Friday, June 5, 2009

'Smart' Flower Bulbs Pull Themselves To Deeper Ground

Plants are smarter than most might think - but if veggies make you smarter and you are what you eat - well, plants must be smart! Makes sense to me. Why eat dumb food?

'Smart' Flower Bulbs Pull Themselves To Deeper Ground


Mature mother bulb before and after root development. Note a bulblet formed on a scale of the middle bulb. On the right is a single bulblet with a contractile root. (Credit: A. Carl Leopold)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2007) — Confused about the right planting depth for flower bulbs? Trust the bulbs! Researchers have discovered that some flower bulbs are actually "smart" enough to adjust themselves to the right planting depth. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science proved that bulbs can adjust their planting position by moving deeper into the ground, apparently in search of moister, more conducive growing conditions.

According to Dr. A. Carl Leopold, William H. Crocker Scientist Emeritus at The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University, when gardeners plant tulips or lilies too shallowly in their gardens, the bulbs will respond to the shallow conditions by literally "pulling" themselves down into deeper ground. "One doesn't think of plants moving, and especially moving down into the ground, but our research proved that this movement occurs.", explained Leopold.

Leopold and the late Dr. Modecai Jaffe had studied plants for decades, but had never focused on bulb movement in soil. The duo was interested in working on the physiology of "contractile roots", or those roots that are responsible for bulbs' movement. Explained Leopold, "Negative growth is very rare in plants, and the sort of contractile proteins that are so well known to drive contraction in animal muscles do not occur in plants. We selected this work as a divergence from the usual studies of growth, and introduced the idea of contraction." He added that hundreds of books have been written about plant root growth, but none mention this phenomenon of negative growth.

The study focused on the "Nelly White" variety of Easter lily. Contractile roots were found to respond to light signals perceived by the bulb. Exposure to certain types of blue light forced new contractile roots to be formed on the bulbs and helped initiate the remarkable bulb movement.

Further explaining the study, Leopold noted that "contraction is evidenced by a formation of epidermal wrinkles, starting at the base of the root and advancing toward the root tip. The movement function occurs in shallowly planted materials, is lessened at deeper locations, and ceases at a vermiculite depth of 15 centimeters. Movement of the bulb in the soil is achieved by a hydraulic shift in cortical cells. Root contraction is stimulated by light."

The research team documented that perception of the light stimulus occurred in the bulblet or the subtending leaf. They also found that responsiveness to light faded as the roots aged. Experiments with light of different wavelengths indicated that the contraction response was triggered most often by blue light, and that blue light was the most effective in stimulating movement, suggesting the presence of a blue-absorbing pigment in the lily bulbs. The signal for contraction moved from the bulbs down into the roots, but the roots themselves did not respond to the light. The deeper the bulbs were planted, the less they formed contractile roots.

Summarizing the team's research, Leopold said that many plants have the ability to move down into soil--either to establish a more protected or stable location as in the case of many bulbs and tubers, or to provide stability for the plant. Bulbs "know" how to move down where environmental conditions are more constant.

Leopold mused, "I have some lily bulbs that were in the ground for nearly a decade, and I was astonished to find the bulbs moved themselves over a foot into the ground!". The research findings may help commercial and amateur gardeners in their quest for more effective bulb planting and growing techniques.


Adapted from materials provided by American Society for Horticultural Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Herbicides Where You Didn't Expect Them

New meaning to knowing your shit...........




Gardeners warned about herbicides in manure
By Carrie Ann Knauer, Times Staff Writer Friday, March 13, 2009
Ken Koons/Staff Photo
Diane Brown plants lettuce seeds at the Carroll County Farm Museum in Westminster Thursday morning. Last year, many of the plants at the Farm Museum died, and the cause has been traced to herbicide in composted horse manure.


Last year when the pea plants started curling up and withering, gardeners at the Carroll County Farm Museum weren't sure what was causing the problem.

They replanted the peas four times, said Pat Brodowski, plant historian for the museum, carefully trying to regrow what is traditionally a part of the museum's heirloom garden exhibiting vegetables grown in different centuries.

But the peas kept dying. And the tomatoes. And the peppers.

"It was a big mystery," said Betty Francies, a master gardener who helped work in the heirloom garden last year.

"You go through the reasons, you call the experts, but you don't know [why it's happening]."

