Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Fertilizer Falsehoods: The Myth of 90+ Elements in a Fertiliser

Transcript

Fertilizer Falsehoods: The Myth of 90+ Elements in a Fertiliser · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there, I'm Dr. Russell Sharp, and today's episode is going to be a joint
• 0:04
  podcast between Hydroponics Daily,
• 0:07
  Grass Me Up, our sports turf podcast, and Serial Killers, our arable podcast,
• 0:12
  because it is applicable to all three podcasts.
• 0:16
  And today I'm going to be talking about products, fertilizers that claim to
• 0:22
  contain loads and loads of different elements.
• 0:24
  So if you know anything about eutreema
• 0:27
  you'll know that one of our hero products is liquid gold
• 0:30
  or gold leaf as it's called in the u.s and
• 0:34
  that's a product that contains every essential plant nutrient and for me there
• 0:38
  are 12 essential plant nutrients and you can say sodium and chlorine as well
• 0:43
  but they're going to be there as contaminants anyway in more than enough that's
• 0:48
  required for plant growth. So 12, 14 at a push.
• 0:52
  And then for some things like legumes, you might need some elements to help
• 0:57
  the beneficial bacteria.
• 0:59
  And silicon is often considered an essential nutrient by many people.
• 1:03
  I consider it a beneficial nutrient because it helps plants grow,
• 1:08
  but isn't essential for growth.
• 1:09
  And you can say the same for selenium. It's required for human health and so
• 1:14
  and animal health, so it's often added as fertilizer.
• 1:16
  We're certainly not getting above 16 though with those figures.
• 1:20
  Now, some products claim to contain far, far more chemical elements.
• 1:27
  Elements are on the periodic table. These are not different compounds.
• 1:31
  It's not like glucose or strychnine or nitrates.
• 1:37
  These are specific elements.
• 1:38
  So hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron carbon nitrogen and so they claim
• 1:43
  to contain loads and i'll just give us some examples of some of them are because
• 1:46
  they cover all sorts of industries then i'll go into why those claims are either
• 1:52
  complete nonsense or they must be extremely dangerous.
• 1:56
  So let's go. So we have C90, which claims to contain 90 plus elements.
• 2:03
  It's complete spectrum. Often I say liquid gold or gold leaf,
• 2:07
  as it's called in the US, is a full spectrum fertilizer, but 90 plus elements, that's crazy.
• 2:12
  It claims to be a dehydrated sea minerals.
• 2:14
  And often you'll find that a lot of these products are from sea-based products.
• 2:18
  Ocean Solution Pure, 90 minerals and is OMRI registered as for organic.
• 2:23
  So it's a sea mineral liquid.
• 2:25
  Azomite, over 70 minerals and trace elements.
• 2:30
  Loads of rock dust type products like Remin, but Remin's not the only one.
• 2:34
  There's loads with over 70 essential trace elements.
• 2:38
  That's straight off the retailers branding.
• 2:41
  And then Hebridean natural seaweed liquid extract, more than 60 elements.
• 2:46
  Quick crop granular seaweed king's seaweed
• 2:49
  symbio liquid seaweed chelatin micronutrients over
• 2:53
  60 elements and then tall turf granular seaweed which is very popular in organic
• 2:59
  sports turf with over 60 elements so yeah what's so over 60 some of them over
• 3:06
  90 i'm over 70 so why is this an issue well let's look at the periodic table.
• 3:12
  So we have got 118 elements, all the way from hydrogen up to ogernison.
• 3:19
  Have you heard of ogernison? Make sure you've got an up-to-date periodic table
• 3:23
  because we'll be going through it.
• 3:24
  So which ones can we discount straight off the bat? Well, we can discount the
• 3:28
  noble gases because they are unreactive and these gases won't be in.
• 3:35
  A fertilizer and they certainly won't be of any use
• 3:38
  so let's get rid of them there are seven noble
• 3:41
  gases so get rid of seven that takes us down to a
• 3:44
  potential list of 111 elements now
• 3:47
  let's take away the man-made elements the
• 3:50
  ones that don't exist in nature well for
• 3:53
  a start we can take away 95 to 117
• 3:58
  we've already got rid of 118 organison so
• 4:01
  the likes of america americium curium
• 4:05
  berkeleyum californium einsteinium fermium these
• 4:09
  are all mendelevium nobilium these are all going
• 4:12
  so these are all these can't exist in these fertilizers unless
• 4:15
  they've somehow managed to put synthetic man-made
• 4:19
  elements in there so let's get rid of those what does that count equal to
• 4:22
  that gets us down to 88 so some
• 4:26
  of those we can call bullshit on some of those products they say they contain
• 4:29
  90 elements there already because they won't be containing in any synthetic
• 4:33
  elements unless they've got contamination from a nuclear power station or a
• 4:37
  nuclear research facility so we've gone down to 88 but we can get further we
• 4:41
  can get further down than that,
• 4:43
  We can get rid of three more straight off the bat. We can get rid of technetium-43.
• 4:48
  While it has been detected in stars, all technetium on Earth is artificially
• 4:53
  produced due to its short half-life.
• 4:58
  Promethium-61. This element is also so unstable that it doesn't occur naturally,
• 5:03
  though minute amounts can be found in trace amounts in uranium ore.
