Poison Ivy: Could You Please Pass the Salt?

Along with watching what we put in/on our bodies, my family also likes to watch what we're adding to the environment.  (Eventually, those chemicals can make it into our drinking water and/or food through ground water.)  During the spring and summer months, I see many people spraying their lawns with weed and bug killers.  I get it - you don't want to be "that neighbor" with all of the dandelions growing in your yard, and you don't want to be covered in mosquito bites after being outside for 5 minutes.  But we still have to think of the environment and our health.

Although there is a difference between an insecticide and herbicide (one is meant to kill bugs, the other is meant to kill vegetation), the EPA sets standards for them exactly the same.  They actually group insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc. into one group and call them all pesticides.

"A pesticide is any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest. Pests can be insects and insect-like organisms, mice and other vertebrate animals, unwanted plants (weeds), or fungi, bacteria and viruses that cause plant diseases. Though often misunderstood to refer only to insecticides, the term pesticide also applies to herbicides, fungicides, and various other substances used to control pests." 1

Therefore based on the EPA's definition of a pesticide, the regulations for weed killers are the same as bug killers.  And we already know from my previous post about pesticides that thousands of pesticides are granted conditional registration and are used before any testing for safety is even done.  (For a full explanation, please read my post about buying organic!)

So put down that bottle of Roundup and keep reading!

Besides being "that neighbor" that everyone silently scolds for a yellow lawn, in my opinion, there's another legit reason to use herbicides - poison ivy!  (Or oak, or sumac!)  According to WebMD, about 85% of the population are sensitive to it.  And even if you weren't sensitive to it when you were younger, you could be now, or vice versa.  Although I have never had a reaction to it myself even when others I had been hiking with got it, that percentage makes me cautious enough to avoid it.

Seeing it out in the woods is one thing, but what happens when it's in your own yard?  We have a patch of poison ivy on the lower, not-used-so-much part of our yard that we normally just avoid.  But this year we decided that we want to build our son a club house, and of course, that's the only spot that makes sense to build one.  I've heard (and seen the rashes from!!) horror stories of people taking heavy precautions to pull out the vines - elbow gloves and plastic bags covering their hands and arms that they use to just pull out and immediately turn into the bag - but they still end up covered in a rash!  So pulling it out ourselves was out of the question and hiring someone else to remove it was really expensive.  So I paid Google a visit for some help finding a natural herbicide.  We thought we'd have to go through a list of testing before we found something that actually worked, but we got it on the first try!  Here's an example of how it worked on one of many vines that were starting to take over a fence on our side yard.

Taken one week after application

I apologize, but I don't have a "before" picture of the poison ivy we killed.  I actually thought I had more time to take it after putting it on at lunchtime, but by the evening it already wasn't looking so hot!  This is the "after" picture, which is of a spot where it was infested with poison ivy - basically, everything you see in the picture that is dead was was once very vibrant poison ivy.  We still have a little spot-cleaning to do, but as you can see, the solution cleared it out very nicely and what is left of the ivy isn't exactly looking healthy.

Taken one week after application

So how did we get rid of our unwanted vegetation?

There are three parts to this solution and each serve a slightly different purpose.  (After trying it and researching why it works, I think we could have gotten away with just one, but I can't guarantee it because we didn't actually try them individually.  If I do, I'll let you know how it works!)

The first ingredient is vinegar.  Yep, plain old white or cider vinegar.  The acetic acid in the vinegar (found at concentrations of 5-8% 2) destroys the leaves of the vegetation, but not the roots in all cases.  If you use it by itself on a younger plant, the roots won't have enough stored energy to regrow the leaves, eventually depleting the roots of their nutrients and killing them too.  If you're using it on an older plant, applying it enough times to new growth will eventually deplete the roots of their leaf-making power also.  It's just going to take longer.

The next part to our homemade weed-killer is salt.  Salt will kill the plant and make the ground uninhabitable by future vegetation - at least until the rain dilutes it enough.  Apparently, "salting the earth" was a war tactic used in ancient times.  They would spread salt (or other minerals) over the conquered land so that the city could not be rebuilt. 3   So I'm assuming this would work on its own also, like the vinegar, but it focuses more on the roots.

The last part is dish soap.  Normally I'd be against this, but it only called for 4-5 drops, so I obliged in hopes that it would actually work.  The soap apparently helps the solution bind to the leaves of the plant.  (I would assume that you could use any kind of soap, including natural ones like Castile soap.)

Now, although this is a natural herbicide, you have to follow the same guidelines as you would when using/consuming something labeled "natural" - too much of a good thing can still be bad, so everything in moderation!  Vinegar and salt can also kill insects, including bees if too much is used.  It can also create issues if you're using the salt near a well, pond or other water source, increasing the concentration of salt to an unhealthy level.  I found that these effects can be so bad that even the Maryland Department of the Environment, along with other environmental groups, are researching better ways to deice the roadways than using salt. 4

So just use it sparingly and watch what you put it on - it will kill ALL vegetation that it touches, not just the weeds and poison plants!