The one thing that they did differently last year in the garden beds that were affected was use composted horse manure, Brodowski said.

Manure is a common additive to garden beds to help improve the organic matter content in the soil and bring in some nutrients. But this was the first time they had used horse manure, and it made all the difference, Brodowski said.

Steve Allgeier and Bryan Butler, of the Maryland Cooperative Extension office in Carroll, looked at the garden and tried to help. Having read about similar problems happening across the country and in the United Kingdom, they arranged for a representative of Dow, one of the world's largest chemical companies, to test the soil to see if one of their herbicides was causing the problem.

"Their end result was that it was not their product," Brodowski said, but the gardeners never got a definitive answer on what it was.


Butler said he's done some research of the problem, which has been seen in other gardens in Carroll and across the country that used horse manure as a garden soil additive.

Through reading about cases of garden die-off in the United Kingdom, Butler said he believes the local problems come from two new herbicides with the ingredient aminopyralid, sold under the names ForeFront and Milestone. These products are used in commercial agriculture to kill broad-leaf weeds such as thistle, which are a problem in pasture fields.

These products are remarkable because they can be used on a field and grazing animals can go right back on the field, without any waiting time, Butler said. The products pose no threat to the animals, he said. However, the herbicide is not broken down in the animals' stomachs and remains an active herbicide.

What goes into the horse or cow comes back out, he said, and it remains an active weedkiller, even in manure form.

"They're herbicides, and they're going to act like herbicides," Butler said.

For the most part, this wouldn't be a problem, Butler said, except that horse manure is sometimes passed around from horse owners to gardeners. Even horse owners who buy their hay at an auction wouldn't know whether it is likely to have the herbicide in it, Butler said.

Butler said he believes that in the best-case scenario, composting the horse manure with these herbicides at the perfect conditions should allow the herbicides to break down in about 18 months. Left on its own, however, the herbicides could remain active for up to four years.

"Eventually the manure would be safe again," he said.

Brodowski said the horse manure came from a master gardener from Carroll with a horse farm connection. Several people used it in their gardens, Brodowski said, and all had the same problems with plants dying.

Brodowski said she and the master gardeners have taken samples from different areas of the contaminated garden beds and started growing peas indoors to see what they can expect this year. Fifteen days into the experiment, the peas are showing some curling on the leaves, but it's less damage than she expected, she said.

"We'll wait another week and see if they die," she said.

In the meantime, this year they'll be planting grain crops in the affected beds instead of the vegetable families that they saw affected last year: legumes, tomatoes, peppers and beets. They also had a student do some experiments with it in the fall, and found that even low-maintenance flowers like zinnias and marigolds were affected, Brodowski said.

While there is no evidence that vegetables tainted by the herbicide would be harmful to humans, the Farm Museum doesn't want to take any chances, Brodowski said.

The heirloom tomatoes, which have always been a focal point of the garden and the source for the annual heirloom tomato tasting day, will instead be grown at the homes of master gardeners this year.

Butler said he is warning vegetable gardeners to be cautious about accepting any horse manure this year unless it is from someone who can confirm that these herbicides weren't used on the hay or pasture.

"If it's not properly composted, you're bringing in a problem, and it may be a problem next year, too," Butler said.

Reach staff writer Carrie Ann Knauer at 410-857-7874 or carrie.knauer@carrollcountytimes.com.

More about aminopyralid

Aminopyralid is a reduce- risk herbicide that provides reliable control of a broad spectrum of difficult-to control noxious weeds and invasive plants on rangeland and pastures, rights-of-way and wildlife habitat areas.

Aminopyralid is particularly effective for the control of tropical soda apple, musk thistle, Canada thistle, spotted knapweed, diffuse knapweed, yellow star thistle and Russian knapweed.

Aminopyralid has a favorable human health toxicity profile when compared to the registered alternatives for these use sites and will be applied at a lower rate. Its residual action should alleviate the need for repeat applications, resulting in a reduction in the amount of herbicides applied to the environment for the control of these weeds.

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Pesticide Fact Sheet

Suspected culprits

- Have no grazing restrictions for any type of livestock, including lactating dairy animals, beef cattle, sheep, goats and horses.

- Are not federally restricted-use pesticides, though some states require an individual to be licensed if involved in the recommendation, handling or application of any pesticide.

