Applying herbicides to crops helps increase yield—but at a cost. Photo: tpmartins.

Recent headlines have brought to light some of herbicides’ unintended effects. The herbicide Imprelis, primarily used on golf courses and the like, has been linked to the death of conifers throughout the east and the midwest. The safety of the widely used herbicide Roundup has also been called into question. Herbicides can provide farmers and gardeners with advantages over unwanted weeds—but they also come with drawbacks.

When DuPont first introduced the herbicide Imprelis in 2010, it was seen as a pretty environmentally friendly option. It is really effective at preventing the growth of weeds like dandelions and ivy. It affects plants’ hormone receptors, and it works at low concentrations. Unlike other herbicides, hot temperatures or rainfall just after application do not make Imprelis ineffective—a benefit for lawn care professionals, who otherwise have to time the application of herbicides according to the weather report. But Imprelis doesn’t bind to the soil and can leach into groundwater, two reasons why the state of New York has not approved it. (California has not approved it either.) Because of these characteristics, the herbicide being taken up by nearby trees through their root systems. As a result, conifers’ needles turn brown, and some trees die. The chemicals in Imprelis stick around in the grass clippings, creating killer compost that should go to the landfill rather than the compost bin or mulch pile. We haven’t heard the end of the story of Imprelis.

We will likely also hear more about Roundup, a big player manufactured by Monsanto. This story in the Huffington Post describes several studies that indicate that the herbicide causes birth defects. Roundup and other similar herbicides contain glyphosate, which causes reproductive problems in adult animals and birth defects in animals’ offspring. Organisms like rabbits can be exposed when herbicides are applied and when they eat the plants that have been treated. Lab studies have shown that exposure to glyphosate results in malformations in frog and chicken embryos. And, lab studies show that Roundup also poses problems for human embryonic and placental cells. Herbicides that contain glyphosate are hugely popular, because they’re so effective. In the last year for which data are available, 2006-2007, the US agricultural industry applied 180 to 185 million pounds of glyphosate. From 2005 to 2007, non-agricultural use added another 8 to 11 million pounds to the ecosystem. This chemical is increasingly ingrained in the US agricultural system: farmers purchase genetically modified seeds that are resistant to Roundup (such as Roundup Ready Soybeans), and then spray Roundup on the crops. These methods allow for much higher crop yields than organic agriculture, and are cost-effective for big farms. Without the advantages that herbicides provide, farms cannot compete.

Eradicating weeds is a challenge, and herbicides are a big part of fighting that battle. We have a complex relationship with weeds—check out this great conversation about weeds on Science Friday last week. Herbicides give us some key advantages over unwanted weeds. These advantages come with drawbacks. The two herbicides under question are primarily used by industry—lawn care professionals and big ag farmers—rather than individuals. But the average citizen uses herbicides on his or her home lawn, too. Do you use herbicides? Why or why not?

Pregnant mothers with the highest exposure to pesticides had kids with lower IQ at age 7. Image courtesy of C. G. P. Grey.

Three studies published last week in Environmental Health Perspectives concluded that pesticide exposure in pregnant women is linked to lower IQ scores in their children at age 7. This is pretty scary news for expectant mothers, but what does it mean practically?

Pesticide exposure can come in many forms. In one of the studies done at UC Berkeley, scientists estimated pesticide exposure in the agricultural town of Salinas (Monterey County, CA) by measuring organophosphate metabolites in the mother's urine during and after pregnancy. While these women had slightly higher than average pesticide exposure due to their proximity to farming centers, their levels were not out of range of national averages.

Interestingly, the effect of pesticide exposure on intelligence was only significant before birth; childhood exposure to pesticides did not appear to have an impact on intelligence scores.

The other two studies were conducted in more urban environments in New York City. In these studies done by researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center and Columbia University, pesticide exposure was determined by measuring either urine metabolites or umbilical cord levels of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, respectively. Intelligence scores were significantly lower in children whose mothers had been exposed to the most pesticides while pregnant, indicating that these results are consistent across populations and not limited to farming communities.

In urban populations, pesticide exposure often comes from eating crops that have been treated with pesticides. People can also come into contact with pesticides in home gardens, schools and other public buildings with landscaping.

The good news is that use of organophosphate pesticides have declined steadily over the past decade, declining approximately 50 percent since 2001. Also, though choosing organic produce will help decrease pesticide exposure through food, consumers shouldn't feel they need to switch to 100% organic to protect their children.

