@ Vinlander - I can get very interested in almost anything in the soil that has a purpose and a natural need to be there for whatever reason, fit for purpose so to speak, what I don't care for is the unnatural and that includes my runner beans soaking up toxic inks and folks on boxes spouting on about the safety of toxins and you have to remember that even the collective organic experts are hugely varied in their dogma - I like bugs, not too keen on radioactivity though ;D
I can understand that, and it's certainly safe to avoid anything that isn't naturally in the soil - but you could be even safer - where do you draw the line between reason and obsession?
Plastic ties aren't OK? pots made from anything except wood and string? anything that has metallic iron? nails, poles? - until they rust, when they magically become fine - presumably?
I think my view is balanced - whether or not you agree...
There is a range of views in the middle ground, but at the extremes there are certainly as many paid propagandists to the commercial side of me as there are eco/alternative/spirit/homeopathic type flannel/wafflers on the other.
I personally try very hard to avoid any new molecules that by definition haven't been around long enough to be understood - depending on how complex they are, that means between 100 and 1000 years.
I'd like to avoid all the pseudo-oestrogens we are bombarded with in PET bottles and the like (they worry me 100x more than copper or derris) - but it is very difficult to do that and still live in this century (or the last).
If the molecules are designed to kill something - anything - then they are 100x as frightening and if they are designed to be persistent in the environment (most) they are 100x as frightening again.
If they end up actually on my food (as opposed to around the roots) then 100x more frightening again.
This makes all modern pest/fungi/herbicides between 1 million and 100 million times as frightening as reactive inks and mineral oils (to my poor brain at least).
The question is how much paranoia gives benefits (like in Catch 22) and where diminishing returns cut in.
I certainly can't answer that question - but the more we know about who is on our side (like most bugs and some pundits) and who really isn't (like absolutely anyone who sells you stuff - or thinks they might) - the less time spent watching our feet miss the cracks in the pavement and the more time spent enjoying the big picture.
Cheers.
PS. Radiation is a relatively non-complex threat to health. Before you start worrying too much about low level radiation you should check out 'hormesis'. And even at high levels it needs to be pointed out that Chernobyl is expected to kill 4000 people before their time (a lot less have died to date) whereas the recent tsunami definitely has killed a lot more already - maybe 20x more when the tally is finished. The Fukushima plant - horrible as it is and getting worse - is still very very unlikely to match Chernobyl, and very very unlikely to be more than a blip on the overall catastrophe - unless you are a journalist who gets more kicks from 'bigging' a small story than reporting a huge one straight.