Source: www.dowagro.com




Tons of released drugs taint US water




AP IMPACT: Tons of released drugs taint US water

By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press Writers Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza And Justin Pritchard, Associated Press Writers Sun Apr 19, 5:58 pm ET

U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water — contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation.

Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.

Federal and industry officials say they don't know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them — as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.

As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.

The data don't show precisely how much of the 271 million pounds comes from drugmakers versus other manufacturers; also, the figure is a massive undercount because of the limited federal government tracking.

To date, drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what's being found in water. Federal drug and water regulators agree.

But some researchers say the lack of required testing amounts to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy about whether drugmakers are contributing to water pollution.

"It doesn't pass the straight-face test to say pharmaceutical manufacturers are not emitting any of the compounds they're creating," said Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an EPA enforcement officer before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney.

Pilot studies in the U.S. and abroad are now confirming those doubts.

Last year, the AP reported that trace amounts of a wide range of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in American drinking water supplies. Including recent findings in Dallas, Cleveland and Maryland's Prince George's and Montgomery counties, pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans.

Most cities and water providers still do not test. Some scientists say that wherever researchers look, they will find pharma-tainted water.

Consumers are considered the biggest contributors to the contamination. We consume drugs, then excrete what our bodies don't absorb. Other times, we flush unused drugs down toilets. The AP also found that an estimated 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging are thrown away each year by hospitals and long-term care facilities.

Researchers have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of drugs harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs. Some scientists say they are increasingly concerned that the consumption of combinations of many drugs, even in small amounts, could harm humans over decades.

Utilities say the water is safe. Scientists, doctors and the EPA say there are no confirmed human risks associated with consuming minute concentrations of drugs. But those experts also agree that dangers cannot be ruled out, especially given the emerging research.

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Two common industrial chemicals that are also pharmaceuticals — the antiseptics phenol and hydrogen peroxide — account for 92 percent of the 271 million pounds identified as coming from drugmakers and other manufacturers. Both can be toxic and both are considered to be ubiquitous in the environment.

However, the list of 22 includes other troubling releases of chemicals that can be used to make drugs and other products: 8 million pounds of the skin bleaching cream hydroquinone, 3 million pounds of nicotine compounds that can be used in quit-smoking patches, 10,000 pounds of the antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride. Others include treatments for head lice and worms.

Residues are often released into the environment when manufacturing equipment is cleaned.

A small fraction of pharmaceuticals also leach out of landfills where they are dumped. Pharmaceuticals released onto land include the chemo agent fluorouracil, the epilepsy medicine phenytoin and the sedative pentobarbital sodium. The overall amount may be considerable, given the volume of what has been buried — 572 million pounds of the 22 monitored drugs since 1988.

In one case, government data shows that in Columbus, Ohio, pharmaceutical maker Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. discharged an estimated 2,285 pounds of lithium carbonate — which is considered slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates and freshwater fish — to a local wastewater treatment plant between 1995 and 2006. Company spokeswoman Marybeth C. McGuire said the pharmaceutical plant, which uses lithium to make drugs for bipolar disorder, has violated no laws or regulations. McGuire said all the lithium discharged, an annual average of 190 pounds, was lost when residues stuck to mixing equipment were washed down the drain.

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Pharmaceutical company officials point out that active ingredients represent profits, so there's a huge incentive not to let any escape. They also say extremely strict manufacturing regulations — albeit aimed at other chemicals — help prevent leakage, and that whatever traces may get away are handled by onsite wastewater treatment.

"Manufacturers have to be in compliance with all relevant environmental laws," said Alan Goldhammer, a scientist and vice president at the industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Goldhammer conceded some drug residues could be released in wastewater, but stressed "it would not cause any environmental issues because it was not a toxic substance at the level that it was being released at."

Several big drugmakers were asked this simple question: Have you tested wastewater from your plants to find out whether any active pharmaceuticals are escaping, and if so what have you found?

No drugmaker answered directly.

"Based on research that we have reviewed from the past 20 years, pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are not a significant source of pharmaceuticals that contribute to environmental risk," GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement.

AstraZeneca spokeswoman Kate Klemas said the company's manufacturing processes "are designed to avoid, or otherwise minimize the loss of product to the environment" and thus "ensure that any residual losses of pharmaceuticals to the environment that do occur are at levels that would be unlikely to pose a threat to human health or the environment."

One major manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., acknowledged that it tested some of its wastewater — but outside the United States.