Natural Weed Killer

1 gallon vinegar ($2.99)

1 cup salt ($0.49 for 26 oz)

4-5 drops of dish detergent or soap

Place the vinegar and salt in a pot on the stove and heat just until the salt dissolves.  Transfer to a spray bottle or yard sprayer and add the soap.  Spray on the leaves and root of the plant.

(It's effective AND it only cost me $3.48!  A 1 1/3 gal bottle of Roundup costs $23.94 at our local Lowes!)

Some other possible solutions we found after we already tried the solution above:

• Boiling Water (Wish I would have found this one initially!  How much more natural can ya get?!  Just pour it straight from the pot/kettle all over unwanted vegetation!)
• Rubbing Alcohol (Just spray on the leaves and roots with a spray bottle or lawn sprayer.) 
• Suffocation by Newspaper (Lay at least 4 sheets of it over the vegetation you want to kill and wait.)

If you try any of these methods, please leave a comment below to let me know how it worked out for you!  I'm planning on dumping boiling water on the remaining poison ivy to see how that does so I'll keep you posted!

To Buy or Not to Buy Organic: That is the Question!

I was taking a walk around our neighborhood a few days ago when something caught my eye.  I thought, "I NEED a picture of that for my blog!"  So I walked back home after walking for an hour already (with my son in the stroller asking every 30 seconds, "Are we going home yet?"), got my camera and walked back to take the picture.  I am pretty sure the neighbor who saw me doing this thinks I'm a tad bit strange, but it was for a good cause!  :)  

So why was I so excited about getting this picture?  Well, I feel like it raises an important question that you need to ask yourself when deciding whether or not to buy organic produce:

If it's dangerous for humans and animals to just walk through areas that have been treated with pesticides, then isn't it dangerous for them to ingest produce that has been treated also?

I honestly never thought about it until I was pregnant with my son back in 2009.  I was walking to my car with my large belly in tow and was told to avoid the man a few feet away from me spraying his vegetable garden with pesticides.  I thought, "Well that's kind of rude to spray that so close to where people walk."  I was angry that someone else could be putting me and my child in danger with their poisons.  But then after thinking about it for a minute, I realized that I was voluntarily ingesting that poison every day - in my salad with a crisp bed of greens, sweet red peppers and juicy, ripe tomatoes...in my garlic mashed potatoes with a side of steamed broccoli...and especially in the crazy amount of watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, and strawberries that I craved while pregnant!  So, why did I think it wasn't okay to be near someone spraying pesticides, but that it was okay to eat the produce that had been sprayed with it?

I needed to find out about the safety of pesticides.  So of course, the math and science lover in me began to do some research and here are some things that I found:

1.  All pesticides must be registered/approved through the EPA and your state, which can have different regulations depending on where you live. 1  Seems a little comforting to know that someone is doing something to look out for us, right?

2.  To be registered, the EPA must confirm that the pesticide "can be used with a reasonable certainty of no harm to human health and without posing unreasonable risks to the environment." 1  Well, that sounds pretty good too, although I'd like to ask them what "reasonable certainty" and "unreasonable risks" actually mean.

3.  The EPA can grant "conditional registration" to allow a company to begin using the pesticide before it is completely tested. 2  Wait a second...the only reason I was kind of comforted by #1 and #2 is because the pesticides had to be approved to say they won't cause unreasonable harm to us.  But now testing can be done AFTER the poison is already in use?

That last one reeeeally bother me.  At first glace, it seemed like the EPA was trying to do what they could to protect us, but then they had to add loopholes like conditional registration.  How is that protecting us?  I looked into it a little bit more and what I found was shocking.  About 65% of more than 16,000 pesticides were first approved through this conditional registration. 4  That's more than 10,000 different pesticides being used without first having their safety completely tested!  So I looked for some specific instances where it bit the EPA in the rear for having this loophole for the use of pesticides.  Two popular ones are nanosilver and clothianidin.  Here are their stories:

Nanosilver

Because it is related to silver, which is considered "safe" by the EPA standards, nanosilver was conditionally approved for use as an antimicrobial agent. Turns out, nanosilver isn't "safe" like silver - it is very easily absorbed by the body because of its size (similar to the size of viruses). It is known to be used in things like food packaging, supplements, textiles, electronics, appliances, cosmetics, medical devices, and room sprays, and it doesn't have to be labeled as "nano" on the ingredients list. 3

