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BPA uptake by plants

O

OrganicOzarks

People that grow organics all grow at different levels. Some say they are purest. Some do veganics. Some people like myself know that it is impossible to get away from all chemicals/heavy metals. For example azomite has aluminum in it.

That being said. None of us can get away from the fact that plants take up bpa. Just about everything you buy comes in a plastic bottle or bag.

Maybe you use plastic containers? Maybe you get fish in a plastic bottle? Maybe you brew a tea in a 5 gallon bucket? I can go on and on with the plastic things that we as growers come in contact with on a daily basis.

So I was just reading about a college student that tested bpa uptake in plants. He concluded that they do uptake bpa, and that the plants actually grew larger.

Now this was not a positive thing. Because it proved that BPA is going into the plants.

So all of us organic guys on here no matter what end of the spectrum we are on, are probably putting BPA, and other chemicals from plastics into our end product.

What can we do to minimize this to make our products safer? I would think brewing teas in a 50 gallon glass container would be out of the question.:)

My first thought is that it will be nearly impossible to get rid of the bpa in the growing cycle. That being said what about immobilizing it with compost tea or humic acid?

I have just recently talked with some one that did a study in their state trying to "rid" the soil of lead with humic acid. Well they were just immobilizing the lead, but it did work. They did bring the detectable level of lead down.

The lead was still in the soil but the humic acid locked the lead up so that it was not available.

It seems as though that with the use of humic acid, and compost tea's that you could do the same thing with BPA.

I would love to get everyone's thoughts on this. Maybe some of you have already done testing with respect to this area.

Can we safely lockup Bpa, and other chemicals in plastic so that they are not taken up by the plant?
 
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T

Toes.

Does BPA Exposure Cause Heart Disease?
In the NHANES study, published in 2010, U.S. adults with the highest levels of BPA in their urine were more than twice as likely to develop coronary heart disease as those with the lowest levels.i Those researchers noted:
"Higher BPA exposure, reflected in higher urinary concentrations of BPA, is consistently associated with reported heart disease in the general adult population of the USA."
BPA is so pervasive that scientists have found that 95 percent of people tested have potentially dangerous levels of BPA in their bodies … and heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States. BPA is clearly not the only factor involved in heart disease, but given its widespread use – and the fact that it is even commonly found in the umbilical cords of babies in utero -- any negative impact it makes on human health could prove disastrous.


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good topic.

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S

SeaMaiden

Wow, OO.... there's a lot to chew on with that post. I don't know! But you're right, damn near everything I use for my cultivation, from the buckets I use to make teas to the hoses I use to move water from point A to point B, all plastics.
 
O

OrganicOzarks

SeaMaiden said:
Wow, OO.... there's a lot to chew on with that post. I don't know! But you're right, damn near everything I use for my cultivation, from the buckets I use to make teas to the hoses I use to move water from point A to point B, all plastics.
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I know it is a lot to think about. No matter how "pure" into organics you are you can't get away from this.

So how do we deal with it? If anyone has come across any tests done to lock up bpa so it is not available to the plant I would love to look it over.

I never went to College(actually I barely made it out of high school. The emphasis on the word "high"), but it seems like a test like this would be great for a College.

I am going to try to track down someone at the universtiy near hear, and see if there are any takers.

I bet no one wants to touch it.
 
S

SeaMaiden

I don't know if I can get away from this in my own home. I mean, yeah, we *used* to have other methods of, say food storage for example, but now? It's like trying to find a metal vacuum coffee pot--you actually have to buy vintage pieces because they're just not MADE anymore!
 
M

MrSterling

OrganicOzarks said:
Some people like myself know that it is impossible to get away from all chemicals. For example azomite has aluminum in it.
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I'm confused by this part, because aluminum is a basic element, and one would expect trace amounts of it to be in a rock dust like azomite. No?
 
H

Hydro-Soil

Active member
Veteran
So... the "Orange buckets from Home Depot grow bigger plants" thing is probably related to the BPA content? LOL

Caught a couple references over the decades where folks experienced larger grows than they expected. Could definitely be attributed to their ghetto grow BPA containers. :)

Thanks for posting this.

Stay Safe! :blowbubbles:
 
O

OrganicOzarks

MrSterling said:
I'm confused by this part, because aluminum is a basic element, and one would expect trace amounts of it to be in a rock dust like azomite. No?
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My point with that reference was that you can not escape things like heavy metals, and toxins any longer. If we did an analysis of everything we use to grow with the tests would show a lot of toxins, and heavy metals.

So with azomite we believe that the good out ways the aluminum which could build up, and be taken up by the plant. Which in turn could help you down the road of aluminum toxicity.

However with just about everything we use for growing having some form of heavy metal or toxic substance, how much is to much, and at what point do we start to realize that we need to immobilize said heavy metals and toxins.

