I'm in the science profession myself. I've done lots of toxicity work and know quite a bit about contaminates, exposure, risk factors, etc. I too wonder about the things people tend to panic about. For some reason (maybe lack of a solid science education in our schools) our society seems programed to never actually look at the facts or ask critical questions about the issues. It's somehow easier to believe the media hype, panic, and then sue everyone in sight. I think a lot of it is because most people just don't have enough understanding of the basic science and math needed to evaluate risks. So when they watch that news report the sensationalized the danger of lead from garden hoses, most people don't step back and think about it objectively. Rather they throw away their hose and run out and buy a new one that is 'drink-safe'. Never mind that they've likely just made the contamination load in their garden worse because of all the plasticizer that might come from a new hose. Most people don't take the time to understand the issues. It never occurs to them to go look up the original study that says drinking hoses are unsafe. If they did they might find out that the vast majority of hoses, used in a normal manner did not leach any lead. They'd also discover that in order for any amount of lead to be detected the water had to be in contact with the hose for hours or days. And for the most part it lead was leached only from hoses that were full of standing water and were then heated (such as a hose filled with water laying in the hot sun all day). So if you're really worried roll your hose up after each use and store it in the shade. If you do leave it out in the sun, flush the hose by running the water for a few mins and all the lead will be gone. You see news stories where some report went out and bought 10 hose, filled them with water, and then had the water tested. And 8-10 hoses can back with high levels of lead!!! It doesn't occur to most people to think about these studies in real world terms or ask critical questions. These studies never hold up to actual scientific scrutiny. Such as these tests were done on new hoses. A new hose is going to leach out most during it's first uses, so one that has been in use for years might not have any leaching lead. Did they test any hose that had 10g, 100g, 1000g, etc run through them? Also did they rinse the hose out before it was tested? The hose may be coated with some oil and dust left from the manufacturing process and maybe it's that dust the contains the lead. If so the 1st time you use it you'd be removing all the lead. Did they test the source water to determine what levels of lead were preset before the test? Was it tap water (most tap water contains some low levels of lead already)? Did it come from a faucet? What if the pipes and faucet were made out of old material with high levels of lead? Where did they get the hoses from, how many did they test? Is the sample size statistically significant? What about the lab? What type of test did they run (not all tests are the same)? Labs can make mistakes too so if one sample is particularly high or low did the person evaluating the data look for signs of lab error? Even if all of this pans out and it turns out there actually is some lead in the water. What does this mean for your garden? If lead is only present in water that has sat in the hose and lets say the hose holds about 1/2 gallons of water. When you turn your hose on that 1st 1/2 gallon contains lead but then you keep running it and water on 20 gallons into your garden. That 1st sample is not representative of your entire 20 gallons. To test properly you'd need to fill a 20 gallon contain and mix well. Or take a small sample every 5 gallons and mix those. So if you have 1/2 gallon with lead 10 times the safe level and 20 gallons with no lead. Overall your 20.5 gallons is actually 10 time lower than the safe level (the math here is a little oversimplified but you get the idea). So if you need to buy a new hose it makes sense to buy one that is 'drink-safe'. But should you chuck your old hose. Probably not. It really is safe to use. And if you want to be environmentally friendly it is always best to use what you have, buying new and throwing out the old is going to add to landfill space, use a bunch of gasoline to have it shipped to you, use up energy from the manufacture and potentially create more pollutants during manufacture, and so on. That's just he 'lead in the hose' issue. Each new issue has it's own set of facts to consider. Even if there are some risk, what is the cost vs the benefit? What level of risk are you comfortable with? Mostly it's too much work to figure these things out for ourselves so we follow the "media-hype", what all my neighbors are doing, what my organic priestess tell me to, what everyone on that garden forum is saying, etc...