What are some of the issues that nanosilver can cause? It can cause issues with reproduction and in vitro is known to effect brain development and sometimes cause death. 4 If inhaled, it can cause pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases 5 It can cause blood-brain barrier destruction and kill nerve cells. 6 In addition to that, the amount of nanosilver that would been needed to make it an effective antimicrobial agent is also toxic to the cells that make keratin (keratin gives strength to hair, skin, and nails) and collagen (collagen helps your skin stay elastic and is part of connective tissues in your body like muscles and tendons). 7 But yet, it was conditionally approved and had been used for decades before any significant research was done to test it's safety. 7

Clothianidin 

Right from the EPA's website, clothianidin was first approved in 2003 because it was safer to humans and wildlife than two other alternative pesticides that were in use at the time and were extremely toxic to bees.  They also state that clothianidin "generally poses less risk to agricultural workers and fish and wildlife" than the alternative pesticides.  (What do they mean by generally???)  Clothianidin is also toxic to bees, like most pesticides, and actually has on its label that it cannot be used when the plant is flowering or there are bees "in the area". 7  (That is their fix for the bee toxicity issue?  Who has the authority to say that the bees aren't "in the area" so it's okay to spray?)  So it's killing bees, the insects that keep our fruits and veggies from going extinct, and it's still toxic to agricultural workers and fish and wildlife...but it's still in use.  I suppose we should be comforted that clothianidin is safer than the alternatives???

And those are just two examples.  Moving on...

So even if I overlook the part about the EPA allowing use of pesticides based on a theory that they won't cause "unreasonable risks" to humans or the environment, I still must ask this:

What does "unreasonable risks" to humans or the environment mean to the EPA that these pesticides are being approved?

The EPA has a article on their website that flat out tells you that pesticides can cause "health problems, such as birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other effects that might occur over a long period of time." 3  The severity of the effects all depends on how much is consumed and for how long, of course, but the EPA sets a standard for this "safe" dose.  So what is "safe" or an "unreasonable risk" to the EPA?  A pesticide that causes birth defects that only effect 1% of the population?  One that causes cancer in only 5% of the population?  Once again, "side-effects" come into play.  The question is not whether or not you're being poisoned or affected by these pesticides, it is when will you end up seeing the effects through something like cancer?

So if the EPA isn't going to actually regulate and test pesticides properly before exposing us to them, then there are only two options to avoid feeding yourself and your family pesticides:  grow your own food without the use of pesticides or buy organic. 

 

I know that growing your own food is not always possible and that organic = expensive in most cases, but it's absolutely possible to clean up your grocery list without breaking the bank.  Here's how I did it without busting out my overalls and shovel...

I started out small, of course!  It was way too overwhelming and wasteful to start over by going through my cupboards and fridge and throwing everything out that wasn't organic.  I also couldn't see myself going to the grocery store the next day and only placing organic items in my cart.  (Where would I get the extra money?)  So I was picky at first.

1. I prioritized which fruits or vegetables I should buy organic, ones that were found to have the most pesticide residue.  The "Clean Fifteen" and "Dirty Dozen" lists from the Environmental Working Group were a great help!  So if I couldn't afford to buy all organic or it wasn't available, I felt comforted knowing that I was at least picking non-organic produce that was low in residuals.
2. I replaced a couple of my usual produce items with organic ones slowly over time while I worked on finding some more ways to save money.  (See next paragraph)
   
3. I shopped and planned meals by item availability.  I went to the store to see what organic items were available and based my menu off of that.

Love local farm stores for savings on spices!

How did I make up for the extra cost? 

1. I bought in bulk when items where on sale, especially ones that I could freeze or were good at room temperature for longer periods.  This included meats, breads, dried beans, pastas, etc.
2. I worked my weekly menu around the items that were on sale.
3. I started taking advantage of local farmers' markets for discounted items.  You may be surprised at how many are in your community offering amazing deals on produce, bulk items and more!
4. I gave up a few convenience items.  For example, I didn't buy that box of cookies that I had been eyeing up since I walked into the store.  Did I still eat junk food?  Uh, is the Pope Catholic??  But I made it from scratch at a fraction of the cost!  From-scratch or DIY savings for many things (even laundry detergent!) added up and allowed me to buy even more organic items every time I shopped!

After about 4 years of these small switches to organic, I still buy some non-organic items (avocados, bananas, and dried spices for instance).  Even though I haven't transitioned completely and it has taken a while, it hasn't been overwhelming and hasn't made my family broke!  I'm doing what I can and feel good about my progress.  So next time you go to the store, I encourage you to switch just one item on your grocery list for organic so that you too can start taking steps in the right direction to one day be released from your dependence on pesticide laden foods.

 

P.S.  If you're concerned about GMOs, "USDA organic" also means "non-GMO", according to their labeling requirements.  If you're not familiar with GMOs, I'm working on a post that covers them for another time!  :)