Every year the Environmental Working Group publishes the “Dirty Dozen,” a list of the conventional produce likely to contain the highest amount of pesticides. It also publishes a list of the cleanest conventional foods, “The Clean 15,” with the lowest pesticide levels. The researchers found that the impact of pesticides on intelligence scores is dose dependent, meaning any reduction in exposure can be beneficial.

While making these decisions it is important to realize that eating a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables is one of the most important thing you can do for the health of your developing baby. You should not drastically restrict the different kinds of produce you consume while pregnant. Being smart about which organic foods you purchase, and carefully washing the conventional produce you continue to buy can make a big impact on your exposure.

Are you worried about pesticide exposure? How do you handle it?

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Scanning electron microscope image of the Orgueil meteorite.
Credit: Dr. Richard Hoover/Journal of Cosmology

The recent publication of the investigation of a rare class of meteorite (the CI1 Carbonaceous Chondrite) by Dr. Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has caused another stir among scientists and the news media regarding possible origins of life on Earth, and life in the Universe in general. Exciting stuff—though the report stimulated the "usual" spectrum of responses, ranging from the starry-eyed wow! to the cool-headed let's wait and see to a tepid-at-best we've heard this hype before….

In a nutshell, Dr. Hoover's study suggests that encased within the minerals of the studied meteorites are chemical signatures of life and fossils of microbes, some of which are very similar to known Earthly cyanobacteria, and some that are not very like Earth life forms at all. The implication is that life (at least these would-be meteoritic microbes) originated outside of Earth, on some other parent body—possibly a comet—and that the formation of life may be common and ubiquitous in the Universe. It's a very big implication—and as some respondents have cited, big implications require big proof (okay, I'm paraphrasing Carl Sagan's, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof").

One of the challenges in this type of investigation is in distinguishing between "indigenous" mineral and microbe-like forms in the meteorites (that is, those that may have come along with the meteorite during its fall to Earth) and contamination by Earthly microbes—because, come on, if the Earth's surface is nothing else, it is absolutely teeming with life in every nook and cranny!

Other implications have been mentioned beside life from "out there" seeding the early Earth and giving rise to us (in fact, there is no definitive proof that life originated on Earth—and according to one theory, life could not have started here).

One idea goes the other way: life started on Earth early on, prior to the end of the period of heavy bombardment of our world by asteroids and comets, and the blasts of some of those collisions could have kicked the Earthly specimens back into space…maybe only to return to us eons later as "evidence of extraterrestrial life"—which would be ironic.

As part of his analysis, Dr. Hoover included a range of known Earth life as control references–samples from mastodons, Egyptian mummies, insects preserved in amber, fossilized cyanobacteria from ancient rocks, and several others—to compare to the samples from his subject meteorites. According to his publication, the comparison of the samples has shown certain organic chemicals found in terrestrial life lacking in the meteorites—a number of amino acids, and nitrogen—which suggest that the meteorite samples may not bear contamination by Earthly life.

The quest for life beyond Earth has gone on for a long time, and a lot of tantalizing clues and possible evidence have been making the rounds. Microbe fossils in meteorites from Mars? Life not-as-we-know-it living in the waters of Mono Lake? Methane plumes from beneath the Martian surface? Organic molecules in the tails of comets and on Saturn's moon Titan? And now, possible organics and fossils in the rarest of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites?

For the moment, I'll wait and see how scientists review Dr. Hoover's study—because, yes, I have heard before what turned out to be hype—but in the back of my mind…wow!

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Raising chickens offers a good life for our feathered friends, a sense of peace, a connection to nature and our food source, eggs with high nutritional value, a composting and fertilization system, free entertainment and another reason to rise and shine.

I appreciate a good, hearty, hot, nutritious and deep yellow omelet. I like humane treatment of animals. When trying to marry these two passions, however, I find myself in an internal struggle. Finding a resource of egg-laying chickens where I am certain that the treatment is humane, cage free, free range and organic has proven a challenge. In my blog post, Quest for a Kind Egg, I tried to get the straight dope. I have also tried with desperation to check farm websites or have a decent conversation with the Egg Guy at the Lake Merritt Farmer’s Market, all with not luck. Finally, I was ready to up my quest.

How about raising chickens? What an original and radical idea. I launched a few investigative e-mails, wondering if anyone I knew could possibly be an urban chicken farmer. It turns out that all the cool kids are doing it. Responses flooded in from Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Monterey, Point Reyes, and beyond, and I was off for some backyard coop adventures to catch up on the trend.