The company's director of hazard communication and environmental toxicology, Frank Mastrocco, said Pfizer has sampled effluent from some of its foreign drug factories. Without disclosing details, he said the results left Pfizer "confident that the current controls and processes in place at these facilities are adequately protective of human health and the environment."

It's not just the industry that isn't testing.

FDA spokesman Christopher Kelly noted that his agency is not responsible for what comes out on the waste end of drug factories. At the EPA, acting assistant administrator for water Mike Shapiro — whose agency's Web site says pharmaceutical releases from manufacturing are "well defined and controlled" — did not mention factories as a source of pharmaceutical pollution when asked by the AP how drugs get into drinking water.

"Pharmaceuticals get into water in many ways," he said in a written statement. "It's commonly believed the majority come from human and animal excretion. A portion also comes from flushing unused drugs down the toilet or drain; a practice EPA generally discourages."

His position echoes that of a line of federal drug and water regulators as well as drugmakers, who concluded in the 1990s — before highly sensitive tests now used had been developed — that manufacturing is not a meaningful source of pharmaceuticals in the environment.

Pharmaceutical makers typically are excused from having to submit an environmental review for new products, and the FDA has never rejected a drug application based on potential environmental impact. Also at play are pressures not to delay potentially lifesaving drugs. What's more, because the EPA hasn't concluded at what level, if any, pharmaceuticals are bad for the environment or harmful to people, drugmakers almost never have to report the release of pharmaceuticals they produce.

"The government could get a national snapshot of the water if they chose to," said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "and it seems logical that we would want to find out what's coming out of these plants."

Ajit Ghorpade, an environmental engineer who worked for several major pharmaceutical companies before his current job helping run a wastewater treatment plant, said drugmakers have no impetus to take measurements that the government doesn't require.

"Obviously nobody wants to spend the time or their dime to prove this," he said. "It's like asking me why I don't drive a hybrid car? Why should I? It's not required."

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After contacting the nation's leading drugmakers and filing public records requests, the AP found two federal agencies that have tested.

Both the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey have studies under way comparing sewage at treatment plants that receive wastewater from drugmaking factories against sewage at treatment plants that do not.

Preliminary USGS results, slated for publication later this year, show that treated wastewater from sewage plants serving drug factories had significantly more medicine residues. Data from the EPA study show a disproportionate concentration in wastewater of an antibiotic that a major Michigan factory was producing at the time the samples were taken.

Meanwhile, other researchers recorded concentrations of codeine in the southern reaches of the Delaware River that were at least 10 times higher than the rest of the river.

The scientists from the Delaware River Basin Commission won't have to look far when they try to track down potential sources later this year. One mile from the sampling site, just off shore of Pennsville, N.J., there's a pipe that spits out treated wastewater from a municipal plant. The plant accepts sewage from a pharmaceutical factory owned by Siegfried Ltd. The factory makes codeine.

"We have implemented programs to not only reduce the volume of waste materials generated but to minimize the amount of pharmaceutical ingredients in the water," said Siegfried spokeswoman Rita van Eck.

Another codeine plant, run by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Noramco Inc., is about seven miles away. A Noramco spokesman acknowledged that the Wilmington, Del., factory had voluntarily tested its wastewater and found codeine in trace concentrations thousands of times greater than what was found in the Delaware River. "The amounts of codeine we measured in the wastewater, prior to releasing it to the City of Wilmington, are not considered to be hazardous to the environment," said a company spokesman.

In another instance, equipment-cleaning water sent down the drain of an Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. factory in Denver consistently contains traces of warfarin, a blood thinner, according to results obtained under a public records act request. Officials at the company and the Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District said they believe the concentrations are safe.

Warfarin, which also is a common rat poison and pesticide, is so effective at inhibiting growth of aquatic plants and animals it's actually deliberately introduced to clean plants and tiny aquatic animals from ballast water of ships.

"With regard to wastewater management we are subject to a variety of federal, state and local regulation and oversight," said Joel Green, Upsher-Smith's vice president and general counsel. "And we work hard to maintain systems to promote compliance."

Baylor University professor Bryan Brooks, who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment, said assurances that drugmakers run clean shops are not enough.

"I have no reason to believe them or not believe them," he said. "We don't have peer-reviewed studies to support or not support their claims."

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Associated Press Writer Don Mitchell in Denver contributed to this report.