Sometimes it doesn't pay to read the science pages....

Totally agree with you Lori... right now we are struggling with some of our veg. but there is no way I would resort to chemicals to kill off the flea beetles on the caulis and broccoli

Think you aware of our views on pesticides etc Lori.Wouldnt touch them with a bargepole and our reward?A garden full of wildlife all keeping natures true balance as intended !

WELL DONE!!
Brilliant blog!
I dont think you were ranting!
My great granny had a stupendous garden, & never had
pestcides & such! She made up her own potions to deal with any problems.
Pity she never wrote down the recipes!!

just as with many things in life we have managed before without so can manage now also

x xx x

I agree Mookins!

Hear hear, well said that lady.....Lol
I agree with every word you have said and wish I could add more.
I don't think we 'should' do more to protect this delicate balance of lifes circle I think we MUST do as much as we possibly can to help mother nature to restore some of the balance WE as humans have done to destroy it.
Sorry (blush) as the good lady said............. rant over.....

Aye!

You're quite right Lori - chemicals don't just disappear after they've been used. They get washed into the soil or down the drains and who knows what effect they will have in years to come. It's best not to use them.

Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' tells us exactly what can happen and is still happening because humanity as a whole feels that they can do what they like to the planet. I agree Ian each individual MUST do as much as they can to preserve what we have and restore the balance in nature. Just don't talk to me about GM!

I absolutely agree, we seem to expect a 'quick fix' to all our problems these days rather than doing what is the best or right thing.

Too true Lily, we seem to think its someone elses problem or that the 'authorities' will do something to fix this 'thing' that everyone is talking about.

Even more of a concern to me is what we are doing to ourselves and our children - even unborn children. If you want to be more informed (and horrified) read:

http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/biomonitoringresults.pdf

Sorry Wagger, I don't download pdf. files after I got a nasty dose of horse flu........ well it was a trojan actually but you know what I mean. :~))

Quite understandable, Ian. Here's a small excerpt for you:

WWF visited 13 locations in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the summer of
2003 and took blood samples from 155 volunteers. Lancaster University analysed the samples
for 78 chemicals – 12 organochlorine pesticides (including DDT and lindane), 45 PCB
congeners and 21 polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) flame retardants, including those
found in the commercially traded penta-, octa- and deca-BDEs.
WWF believes that this survey provides the first data on the concentrations of PCBs,
organochlorine pesticides and PBDEs in the UK population’s blood serum. Further, these
results form the most comprehensive and largest data-set of organohalogen chemical
concentrations in humans in the UK in the last 10 years at least. In addition, the survey is the
first which tries to link findings of chemical contamination to people’s lifestyles.
Every person tested is contaminated by a cocktail of known highly toxic chemicals which
were banned from use in the UK during the 1970s and which continue to pose unknown
health risks.
We found 70 (90 per cent) of the 78 chemicals we looked for in the survey. The highest
number of chemicals found in any one person was 49 – nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of
the chemicals looked for.
Every person is contaminated by chemicals from each group: organochlorine pesticides,
PCBs and PBDEs (flame retardants).
The highest concentration of any chemical found was 2,557 ng/g (ng/g – parts per billion)
of the DDT metabolite p,p’-DDE. The use of DDT was banned in the UK more than 20
years ago.
The most frequently detected chemicals were PCB congeners 99 and 118 and the DDT
metabolite p’,p-DDE, which were detected in all but one of the 155 volunteers.
• Ten chemicals were found in more than 95 per cent of volunteers (PCB congeners 99, 118,
138, 153, 156, 170, 180, 194, PBDE 153 and the organochlorine pesticides _-HCH and p’,p-
DDE).
• This is the first survey to identify the widespread contamination of non-occupationally
exposed people to the deca-BDE brominated flame retardant product. Worryingly, the
highest levels found in our non-occupationally exposed volunteers were very similar to
those observed in Sweden of people occupationally exposed to deca-BDE.
• We are being contaminated daily by “unregulated” chemicals of unknown toxicity, such as
the deca-BDE flame retardant. Since there is a dearth of knowledge on the levels of
brominated flame retardants in the UK population, it is not possible to determine any trend
in contaminant levels.
• PCB contamination is gradually decreasing from levels found in the UK 10 years ago –
which indicates that strong regulations work
• Small numbers of people continue to be exposed and contaminated with high levels of
certain chemicals, although median levels of some chemicals are decreasing compared with
some earlier studies.
• Volunteers tested in Nottingham had the highest median level of total chemical
contamination of the chemicals we looked for. They also had the highest median level of
PCBs, organochlorine pesticides and of DDT and its metabolites. Further regional findings
are presented in Appendix 1.
• The lifestyle questionnaire identified two factors which significantly affected the level of
contamination of individual chemicals:
• older people have higher levels of PCBs in their blood; and
• women have lower levels of certain PCBs than men and the levels appear to reduce in
relation to the number of children they carried and breast-fed. These differences seem to
be related to women “off-loading” some of their chemical burden to their children.

I am, sadly, not surprised! The crap that many folk eat is scary... and this is without the airbourn/waterbourn pollution!

Thanks for this Wagger cant profess to have your in depth knowledge on the subject and my only experience of such things would be second hand from my father and described as anecdotal by people who never suffered the effects of such things.

As a forestry worker during 60s and 70s he and his colleagues were asked to use chemical defoliants to clear large areas of ground between broad leaf woodland.