I paid a visit to Mike and Tasha and their three hens at their condo in Rockridge. I found their flock happily hanging in their home-made coop and condo backyard, doing some evening snacking. Tony was raised with chickens in Zimbabwe and went the chicken route because he finds them peaceful and entertaining to observe. He appreciates their free-range roaming of the yard and their innate ability to pull on grasses until they get the seeds. He loves that each chicken lays one egg a day, offering the family plenty of heavy, delicious eggs for eating and baking. He especially loves the way they announce their egg laying with a loud squawking performance and shout out.

Tasha appreciates the relationship she and her three year old daughter have with these gals. They recognize her, respond to her and add a nurturing dimension to her life. They also take care of the family compost as they peck away.

So, I concluded, raising chickens offers a good life for our feathered friends, a sense of peace, a connection to nature and our food source, eggs with high nutritional value, a composting and fertilization system, free entertainment and another reason to rise and shine. No wonder there are so many eggheads out there and so many resources for them:

BackYardChickens
Urban Alliance For Sustainability
Urban chicken trend on rise in Bay Area
Urban Chickens Network

Also watch City Egg, Country Egg on QUEST to learn more about a study at UC Davis that compares store-bought eggs and farm fresh eggs.

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I often look at the chemical ingredients in what I buy. I shop at farmers markets for organic produce and use green cleaning supplies. So, it caught me off guard when a friend remarked, "you are so aware of what you eat, why aren't you just as curious about what you drink?" Well, we drink organic coffee but not organic wine. I was worried about sacrificing taste and I just didn't think most vineyards were heavily sprayed with pesticides. Then I learned that wine grapes are the second most sprayed crop in the state. This didn't seem like it could be that good for the farm workers, the Earth, or the consumer. Several studies have found trace amounts of pesticides in wine. They may be at extremely low amounts, but what kind of impact could pesticide residues have overtime?

Armed with a new green cause, I set out to find more information about eco-wines. I learned that organic wine is just one type of green wine — there is also wine made with organic grapes. It turns out I had been drinking some of these wines and enjoying them. The thing is, you can't call it "organic wine" if the wine has added sulfites, a naturally occurring compound. Most winemakers add sulfites to help preserve the wine and make it more stable. If a wine is made from organic grapes but contains sulfites, the world "organic" can only be mentioned as part of the ingredient claim on the back of the bottle. No wonder I didn't know I was drinking wine farmed organically.

It turns out northern Sonoma County and Mendocino county are hotbeds for green wine. In the course of reporting this story, I visited several of these wine makers. Bonterra Vineyards, below Ukiah, has been farming organically since 1987 and now farms one of their ranches, McNab, biodynamically. Their red blend is nicely balanced and tastes very good.

Biodynamic is a novel form of organic farming practice with its roots in France. A biodynamic vineyard is a self-sustaining ecosystem — making organic compost, removing chemicals from the soil and farming with the cycles of the Earth.  Biodynamic has its own international certification. (Here is a list of their certified wines). Just up the 101 from Bonterra is Parducci Wine Cellars. This family run company is farming organic grapes and in some cases, biodynamically. Parducci also claims to be one of the most sustainable wineries in the country.

Sustainable is a squishy term. Sustainable wineries may be running off solar power or doing creek restoration to save spawning salmon but they are not necessarily organic and they are not certified. However, the California Sustainable Winegrowing Program is working toward an industry certification. The idea is to raise the entire industry's practices and help vintners make more eco-friendly choices that often include using less chemicals in the vineyards.

Back to sulfites. This ended up being the main reason for the stigma still associated with green wine. Twenty years ago, green wines were uneven and there were not that many choices. Now, several of these eco-wines are winning high points from the industry. Organic wine can only contain naturally occurring sulfites, under 10ppm. Wines farmed organically must keep the added sulfites below 100ppm. Conventional wine can contain sulfites as high as 300ppm. When I was reporting this story, several folks asked me if I was going to explain why they get headaches from red wine. Isn't it the sulfites? Actually, it is not known why some people get headaches from drinking red wine. It could be the histamines. It doesn't look like it's the sulfites. Less than 1% of the population, according to the FDA, is sensitive to sulfites. The reaction is a respiratory one.

Anyway, if you enjoy wine, I encourage you to think beyond red and white but to consider green, too. To find out more, listen to our radio story and check out our links. Also, green wine pioneer, Paul Dolan together with Parducci has created a green wine handbook which is very helpful.

Listen to the The Politics of Green Wine radio report online.

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Is this you in the kitchen?

Last year, I stumbled across a new series of lectures on Food Ethics & Environment at Stanford University. Headlining the series was the incomparable Michael Pollan, who led an interactive discussion on the evolution of food culture in the U.S. I was amazed at the level of passion in the audience and moreover the knowledge level of the audience. I left inspired to take my time with food and eat a little healthier (that worked for about a week).

