I was going to start out with “I don’t mean to scare you . . .” but I really do intend to scare you.
Do you buy bulk or bagged compost, topsoil, mulch or hay? Do you get compost or mulch free from your city or town? Either way, you may be getting more than you bargained for.
That compost, mulch, topsoil or hay may be contaminated with herbicides that can kill your valuable plants.
Farmers spray their pastures and hayfields with an aminopyralid herbicide from Dow called Milestone, or related herbicides like Confront, Curtail, Forefront, Hornet, Lontrel, Millinium Ultra, Reclaim, Stinger and Transline. The manure of animals that graze on treated pastures shows chemical residues for years, even if the manure is composted. When gardeners use the treated hay or composted manure on their gardens, plants may die quickly or over a period of weeks depending on the plant. The leaves curl and shrivel and gardeners assume their plants have diseases or maybe that the weed killer from their neighbor’s drifted over.
The EPA does plan to reevaluate aminopyralid . . . but won’t be finished with their study until 2014!
Another herbicide, aminocyclopyrachlor, sold by DuPont under the brand name Imprelis, is used by professional applicators on lawns. When grass clippings from these lawns are composted, even in a municipal compost facility, it only degrades by about 60% in 200 days. Long after the plant material has decomposed into what appears to be healthy, rich compost, there is plenty of the poison left to kill your beans, tomatoes, zucchini, even full-grown trees and shrubs.
Eleven states from the Midwest to the East Coast have reported tree damage and death linked to Imprelis in the last few months. A class-action lawsuit has been filed by a Pennsylvania homeowner and an Indiana golf course claiming damages for poisoned plants.
There is a warning on page 7 of the 9-page Imprelis label that clippings should not be collected for composting, but what if the lawn treatment person and the clipping-collector person are two different people? Or what if the applicator lost interest before reading page 7, or simply forgot to tell the homeowner?
Although Dow has recently recalled Imprelis, they are collaborating with Scotts Miracle Gro Company to develop a new fertilizer/herbicide combo to be marketed to homeowners containing the very same aminocyclopyrachlor! And they still sell four other products containing the same chemical.
What can you do? Make and use your own compost or know where your compost, mulch, hay and topsoil come from. If buying in bags, check the company’s website or call them to make sure none of these chemicals have contaminated their product. If they can’t reassure you or don’t know what you are talking about, don’t buy it. Write to the EPA, Dow, DuPont and Scotts and tell them to stop allowing these persistent chemicals to poison our gardens and landscapes.
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