Contaminated Compost: Coming Soon to a Store Near You |  | Creator: Natan Snider
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B003OIBN5G
Publication Date: May 28, 2010
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Product Description
In Santa Rosa, Calif., the folks at Grab n’ Grow have been making compost and planting mixes for 25 years, using organic materials generated in Sonoma County. In 2002, the company detected residues of a potent herbicide called clopyralid in a batch of compost. The next year, Grab n’ Grow manager Don Liepold and his wife saw the herbicide’s trail of destruction in their raised bed organic garden — lettuce that refused to grow, curled and wilted peas, and stunted, gnarled tomato leaves.
As we reported in July 2009, clopyralid and its close cousin, aminopyralid, easily persist, sometimes for YEARS!, in hay, manure and compost. When contaminated materials are used in food gardens, tomatoes, beans and other sensitive crops develop curled foliage that looks like a disease, if they grow at all.
Both herbicides are manufactured by DowAgrosciences, which seems to have no moral or ethical problem selling products which clearly are polluting the public compost stream. Meanwhile, aminopyralid pesticides have been pulled from shelves in the United Kingdom. Liepold, the Rachel Carson Council and MOTHER EARTH NEWS think the U.S. EPA should take the same action here.
“I have been testing and detecting herbicide residues and thus rejecting cow manure, horse manure, turkey mulch, rice hulls, mushroom compost and yard trimmings,” says Grab n’ Grow manager Don Liepold. “I spent $20,000 in lab fees in 2008, and am on the same track for 2009,” he says.
It is extremely difficult to keep contaminated materials out of commercial compost. “One load of contaminated grass clipplings can ruin a batch of compost,” says Eric Philip of Anatek Labs in Moscow, Idaho. Philip has seen so many positive tests for clopyralid residues in compost that he would not use untested compost in his own garden.
“When folks have plants die in their home gardens, their first assumption is that they did something wrong,” Philip says. But with pyralid-laced commercial compost becoming more common, contaminated soil amendments are often to blame.
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