following info: As far as chemical fertilizers and toxics- CENEX is a prime culprit. After the uproar three years ago in Quincy there was an agreement that the toxic ingredients (mostly metals such as lead, aluminum, cadmium etc) would be listed on the label. This was rescinded quietly the next year and there is no labeling requirement.

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), April 01, 2002.

Paul, are you saying that after making a big production adding labels and cleaning up the fertilizer industry, they allowed it to quietly expire? Tell me more. Any websites?

I am an organic gardener and I do have to add soil ammendments that are free from contamination.

-- Laura S. (Ladybugwrangler@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.



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