Should I be worried about fruits or veggy's being sprayed with pesticides and then putting them in my compost pile - any residual effects? Thanks.
Depends on the pesticide I would think. if you are curious try to find the information regarding the half life of the ingredients or the leaching characteristics.
Harry, you seem to be more worried about possible pesticide residues from fruit and vegetable going into your compost pile, then you must have been when you purchased the fruits and vegetables to put in your body by eating them. I imagine you wash all of your produce before you eat them. My guess is, you breath in a 1000 times more adverse agents from the Washington DC air every day, than your compost pile will receive from your refuge. I would not spend my time worrying, add away. - Millet
OR he is getting some toxics exposure from the urban air he breathes AND pesticide-drenched non-organic supermarket produce. And dozens of other sources. Cancer is unusual until cultures industrialize. Then it become epidemic.
Hi Harry, The SARE board is a good source for information on residual pesticides in compost. This was a good, informative thread: http://lists.ifas.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0111&L=sanet-mg&P=R10595&I=-3 For more good threads on SANET / SARE, go to the archives (here: http://lists.ifas.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?S1=sanet-mg) and try searching on the word "persistent". The US Composting Council has an excellent listserve which I've been on for many years. Unfortunately the archives are not available to the public, but I believe that you can search them online if you register: http://www.compostingcouncil.org/membership/login.php The Composting Council has a fact sheet on claims that their member agencies/companies are allowed to make about the efficacy of compost. Number 13 is "Binds and Degrades Specific Pollutants" and they list the research that has been done to support that claim. You can view/download the fact sheet here: http://www.compostingcouncil.org/download.php?r=39&f=5bf4a53e6e51a6c29d78dccf1ee2e284.pdf You can also try Google using the search terms "bioremediation" and "compost". Hope this helps. - Bev
The US Composting Council has an excellent listserve which I've been on for many years. Unfortunately the archives are not available to the public, but I believe that you can search them online if you register The USCC archives are available to the public but there is no search facility that I know of.
Ron B writes....."pesticide-drenched non-organic supermarket produce"......... Ron, evidently Harry Homeowner did not worry about EATING your so called """pesticide drenched""" supermarket produce, after all he purchased the food and then consumed it. In actuality, life has MANY more things to worry about, than if a nano possibility of residue from a left over apple core, or from the peal of an orange eaten at lunch is going to violate ones compost pile. It is doubtless a thousand times more important to wash one hands two or three times a day, than spend time anxiously worrying about throwing scraps from the dinner table into the compost pile. It would be better for ones health to not even have the compost pile, rather than have anxiety about such mundane matters. This will be my last posting on this naive thread, it is just to inane to spend any more time and energy. - Millet
People who ask questions here should not be subjected to insulting, arrogant and dismissive responses. Millet, "Harry" has done nothing to provoke you except to be curious about something. May I suggest that if you think the question is silly then simply don't respond. Yes, we are surrounded by life's "many more things to worry about" and, as individuals, there is often little we can do to mitigate them. But these so-called mundane matters, like pesticide residue in compost piles, present an opportunity to learn about larger issues that are directly related-- issues that are important and can be addressed through legislation if enough people are aware and interested. Google "Clopyralid" to see what I mean. Anyway, the original poster did not even mention scraps from his kitchen. Re-read his questions and don't jump to conclusions. For all we know Harry eats organic only. It is possible that he is getting feedstock from a commercial or industrial source (restaurant or food processing waste). - Bev
