Compost News

DOW URGED TO WITHDRAW WEED KILLER

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, November 1, 2001 (ENS) - A new e-mail campaign is demanding that Dow AgroSciences take Confront and other persistent, clopyralid containing herbicides off the market until Dow can demonstrate their safety to both backyard and centralized composting processes.

The web based campaign has been launched by the Athens, Georgia based GrassRoots Recycling Network (GRRN) at: http://www.grrn.org

"Confront is totally contradictory to all of our goals for recycling, resource conservation and sustainability," said GRRN president Anne Morse. "Dow's proposal that the solution lies in educating composters and making composters pay for expensive laboratory testing is completely unacceptable."

"Dow must follow the Precautionary Principle and withdraw Confront immediately until it can be proven safe for organics recycling," added Morse. "Dow must take full financial responsibility for damage caused by its products."

Morse said losses in Washington state due to unmarketable compost are significant, according to state and industry officials.

A class of persistent herbicide products in turf and agricultural applications, of which clopyralid is a member, has been detected in finished compost in Washington state, Pennsylvania and New Zealand, says the trade journal BioCycle.

BioCycle said that, "Sensitive plants like tomatoes, beans and sunflower grown in compost containing clopyralid can be deformed and damaged. Even compost containing manure from animals that have eaten hay treated with picloram, a Dow chemical in the same class, have been damaged by minute quantities of the herbicide."

"Dow AgroSciences claims to have fulfilled its obligations with its label warning," said Gabriella Ulnar-Heffner, a Seattle Public Utilities program development specialist. "The label is totally inadequate sinceits message is only being delivered to the commercial applicator who applies the chemical to lawns and not to the homeowner or lawn maintenance company who collects the grass clippings and makes the compost. Moreover, clopyralid levels have been detected in compost products produced from such agricultural residuals as manures, straw and animal bedding."