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The Dirty (half) Dozen: Harmful Preservatives Hiding in Your Fertilizer · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there, welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and I am the founder of Utrema Limited,
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  and we make premium fertilisers, novel biostimulants, and organic biopesticides.
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  And I've been doing this for a number of years, almost decades,
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  and so I know a lot about chemical formulations and organic product formulations.
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  And one of the things that always surprises me is the use of non-few food-grade
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  preservatives in fertilizer products.
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  I think that people should be aware of this because you are not necessarily
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  eating fertilizer, but you are putting them on plants and plants can take those
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  up and come into contact with them.
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  And if you're spraying them as foliar products, then they are going onto the
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  produce that is going to be ate or smoked or drunk or things like this.
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  So I think growers should be aware of and look at the preservatives that are in the products.
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  It might be listed on the back of the label if you're in North America or
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  it will be listed in the safety data sheet and if it's one
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  of the terrible products that well not terrible if it's
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  one of the products I'm mentioning today then you need to be aware of it some
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  of them are terrible products others are I would use with caution and sparingly
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  so at Utrema we have this philosophy that we only use food grade preservatives
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  so that we know for two reasons really so that you can be.
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  Assured that the product is safe when it's
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  put on the crop and you eat the crop and the other reason is that we
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  don't want too much microbial preservation in
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  our products because when we add our fertilizers to the
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  grow media we do want beneficial microbes to
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  be able to grow so if you have a really strong and really high concentration
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  of preservatives then you will wipe your beneficials out as well as the the
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  microbes you don't want now preservatives need to be added to most fertilizer
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  products because you need to stop the microbes from eating the product in the bottle.
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  So if it contains any sort of organic matter, sort of like a plant extract or
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  things like this, then you need to add a preservative just like you would in a processed food.
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  Now there are preservatives and there are preservatives. So
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  we use food grade preservatives at Utrema and we
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  think that some of the really bad ones
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  are used because people are cutting corners to reduce
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  costs and also because they just don't know about what's
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  the best option for formulating the product so i've
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  got about six or seven products that
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  i want to go through and i think you should be looking out for these on the safety data
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  sheets or on the labels and just questioning where they
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  are used and whether it's the right preservative to use or whether
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  you should look for an alternative such as gold leaf or
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  one part fertilizer that gets you from seed to harvest with
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  just one bottle or liquid gold as it's called in the uk so what
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  are my dirty dozen what are these products well the worst
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  one i've ever come across is formaldehyde or formalin as
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  it's sometimes called this is on the
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  face of it doesn't look like a nasty chemical but it is carcinogenic and
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  it is highly hazardous and it can cause immediate effects if you touch it or
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  come into contact with it or heaven forbid ingest it it's used in some sort
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  of ship deep easy for me to say sheep dip type of products so like contact.
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  Disinfectants for animals, but should never be used in a fertilizer.
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  And the worst case I ever came across was an organic biostimulant,
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  a seaweed extract from, I think it was from the,
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  Orkneys in Scotland, and they were using it to preserve a seaweed extract.
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  It was classified as organic.
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  And I was testing its pH because I was testing it against a range of other pH
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  seaweed products that I was, including the ones that I was manufacturing at the time and still do.
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  And I was testing it for its pH, got a drop on my finger, I wasn't wearing any
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  gloves, I wasn't wearing a glove because it wasn't classified as hazardous and
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  it was a seaweed extract so I thought it'd be fine half an hour later my finger
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  has swollen up to twice the size.
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  It's normal size hard to believe but very
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  shocking and I was like oh I can't buy the seaweed extract and
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  then read the small print on the back of the label and said preserve with
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  something really high like 0.1% formaldehyde
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  I was like what the heck and well long
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  story short that company doesn't exist anymore because they
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  should never have been using a carcinogen to preserve
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  a seaweed extract so that's probably
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  number one on my list then i've got quats
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  that's with a q or quaternary ammonium compounds
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  such as and this is going to be don't
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  worry the scientific names are going out for a bit benzalkonium chloride
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  that's the most common one this is the sort of chemical that you find
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  in patio cleaners and mold removers
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  for your walls find it in things like wallpaper
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  paste really strong residual preservatives and
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  fungicides these are not the sort of things that you should ever put on food
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  although some people do some people use it for disinfecting hydroponic units
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  and water and that's because it's cheap and it's residual and it's effective
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  but if you it's a skin and irritant, it's toxic to aquatic organisms,
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  it's highly toxic,
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  and it doesn't biodegrade.
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  So the quads don't biodegrade. And you'll often see.
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  This product contains no quads on the back of cosmetics and things like this.
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  So this shouldn't be going into... People are... These are almost banned in
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  many cosmetic applications.
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  Certainly banned to put into food itself. So shouldn't really be going into fertilizer.
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  Seen a terrible product in hydroponics where it actually advertised the fact
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  on the label. This contains quaternary ammonium compounds.
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  Clean up your grow room with this and your grow media.
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  And that was shocking, really. And that product didn't take off, thank God.
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  Probably because it killed the plants as well so avoid anything
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  that's got quads in if you're worried about
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  any of the ingredients that you might be in a fertilizer
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  or a biostelement or any additive just stick it into chat
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  gpt and say is this safe to consume so
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  take the cast number or the ec number or the chemical name stick it into chat
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  gpt and say is this safe to consume everything on a gold leaf or as it's called
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  in the uk liquid gold label and safety data sheet you'll find is a normal fertilizer
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  ingredient so don't put like calcium nitrate or you know.