This year, Stanford again delivers a stellar lineup. Over the next few weeks and months– there will be discussions ranging from water, the affect of global warming on our food, fair trade coffee, and even a conversation with a organic farmer (it's Joel Salatin, one of the heroes from the "Omnivore's Dilemma").

So before you give thanks next week, consider a heaping serving of food science.

All events are free. They take place at the Annenberg Auditorium on the Stanford University Campus. The events are usually held on Thursday nights at 7pm. For more info, check out the Stanford Ethics Website.

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Since the CSA only buys whole animals, members get a few interesting things in each delivery. As Adler says, not every cut on an animal is a grill-able cut. Some cuts require other cooking techniques, and so members are challenged to do braises and stews with what they get. The idea is to create a new market for many of the local, small-scale producers. And Adler says she's been getting phone calls from many others looking to join.

Adler has decided the CSA will take the summer off, so she can work on restructuring it into a more cooperative model. As she says, one of the goals of the CSA is for consumers to connect with their producers and she's hoping the CSA's structure can reflect that. The good news is a number of other meat CSA's have arrived on the scene in the Bay Area for those of you looking to join one. Those are:

• The Clark Summit Meat Club
• Sonoma County Meat Buying Club
• Marin Sun Farms
• And here's a list of meat CSA's nationwide

As I also discovered in this story, eating a low-carbon diet is not simple. Researchers are just starting to get a handle on the methodology used to do a life cycle analysis for food. And the news isn't good for meat and cheese lovers – it turns out red meat and dairy products have the highest carbon footprints. The further you dive into their life cycle, the more complicated it gets. Luckily, Gail Feenstra of UC Davis's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program has a few simple tips to cut your carbon.

• Eat less red meat and dairy
• Avoid foods grown in heated greenhouses by eating seasonal food
• Avoid food transported by air by eating locally
• Consolidate your shopping into as few trips as possible
• Waste less food. If it goes into a landfill, it emits the same gases as cows

You can get a sense of the footprint of your diet through the Bon Appetit Management Company's Eat Low Carbon Calculator or you can look up a local farmer's market with Local Harvest.

You may listen to "Eating a Low Carbon Diet" report online, as well as find additional links and resources.

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Organic Fed / Certified Organic

All organic eggs are certified by the USDA. Organic eggs come from hens whose feed is free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and commercial fertilizers. Organic chicken feed contains no animal byproducts and the hens have never been given antibiotics.

Hormones and Antibiotics:

The FDA banned the use of hormones – most notably diethylstilbestrol, or DES – in poultry in 1959, after they not only caused tragic health problems in consumers but also failed to stimulate growth in chickens. "Hormone free" is a misleading bit of marketing that suggests other egg producers are illegally dosing their birds.

Kept in Cages

Some hens are kept in battery cages; enclosures so small the animals can't spread their wings. Battery caged hens are crammed as many as six chickens into a cage at a time, leaving each bird with less personal space than a sheet of ordinary notebook paper. Critics say the battery system causes the spread of disease, requires the painful de-beaking of birds, and restricts natural bird behaviors, such as dusting or nesting.

Have Access to Outside

"Free Range" and "Free Roaming" are terms that bring to mind idyllic barnyard scenes. These labels, which are regulated by the USDA, may be used by a producer if their hens are allowed some access to the outdoors. This does not guarantee constant access, nor is there any specification of the size of the outdoor area (which is, of course, a penned area, not a range).

Beaks Clipped

Also known as debeaking, or beak trimming, is a process by which parts of the beak of a chicken or turkey are trimmed. Many variations of debeaking are used. Most commonly, the beak is shortened permanently, with the lower beak somewhat longer than the upper beak. The goal of this is to reduce cannibalism in stressed-out bird populations, such as in crowded egg-laying hen houses.

Forced Molted

When light and temperature are manipulated so hens lay eggs more than normal.

Omega-3 enriched

Omega-3 is a polyunsaturated fatty acid considered crucial by some for developing brains and preventing heart disease and depression. Farmers boost the omega-3 content of their hens' eggs by adding ground flaxseed, algae, or even fish oil to the birds' feed.

My own kind choice is to stay informed, shop at the local farmers' market and ask questions, and someday, raise my own.

If you have any tips or insights into local egg farms, please do share!

For more egg carton terms, go to:

http://blog.pennlive.com/naturalliving/2007/06/eggs.html

Amy Gotliffe is Conservation Manager at The Oakland Zoo.

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