See the funny thing about us organic people is we bicker back and forth about this amendment or that one(like azomite) but we all over look things like plastics.

I know people that would not use azomite because of the trace amounts of aluminum, but they sure use a shit load of plastic.

Since we can not rid ourselves of these things we need to immobilize them from the plant.

This does not only apply to smoke. Our entire food supply (however organic you want to be) contains chemicals.

So I figured us organic peeps need to quite bickering about who is more organic than the other because in the end we are all pumping heavy metals, and toxins in to our herb and our food supply.

Until we can provide data proving that we can immobilize the toxins we will just continue to poison the planet just like the chemical crop producers.

Maybe it will be at a slower/lower rate, but in the end it will be the same. Maybe it will take 10 generations to see the difference instead of 5.

However there are already some studies that have been done about immobilizing toxins. So we organic people need to get serious about this, and continue the research.

Because in the end it does not really matter who uses what amendment, or who thinks OMRI means something. The only thing that matters is that as we bicker back and forth we are over looking the fact that we are all doing the same thing that all of the other growers are doing.

The only difference is that we get to use the word "organic."
 
M

MrSterling

Ozarks. We try to work with science here in the organics subforum. This thread feels entirely lacking in that regard. Good luck in whatever it is you're trying to do.
 
O

OrganicOzarks

MrSterling said:
Ozarks. We try to work with science here in the organics subforum. This thread feels entirely lacking in that regard. Good luck in whatever it is you're trying to do.
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Science proves that our plants take up toxins, and heavy metals.

Science has also proven that you can block these things from being taken up.

The problem I see is that there is not a lot of science that goes with blocking the uptake of toxins and heavy metals to our plants.

We need more.

Will you please elaborate on why there does not seem to be science involved in this?

Thanks for the response.
 
O

OrganicOzarks

I wanted to add that I am guilty of amendment nit picking. We have all done it one time or another:)
 
A

apep

Interesting topic. Do all plastics contain bpa? I thought that if they had a 1,2,4,5 or 6 in the little recycle sign on the bottom there were no bpas. Learned this after the whole check your baby bottles for bpa thing.
 
O

OrganicOzarks

apep said:
Interesting topic. Do all plastics contain bpa? I thought that if they had a 1,2,4,5 or 6 in the little recycle sign on the bottom there were no bpas. Learned this after the whole check your baby bottles for bpa thing.
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Very good question. By asking this question we answer one thing while opening the door for many other things.

Out of all of the chemicals that leach from plastic is BPA the only oneto worry about? At this point this is the one that we know can harm us.

I will guess that there are many more.

Maybe someone that is in the plastics business can chime in on what else we should worry about?

when you think about it the need for more reaearch on this subject seems almost mandatory.

However considering it involves organics I think it will take the back seat.:)
 
Hurk

Hurk

Member
I just checked all the plastic containers to do with my grow and they all seem to be bpa free. I'm not using any 5gal buckets or anything though.
I think that the amount of bpa and other toxic chemicals that we put into the environment every year is just insane. Did you know they coat the inside of beer cans with bpa so the beer won't taste metallic. Also a lot of receipts, like from a store or from an atm are coated in bpa. If you handel a couple of receipts in a day you'll test positive for small amounts of bpa in your system.
 
O

OrganicOzarks

Hurk said:
I just checked all the plastic containers to do with my grow and they all seem to be bpa free. I'm not using any 5gal buckets or anything though.
I think that the amount of bpa and other toxic chemicals that we put into the environment every year is just insane. Did you know they coat the inside of beer cans with bpa so the beer won't taste metallic. Also a lot of receipts, like from a store or from an atm are coated in bpa. If you handel a couple of receipts in a day you'll test positive for small amounts of bpa in your system.
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It's fucking everywhere! Scary as hell to me.
 
S

SeaMaiden

I'll tell you this much: If I still lived near Tijuana I would be buying and using terra cotta and ceramics (tested for lead, of course!) instead of plastics such as planters and the like. I wouldn't be able to tote them around like I do 5gal buckets.

You know what? Something just kicked in my brain and I can't believe I'd forgotten. Back in the day when I was making my dough-ray-mee doing aquarium set-up and maintenance I had to mix and keep a LOT of salt water. I would use plastic trash cans and would line them with black contractor bags because we'd found that they are chemically inert and caused no harm to either vertebrate or invertebrate life. In fact, you can house sponges and tunicates (quite literally organisms that should be considered aquatic canaries) using 100% water mixed and stored in this manner to no ill effects.

The question here is this: Can that experience be translated? I think perhaps, possibly, it can. Anecdotal I know, but I've been able to extrapolate a great deal of knowledge and science from one area to another, dissimilar as they may seem on the surface.
 
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