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Carcinogenic Fertilizers - A secret scandal · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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  Today I'm going to talk about my campaign against carcinogenic fertilisers.
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  This is a scandal that I am trying to make people aware of, and it's a global
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  problem, but it's particularly a problem in North America.
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  And this is the use of known carcinogens that are residual,
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  they stay around, they're highly toxic heavy metal products that don't need to be used,
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  and the people selling them know they're carcinogenic and
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  are selling them without even properly showing people they're carcinogenic so
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  i've highlighted this on a couple of youtube videos
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  for our parent company utreema i focused
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  on it did an episode on our serial
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  killers podcast and i'm going to do a load more videos
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  and i'm trying to get articles in newspapers
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  and online so anything if you're there and
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  if you're out there listening to this and you can help spread the word
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  about this scandal then i'd really appreciate it because it's an issue for farming
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  and it's an issue for hydroponics as well so the particular issue is fertilizers
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  made out of cobalt and nickel now these don't sound very poisonous but.
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  Do they because you know you think of nickel is a
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  is a coin and so you know
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  these are just metals but cobalt sulfate nickel
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  sulfate any salt any chelate of
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  these chemicals are known carcinogens
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  that and harm the development of humans
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  and babies and they never
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  degrade so compare that to something like glyphosate roundup
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  you know there's loads of scandal about the use
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  of glyphosate because it's potentially carcinogenic but
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  glyphosate if you would inhale a spray of
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  glyphosate it would break down into carbon nitrogen
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  hydrogen and a bit of phosphorus in your
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  lungs eventually and it might have a residual effect
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  it might cause cancer but at least it's broken down cobalt and
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  nickel as soon as they're sprayed or they get into you they're not
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  leaving unless you blast yourself into the
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  sun or enter a nuclear reactor nickel stays
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  as nickel cobalt stays as nickel and there are a couple
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  of people who i really want to highlight and i want people
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  in particularly in america and australia to.
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  Really get after because i can't do it from
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  the uk and the reason i'm after them they're
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  not the only people selling these products but they're the
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  hypocrites because they're talking about soil health and
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  human health and soil biology and
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  they're claiming to be the saviors of farming and they're selling carcinogens
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  okay and the first person i want to mention the first person i want people in.
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  America to go after is a guy called john kempf okay he's he has a company called aea it's based out of.
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  Ohio so just like gold leaf it's based out of ohio and but he's selling seven
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  products that carcinogenic.
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  Will contain carcinogens and this i'll
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  start with the cobalt based product so john kent sells a cobalt shuttle
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  tape product and even though
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  he claims to be protected in soil biology he's amish and so he doesn't show
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  his face and he claims to have all these religious and moral beliefs but i think
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  he's an absolute critic because these sorts of people talk about you know nitrates
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  being carcinogenic and things like
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  that but they they're selling known carcinogens and they talk about how.
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  There's no such thing as a pest disease or a weed it's just an
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  imbalance in nutrients and that's because they can only
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  sell fertilizers because of the licensing and
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  the way it works and so every solution has to
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  have a every solution has to be a nutrient-based one and so he's got himself
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  into this pickle where he's found himself selling cobalt-based products along
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  with other micronutrient products and i think it's absolutely unbelievable if
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  this was in the UK and you sold somebody a carcinogen,
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  they would have to log every time they used it, they'd have to show that they
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  didn't expose the workers to a certain amount, and they'd have to be able to
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  legally tell people where the carcinogen ended up.
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  I don't know what the case is in the US, but I would imagine the EPA are not
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  too happy about the, or wouldn't be too happy about the fact that these products
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  are being used if they found out.
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  Because we think about spray drift, farmers, family, neighbours,
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  consumers, watercourses, the soil, life, the livestock, these will all be affected
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  by the addition of these carcinogens.
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  And the reason they're doing this is because these people, these,
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  well, they're a bit like, I won't call them a charlatan, but gurus,
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  that's a strong enough word, they're not really plant scientists.
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  So they've read reports that cobalt potentially could be a plant nutrient,
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  but it's required in such small amounts that there's already enough contamination
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  in the growing media, no matter what growing media you used in the water system.
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  Cobalt and nickel are heavy metal pollutants and you could never
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  you could never even if you're grown hydroponically purify
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  your system enough to detect a cobalt or nickel deficiency and
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  even the plant science community is not universally accepting that
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  these are nutrients in fact a lot of people just think that they are you might
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  get a yield bump from from applying them but that's because of two things one
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  is that they might supplement for a deficient a nutrient that's already deficient
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  like iron and the other thing is that you are killing everything in the soil
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  and on the plant by applying them. These are extremely toxic chemicals.