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  Magnesium sulfate into chat gpt and say is
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  this safe to consume because they're obviously the fertilizer ingredients the
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  element elements but put the preservatives in and see
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  if it's safe to consume so formaldehyde is
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  the worst i've ever seen next up is quats or benzalkinium
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  chloride or back 50 as it's often called
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  these are formaldehyde is a sheep dip your quats
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  are your patio cleaners and your mold removers and your wallpaper paste type
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  products don't use them next up we've got copper sulfate it's a moderately toxic
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  but still toxic heavy metal if you consume lots of it then you'll then you will
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  have long-term health issues a lot of vineyard,
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  great growers suffer from copper toxicity and the
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  plants themselves suffer from it as well too much copper is bad for plants
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  and using copper sulfate as a preservative is
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  not a good idea can be used in certain organic systems for formulation but it's
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  not the best option and there are other alternatives out there if you just ask
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  so copper sulfate is a bad one then there's a couple of other ones that are
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  i've seen used recently and i would just say these are not.
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  They're not allowed to be used
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  in food production and they're not allowed to be used in cosmetic
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  production so if you had a mascara or
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  a lipstick these wouldn't be allowed in them so if you're not allowed to
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  put them on your face then you probably shouldn't put them in the fertilizer on your plants that
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  you're going to eat as well so one of them is bronopol that
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  contains bromine bromine is not an essential nutrient
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  for plants so you don't need bromine there and that can released formaldehyde
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  and form nitrazamines which are
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  systemic hazards in humans so avoid
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  bronopole if you can and then cathone a strong sensitizer known to cause allergic
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  reactions and dermatitis in high concentrations so cathone and bronopole not
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  allowed in food not allowed in cosmetics so really should be looking to avoid
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  those in formulations if possible.
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  If you need any more information wikipedia is
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  a great option stick these compounds in there and also
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  just put it into japp gpt and say is this safe to
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  use in fertilizer is it safe to use in cosmetics if
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  you know of any other preservatives that are used in fertilizer and
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  you would like me to have a look at them i'm more than happy to do that
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  and i can add that as an addendum is
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  that the word on the end of the next podcast and
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  talk about those ones as well so the other
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  thing as well is why a lot of these synthetic pesticides are
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  used is that often people are trying to fight they've produced
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  a formulation produced a stable formulation and then their last thought before
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  they commercialize it is how are we going to preserve it preserve it or they've
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  put it on the shelf and realized it blows up because the microbes start growing
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  on it and they think ah sugar how am i going to preserve this and so they're
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  fighting that rather than thinking,
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  has to be preserved with food-created preservatives first.
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  That sort of afterthought and that means that you
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  could have a product that's ph12 and you're thinking well oh sugar
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  these food grade preservatives are not going to work at ph12 so
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  we're going to have a product that does so they get to
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  someone like croda and they say which is a
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  chemical company and they say give us a preservative that will work at ph12 or
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  give us a preservative that will work at ph2 when really
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  you should be using high quality ingredients that are
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  not with extreme ph i don't think there's many additives
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  that need to be of an extreme ph anyway in hydroponics and
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  seaweed extracts the best quality
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  seaweed extracts are mildly acidic anyway and
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  that's what you want your growing media to be humic acids
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  silicons are going to be high pH but silicons
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  don't need much preserving anyway humic acids maybe what
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  else could we say on the topic of preservatives obviously
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  if you don't include them then microbes can grow in them and they
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  can themselves be toxic as well so can't do
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  without preservatives unless we want to completely rewrite.
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  It and use powdered products all the time you
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  might be thinking why don't you use peroxide or chlorine to
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  preserve the products and that's because things
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  like peroxides and chlorines
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  are very short time scale activity so they break down very very quickly hydrogen
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  peroxide breaks down really quickly and that's why it's a good thing to sterilize
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  your grow system with peroxides because it's not going to last it's going to
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  break down to water and oxygen and so.
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  That makes it a fantastic sterilizing agent but
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  not a good preservative and same with chlorine chlorine breaks down and that's
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  one of its issues you know i used to work for a company that stored lots of
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  bleach and the bleach was constantly going off and degrading in quality because
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  the chlorine breaks down and is released as chlorine gas.
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  So that's why we look for alternatives.
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  Silver silver nitrate is used in very low concentrations
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  for antimicrobial antimicrobial action however
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  silver messes with plant hormones
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  so it should be avoided when you think about silver as
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  the colloidal silver is used in feminizing
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  spray in legal cannabis and breeding and
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  things like this but use it at the wrong time and you could have
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  serious issues with your plant hormones your ethylene levels and you
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  could have all your leaves dropping off or you could have males turn into
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  females and females turn into males and so
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  yeah don't don't use silver nitrate for that reason also because
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  it's it's residual as well so it's not
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  going to go anywhere so that's another consider so um
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  i'm not sure if i mentioned quat products are non-biodegradable and
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  that's one of the main issues with their use especially as patio
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  cleaners and in wallpaper places like
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  this these are these are almost forever chemicals so they should be avoided
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  that's been hydroponics daily for today hope you found it interesting if you
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  disagree on anything let me know i know it's not going to be to everyone's taste
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  this one and some people will strongly disagree because their products will
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  contain some of these ingredients but.
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  Hopefully you know stay friends anyway until tomorrow
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  that's been hydroponics daily if you can give us a review on apple podcasts
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  that would be tremendous because that bumps us up the podcast charts if you're
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  not listening to me on apple podcasts sit back relax chill out because giving
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  me a review on any other type of podcast provider doesn't do anything really
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  all right until tomorrow goodbye.