They were offered quite large pay incentives to use it and my father asked why ..he was suspicious of the glib answers from employers who had them on piece work and paid very poorly previously .So refused to use it.

He suspects this was very similar to agent orange used in Vietnam war to strip forests and although the oldest now has lost colleagues to various forms of cancers and leukemias . Of course what would he know being a simple manual worker without the benefit of a higher education just being expected to live - and die - with the consequences of someone elses theory and research.

Wow...thanks Wagger...They've only just started regulation of the use of 2-4D and 2-4-5T and insecticides by lawn companies here in Canada....before they could spray what ever they liked and all they had to do was post a warning sign! ...They are defoliants...and "Agent Orange" was tested on forests here in NA before it was used in the Vietnamese swamps...I remember the use of it by Ontario Hydro to kill brush and scrub under the high tension wires. Another atmospheric disaster that very few people realize caused major changes in our climate was the torching of the Oil wells in Kuwait...they burned for two years! The list is long and frightening...
It's all too true, Bonkers, I worked for a landscape contractor who sent his minions off to be educated on how to use the chemicals of his industry...he never handled them.. I also remember the strange effects of a 2-4-D spill on the campus at the University where I studied...Most of the grad students doing research received grants from CIL and Monsanto and Dupont...so they were loath to bite the hand that fed them... but if you really want to read a horror story...check out the use of genetically modified soy beans which require the usage of 2-4-D to grow...it must be sprayed on the crops for them to mature...and the genetically modified strains of corn and soybeans will not reproduce...they cross pollenate with regular crops and produce hybrids that are dependent on the Monsanto chemicals...and won't grow to maturity..or won't produce viable seed... if it wil do that to the plants what will it do when we ingest it? If you ask them they cite reems of research...but can't tellyou how long the residue remains in our water and soil... The earth, I hope, will heal itself eventually... but we wont be here to see it...and believe it or not the "silent spring" is here already for some frogs and birds. Industry should be held accountable.

I have absolutely no scientific proof of this but I do think that the rise in allergies, particularly in children, can be attributed to the rising use of chemicals to control this/destroy that/ wipe out the other.

The farmer whose field is at the end of our garden has grown barley in it for I don't know how many years. There is little or no nutrition left in the actual soil so it is artificial fertilisers that are keeping the crop growing. The soil here is naturally light and sandy, we've built our soil up so it is good and humus rich and continue to add more and more humus to it as we go along. If there is a strong wind early in the season the 'soil' in the field blows everywhere!

I don't have any knowledge of the subject, Bonkers - just read this on the World Wildlife Fund site.
Lori,Monsanto are getting fat on profits from third world subsistance farmers who now have to buy their seed every year instead of saving it from the crop.
I totally agree with you about allergies, Moon grower.

Monsanto is getting fat at everyones expense - not least the planets!

Its all very disturbing and to me in particular as I have always (except for roughly ten years) lived in Nottinghamshire! ! ! My children were born and live in Notts and I brought Carol here from Northumberland, where we could have stayed quite happily. :~((

Oh Ian, I'm sure you shouldn't let this concern you because of the Nottinghamshire reference - I think the main point of the paper is the overall levels of chemicals found in people. The sample is very small - 155 people across 13 locations is less than 12 people per site. They would only have to come across one person with particularly high levels of contamination and it would skew the figures completely.

Hmmmmmmmmmm Ok then but it doesn't bode well for anyone really. I wasn't off packing bags by the way. :~))

Glad to hear it - you'd be missed by you neighbours, lol.
It's the future generations I feel concern for - allergies, asthma, falling fertility to name but a few. Thank goodness it is balanced out in part by advances in medical cures and treatments.

What is of most concern to me is the "unknown" factor...the unintended consequence, the fact that there are gaps in research that you can drive a tractor through... and even though the sample was extremely small there had to be a reason to do the testing...
I live in an industrial town that has had better times...there are areas which were industrial sites that have been bulldozed and left for 40 years... (textile)...when it operated it's effluent ran into the St. Lawrence. The cancer rate and the number of people needing dialysis is a shockingly large percentage of the population here... the medical stats speak very loudly.
Our air is now better because the pulp and paper mill which kept the town alive closed last year when the government refused to give a handout to the corporation. Instead of tightening their belts and working thro their problems they just closed the plant and shut their doors. The city is still reeling from the economic fallout...but the air is much cleaner and the terrible smell is gone! An irony attached to that plant was that it gave some of the organic sludge to it's employees to use on their gardens as "compost" !!!! They also sold it to gardeners. There are so many stories of shocking stupidity. We have selected ourselves for extinction. from storage of nuclear waste, landfill sites full of automobile tires, and agricultural chemicals in our food, the recalcitrant auto industry, the petro-chemical industry...our never diminishing uses of expensively produced energy...we are only looking at the tip of the iceberg.

Lori you are right and we all need to start campaigning and demanding that our governments do more to solve these problems and also do what we can in our own lives to ensure that we are not wasting resources or polluting the planet.

At the beginning of the year Findhorn Press published the book 'The Fire Dogs of Climate Change' take a look at http://sallyandrew.findhornpress.com/ If folk are interested I can set up a special offer so that you can buy the book at a bigger discount from the website.

Ajay alternatively it could be done as a link from your site...

wonder why this dropped from my list? I totally lost track of it. sorry Moon grower...didn't mean to appear rude. Found the book available as an ebook on the findhorn site. thanks for the link.

No problem Lori