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  And so, yeah, you'll get a yield bump because you're getting rid of all the
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  rots, all the mildews, all the rusts, all the spider mites.
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  And so that's why you're getting a yield bump from applying these.
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  And these people are saying, oh, use our amazing micronutrient products and
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  you'll never get pests and diseases. Well, yeah, because you've killed everything.
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  So please, if you're in America, could you do some research on John Kemp?
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  If you're in Ohio, can you go and find out if he's an actual farmer like
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  he claims to be he claims to be an amish farmer a beekeeper but
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  obviously i can't do that research here so anyone could
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  pass any information about john kenth and his carcinogenic products
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  where he sources them from that'd be really useful please
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  email me there are a couple of other people that
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  do it like graham sate in australia he
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  has a cobalt based product and there
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  are companies that are selling nickel based
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  products so there's a couple that i want
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  to highlight the first one is called opulent blends of
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  michigan they sell a nickel product and they're
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  not hypocrites because they they show that
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  it's carcinogenic and they they are not claiming
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  they well actually they are a bit hypocritical because they they claim
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  to be helping with soil biology they've
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  got an opulent blend nickel 12 and they
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  make the claim that it's edta free oh it's
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  a good job it's edta ta free because you wouldn't want any edta in
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  there in your carcinogenic nickel and it's and they
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  claim it's free of harsh impurities yeah harsh
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  impurities apart from the nickel being an absolute stone cold carcinogen and
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  they have a commercial grade product that is on sale to amateurs on the website
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  and it doesn't even say that it's carcinogenic so if you're in north america
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  if you're in america you can buy this product.
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  And on the website it wouldn't even tell
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  you it's carcinogenic now opulent blends
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  are not sure how big a company they are because when
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  you google them a residential address with a tennis court and a
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  lake appears and their address and you know
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  looks lovely the other company that's selling nickel-based products
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  in north america is nutrient tech and they
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  are a big company because they are a division of
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  disangos which are a massive company that makes slug
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  pellets amongst other things never a product called
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  nickel power or ni power and it's
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  a folia product i mean how this i
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  would love to know this where these products are used and whether
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  there is a spike in lung cancer around those areas because it's just unbelievable
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  they claim to be the evolution of agriculture with their 2.8 nickel product
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  they're based in california and their mission statement is that we manufacture
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  and provide safe effective and blah blah blah blah blah you can't manufacture
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  as safe products if they contain carcinogens.
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  So stop it, Nutrientech. You're making enough money already.
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  Now, you might think, what's this got to do with hydroponics?
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  Well, there are products in hydroponics that contain cobalt and nickel.
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  Look on the label, and I think
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  this happens because the formulators don't
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  know much about the environmental and
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  plant science involved in fertilisers so they've come from a formulation a chemical
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  background they've maybe they've they've looked at plant nutrients on wikipedia
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  and seen a post a couple of sentences nickel is a potential plant nutrient and
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  cobalt is a potential plant nutrient and they're not realized.
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  Plants, this is debatable and plus there is already enough contamination in
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  the world and we don't need more heavy metal contamination and plants don't
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  need these to actually produce a healthy crop.
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  So you will find hydroponic products containing cobalt and nickel.
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  These will be sourced from carcinogens and adding them will increase the level
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  of these carcinogens in your grow media and in your plants.
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  So be on the lookout for cobalt which is
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  the chemical element symbol co and nickel
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  ni on the label and in the
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  and particularly in the ingredients they might not list it
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  on the guaranteed analysis but it might be in the ingredients it certainly
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  won't be in a bottle of gold leaf and it certainly won't
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  be in a bottle of liquid gold in the uk we have
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  extremely low levels of heavy metals and these
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  are heavy metals in addition to being carcinogens they'll have
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  all the additional issues of being a heavy metal
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  as i say it's an absolute scandal this is
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  only the tip of the iceberg there are there are there's a company in
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  denmark that sells a cobalt product for organic growers and there are people
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  in canada there's a guy called joel williams who i've emailed and he says he
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  understands what i'm saying but he's going to carry on recommending farmers use these products.
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  So it's a global issue but the the main ones
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  are in the united states as i say if you think that
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  there's a bad issue with glyphosate then we need to expose this as a scandal
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  and anything you can do to help me would be great so that's been hydroponics
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  daily for today carcinogenic fertilizers hopefully i'll choose a more cheery
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  and upbeat topic for tomorrow thank you very much.