Latest / Cereal Killers / Fertilizer Fraud? The Truth Behind 60–90 Element Claims

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Fertilizer Fraud? The Truth Behind 60–90 Element Claims · Cereal Killers

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