• 5:07
  So unless these fertilizers are made from uranium ore, that's not going to be
• 5:10
  occurring. And it's very short.
• 5:14
  Short half-life. Did I say shelf life? I want to say shelf life. And then francium.
• 5:19
  This element is extremely unstable with all its isotopes having short half-lives,
• 5:25
  so it's not found in nature.
• 5:27
  So let's get rid of those three. So that gets us to 85.
• 5:30
  Now let's get rid of the elements with no stable isotopes, because I'm sure
• 5:36
  that these products don't contain radioactive compounds.
• 5:39
  Ones they wouldn't want to register that so let's get rid of the radioactive
• 5:42
  ones so let's get rid of polonium there's no stabilized tapes for that and then
• 5:46
  we can get rid of for the same reason,
• 5:48
  astatine 85 and actinium 89 so we're getting down there we're up to 82 now and
• 5:54
  where we got thurium protactinium and then all the transuranium ones uranium
• 6:00
  neptunium plutonium so we're down to 77.
• 6:03
  We'll leave bismuth 83 in, because even though it's radioactive,
• 6:07
  it's got a very, very long shelf life. I keep on saying shelf life.
• 6:10
  Half-life, it doesn't decay very fast, so they can have that one.
• 6:15
  So we're down to 77, and then we've got to say which elements are left.
• 6:20
  Well, I'm sure they wouldn't want to say that these products contain arsenic
• 6:25
  and lead, so they must be taken away.
• 6:27
  So let's take away arsenic and lead from these essential elements that these
• 6:31
  fertilizers contain. so that gets us down to 75.
• 6:34
  Then I'm sure they would say that these products are free from mercury and cadmium
• 6:38
  to really poisonous toxic heavy metals, so that gets us down to 73.
• 6:44
  Now I'm sure these products don't contain beryllium or thallium,
• 6:48
  two extremely toxic elements that are on the periodic table,
• 6:53
  so that gets us down to 71.
• 6:56
  Let's get rid of radium, that's a radioactive as well so we're down to 70.
• 7:00
  So we've got down to our magic 70 and of those that are left many are,
• 7:07
  toxic to plants in anything other than trace elements many
• 7:10
  are toxic to humans in anything other than trace elements so
• 7:14
  it'd be interesting to know what these fertilizers that
• 7:17
  claim to contain 90 elements actually
• 7:22
  claim to contain because as we say there either they
• 7:25
  don't contain 90 or they're containing ones
• 7:28
  that are radioactive man-made or extremely
• 7:31
  toxic so we got to the magic 70 so products
• 7:35
  like c90 what else have we got the rock
• 7:38
  dust products all claiming over 70 over 60 over 90 you know what do they actually
• 7:44
  contain if they're containing over 60 elements because plants don't need them
• 7:48
  they only need let's have a look nitrogen phosphorus potassium your primary macronutrients.
• 7:57
  Magnesium, calcium, and sulfur, your secondary macronutrients,
• 8:02
  and then your micronutrients, which are iron, zinc, copper, boron,
• 8:09
  manganese, polybdenum.
• 8:11
  Yeah, there you go. And maybe some silicon, maybe some selenium if you are looking
• 8:17
  for animal health, maybe some iodine as well for animal health.
• 8:21
  But really, when we look at the rest, what are
• 8:24
  these products claiming the benefit of having gold or
• 8:28
  iridium palladium and then you've got the heavy metals which have been which
• 8:34
  are carcinogenic so cobalt and nickel carcinogenic you why would you be applying
• 8:41
  those in your fertilizer why would you want barium cesium what else have we got.
• 8:48
  Lanthanum, samarium, europium.
• 8:52
  The only use of europium, I think, is in European banknotes to make sure that
• 8:58
  they are not counterfeit.
• 9:01
  Euterbium, thulium. So yeah, when we say liquid gold contains every essential
• 9:07
  plant nutrient, it's the 12 essential plant nutrients.
• 9:11
  Plants will get carbon and oxygen from the air and hydrogen from water.
• 9:15
  The rest you don't need to worry about.
• 9:18
  Gold leaf doesn't contain any in america doesn't contain any
• 9:21
  gold liquid gold in the uk doesn't contain any gold so if
• 9:24
  you're using one of these products that claims to contain these then please ask
• 9:27
  what what are the elements please can you list the
• 9:30
  60 70 90 elements that they contain
• 9:33
  thank you very much for listening today if you thought this
• 9:36
  was an interesting episode then please leave a
• 9:39
  review please click the follow button or at
• 9:42
  the very least leave an apple podcast review and if
• 9:45
  you're listening on any other platform don't leave a review because it's worthless
• 9:48
  but please do check out utreema.co.uk and
• 9:52
  find all the crazy interesting products that we make we make organic biopesticides
• 9:57
  novel biostimulants and bespoke and premium fertilizers and we're the masters
• 10:04
  again elements like silicon and calcium and phosphorus into solution when Otherwise,
• 10:11
  conventional chemistry says you can't do that.
• 10:13
  So check out our portfolio. It's a really interesting portfolio of products.
• 10:17
  Okay, until next time, thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.