Tests commissioned by the Canadian Reforestation and Environmental Workers’ Society on polymer-coated loose fertilizer revealed the presence of toxic metals (such as molybdenum and cadmium) not listed on their Material Safety Data Sheets.
by J. Cates
There are two big problems associated with putting chemicals into soil: first, chemicals are no respecters of geographic boundaries, and second, chemicals that are good for trees may not be so good for the people who have to work with them.
The equation is, faster tree growth equals more money. If this can be done safely, so much the better. But the bottom line is, always, the profit picture. Fertilizing at planting can result in faster growth by 200-400 percent.
Adding a bit of chemical fertilizer to a tree doesn’t really matter much. But Weyerhaeuser has a lot of trees.
The forestry company, which bought out MacMillan Bloedel’s interests, has been fertilizing young trees on a 300 square kilometre chunk of its fenced-in private land about 25 kilometres southwest of Nanaimo, and within that city’s watershed.
Today’s drug of choice
The current drug of choice is called NutriPak. Imported from a company in Wisconsin, the product comes in small plastic packages, one per tree. Depending on the size of the packet, it will have 8 to 16 pinholes punched through its skin. The premeasured dosages, says tree planter Ingmar Lee, are 50g for fir and 35g for cedar. Weyerhaeuser has planted about 300,000 trees at its site near Nanaimo, and will likely double that number in the current year.
The suppliers of NutriPak, Brinkman & Associates Reforestation, like this product because they believe it to be the easiest and safest to handle. Other forms of fertilizers, especially the loose urea-coated granular, resulted in complaints from almost one-third of the planters using them, and included nausea, headaches, nosebleeds, congestion, and eye irritation.
Tests commissioned by the Canadian Reforestation and Environmental Workers’ Society on polymer-coated loose fertilizer revealed the presence of toxic metals (such as molybdenum and cadmium) not listed on their Material Safety Data Sheets.
Lee called those sheets “fraudulent,” allowing “industrial waste disguised as fertilizers” to be imported from the United States. Use of loose fertilizers was suspended by Salt Spring Planters, and its parent company, Brinkman & Associates, adopted a policy of “if the workers won’t handle a fertilizer the company wants to use, we’ll turn down the contract.”
But this history suggests that past practice has not been, ‘This is safe, so let’s use it,’ but rather, ‘Let’s use it, and see if it’s safe.’
NutriPak packets are placed in the ground dry; after they become moist, the contents seep out through tiny pinholes, reducing the planters’ exposure to the fertilizer.
How safe is safe?
Two questions arise in response to this issue of worker safety.
Earlier this year, NutriPak at a planting site was mishandled by a job foreman, who presoaked it, causing seepage before planting. This was an isolated incident and has not been repeated. Problem identified, problem corrected. More important, though, the incident provided graphic evidence that Murphy’s Law is alive and well. Sometime, someplace, somehow, despite the best intentions, something will go wrong, and it will always be due to human error.
The other question arises from the fact NutriPak is a pretty recent development. It’s been used on farms and tested in laboratories, but only began seeing use on the BC coast this spring, which makes it still something of an experiment as it’s used on plantations.
A solution to health concerns, according to distributor Dirk Brinkman, is unlikely to include more research that might provide proof of the product’s safety, due to the differences in reactions among planters, their long-term concerns, and, of course, “the effective cost to production.”
So even though the testing may be “not conclusive,” he says “It appears best to simply minimize planter exposure at this time,” while adding that, “Because of the complexity of operational problems and biological processes, there is considerable latitude for further refinement and new solutions.”
For now, he believes this packaging solves 95 percent of the safety problems associated with other forms of fertilizer, while providing “a great kick-start” to new growth.
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“Fertilizer production involves blending raw material sources from various mines and excavation sites. Some of these sources have more contaminants than others, but they all include the normal background presence of toxic metals also found in most BC soils. The cost of creating completely clean fertilizers is very prohibitive. Natural and organic fertilizers contain higher levels of toxic metals and other contaminants because they are more concentrated in the organic sources through bioaccumulation.” *Discussion of fertilizer test results and health hazards of fertilizing at planting – Dirk Brinkman, July 14, 2000. |
Now: what’s in the stuff?
Relatively large amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and magnesium, of course. That’s pretty much what fertilizer is.
Also of interest are the “micro nutrients”–boron, chromium, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, sodium, selenium, silicon, and zinc–and our old pals, the toxic metals: arsenic, cadmium, mercury, lead, and antimony. (A not too surprising array, since, Brinkman says, “Fertilizer production involves blending raw material sources from various mines and excavation sites.” NutriPak itself is an import, coming to us from JRP International in Wisconsin.)
But Brinkman believes the product to be environmentally safe, based on testing that shows, due to its slow-release property, all of the ingredients go into the plants, not the soil.
“Because the products’ rate of release is more in line with the rate of root uptake, it also reduces the amount of fertilizer lost to fixation, denitrification and leaching … increasing the percentage of plant uptake reduces the contamination risk in fisheries sensitive zones and community watersheds, extending the potential area of use.” (From a report by Salt Spring Planters.)
Just like home-grown dirt
And anyway, the ingredients closely match the levels that are already present in our normal soils. That same progress report says, “At low levels, ‘toxic’ metals are not toxic, and some argue they are essential for life.”
Now we return to the Nanaimo and other watersheds. How sure can anyone be that the NutriPak brew is entirely absorbed by trees, and that there will never be another accident in its handling? Even though they match our natural soil composition, these substances constitute an addition to the soil … and they gotta go somewhere.
The City of Nanaimo has no worries about Weyerhaeuser’s operations in its watershed, and cooperates with the company.
The city, says its Superintendent of Water Supply, Wayne Hansen, has no regulatory or enforcement powers; those lie with the province, under the Forest Practices Code. His office conducts extensive water testing, he says, and has found no appreciable difference in samples taken before and after fertilization began. He emphasizes that Nanaimo’s water is well within all the requirements of Canadian Drinking Water Standards.
Nanaimo, with a population of 72,000, uses about 18 million gallons of water a day. Weyerhaeuser’s operation there is just one project within one watershed near one medium-sized city, using one form of fertilizer. For the province-wide picture, start multiplying. Keeping in mind, of course, that water testing does not so much predict when a problem will develop, as identify when a problem has developed. Testing is how we chart the effects of Murphy’s Law.
Even in its safest forms, mass fertilization of tree plantations is something in the nature of an on-going experiment. If its proponents are correct in concluding that the stuff is probably pretty safe, then probably no one will be hurt.
But what if they’re wrong?
The only way to guarantee worker and environmental safety is not to keep experimenting with new and improved designer drugs for trees, but to cease being so completely profit-driven in planting and harvesting procedures.
Discontinuing the use of chemical growth enhancers would remove not just 95 percent, but 100 percent of any risk from them. This wouldn’t eliminate jobs. Trees would still need to be planted, and using natural methods would even be labour-intensive: without a “kick-start” of tree amphetamines (or, even worse, herbicide sprays) to help them outgrow the surrounding vegetation, more slash-cutters would be needed. The only difference would be, a few people would make smaller profits, and everyone else might become a bit less reliant on timber and pulp products. No down side there.
* For more information about NutriPak, contact its distributor: Brinkman & Associates Reforestation Ltd, 520 Sharpe St, New Westminster, BC V3M 4R2; ph: (604)521-7771; fax: (604)520-1968; More details about tree planting and fertilization are also available from the website of the Canadian Reforestation and Environmental Workers’ Society at: www.crews.bc.ca
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[From WS October/November 2000]