Can gentically engineered foods help feed the hungry? Are anti-GMO activists and over-zealous environmentalists standing in the way of the hungry being fed? The hope that GMO foods might bring solutions to malnutrition and world hunger was never more dramatically illustrated than when Time magazine ran a cover story titled "Grains of Hope." The article joyfully announced the development of a genetically engineered "golden rice." This new strain of GM rice has genes from viruses and daffodils spliced into its genetic instructions. The result is a form of rice that is a golden-yellow color (much like daffodil flowers), and that produces beta-carotene, which the human body normally converts into Vitamin A. Nearly a million children die every year because they are weakened by Vitamin A deficiencies and an additional 350,000 go blind. Golden rice, said Time, will be a godsend for the half of humanity that depends on rice for its major staple. Merely eating this rice could prevent blindness and death. The development of golden rice was, it seemed, compelling and inspiring evidence that GM crops are the answer to malnutrition and hunger. Time quoted former U.S. President Jimmy Carter: "Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy, starvation is." Shortly after the Time cover story, Monsanto and other biotechnology companies launched a $50 million marketing campaign, including $32 million in TV and print advertising. The ads, complete with soft focus fields and smiling children, said that "biotech foods could help end world hunger." Other ad campaigns have followed. One Monsanto ad tells the public: "Biotechnology is one of tomorrow's tools in our hands today. Slowing its acceptance is a luxury our hungry world cannot afford." Within a few months, the biotech industry had spent far more on these ads than it had on developing golden rice. Their purpose? "Unless I'm missing something," wrote Michael Pollan in The New York Times Magazine, "the aim of this audacious new advertising campaign is to impale people like me -- well-off first-worlders dubious about genetically engineered food -- on the horns of a moral dilemma ... If we don't get over our queasiness about eating genetically modified food, kids in the third world will go blind." The implication of the ads is that lifesaving food is being held hostage by anti-science activists. In the years since Time proclaimed the promises of golden rice, however, we've learned a few things. For one thing, we've learned that golden rice will not grow in the kinds of soil that it must to be of value to the world's hungry. To grow properly, it requires heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides -- expensive inputs unaffordable to the very people that the variety is supposed to help. And we've also learned that golden rice requires large amounts of water -- water that might not be available in precisely those areas where Vitamin A deficiency is a problem, and where farmers cannot afford costly irrigation projects. And one more thing -- it turns out that golden rice doesn't work, even in theory. Malnourished people are not able to absorb Vitamin A in this form. And even if they could, they'd have to eat an awful lot of the stuff. An 11-year-old boy would have to eat 27 bowls of golden rice a day in order to satisfy his minimum requirement for the vitamin. I'm sure that given enough time and enough money, some viable genetically modified (GM) crops could be developed that contain more nutrients or have higher yields. But I'm not sure that even if that were to happen, it would actually benefit the world's poor. Monsanto and the other biotech companies aren't developing these seeds with the intention of giving them away. If people can't afford to buy GM seeds, or if they can't afford the fertilizers, pesticides and water the seeds require, they'll be left out. Poverty is at the root of the problem of hunger. As Peter Rosset, director of Food First, reminds us, "People do not have Vitamin A deficiency because rice contains too little Vitamin A, but because their diet has been reduced to rice and almost nothing else." And what, pray tell, has reduced these people to such poverty and their diets to such meager fare? In the words of the British writer George Monbiot: The world has a surplus of food, but still people go hungry. They go hungry because they cannot afford to buy it. They cannot afford to buy it because the sources of wealth and the means of production have been captured and in some cases monopolized by landowners and corporations. The purpose of the biotech industry is to capture and monopolize the sources of wealth and the means of production ... GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them. They can patent the seeds and the processes which give rise to them. They can make sure that crops can't be grown without their patented chemicals. They can prevent seeds from reproducing themselves. By buying up competing seed companies and closing them down, they can capture the food market, the biggest and most diverse market of all. No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must persuade us to focus on something else ... We are told that ... by refusing to eat GM products, we are threatening the developing world with starvation, an argument that is, shall we say, imaginative ... With rare exceptions, genetically engineered crops are being created not because they're productive or because they address real human needs, but because they're patentable. The biotech companies have invested billions of dollars because they sense in this technology the potential for enormous profit and the means to gain control over the world's food supply. Their goal is not to help subsistence farmers feed themselves. Their goal is maximum profit. While Monsanto would like us to believe they are seeking to alleviate world hunger, there is actually a very dark side to the company's efforts. For countless centuries farmers have fed humanity by saving the seed from one years crop to plant the following year. But Monsanto, the company that claims its motives are to help feed the hungry, has developed what it calls a "Technology Protection System" that renders seeds sterile. Commonly known as "terminator technology" and developed with taxpayer funding by the USDA and Delta & Pine Land Company (an affiliate of Monsanto), the process genetically alters seeds so that their offspring will be sterile for all time. If employed, this technology would ensure that farmers cannot save their own seeds, but would have to come back to Monsanto year after year to purchase new ones. Critics refer to these genetically engineered seeds as suicide seeds. "By peddling suicide seeds, the biotechnology multinationals will lock the world's poorest farmers into a new form of genetic serfdom," says Emma Must of the World Development Movement. "Currently 80 percent of crops in developing countries are grown using farm-saved seed. Being unable to save seeds from sterile crops could mean the difference between surviving and going under." To Monsanto and other GMO companies, the terminator and other seed sterilizing technologies are simply business ventures that are designed to enhance profits. In this case, there is not even the implication of benefit to consumers. I wish I could speak more highly of GM foods and their potential. But the technology is now held tightly in the hands of corporations whose motives are, I'm afraid, very different from what they would have us believe. Despite the PR, Monsanto's goal is not to make hunger history. It's to control the staple crops that feed the world. Will GMOs help end world hunger? I don't think so. John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World," the classic "Diet For A New America" and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info This Blogger's Books from The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less by John Robbins Food Revolution, The: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World by John Robbins Many supporters of GMO seeds, are Monsanto supporters. Who is in charge of the USDA-Agricultural Research Service ? I believe it was Tom Vilsack,who is now a member of the cabnit our current Secretary.Who is Tom Vilsack?Google him and find out. Our Supreme Court Justice,Clarence Thomas,,,Used to Work for who> Monsanto.and several top positions in the Food and Drug Administration,and the Department of Agriculture,all filled with former Monsanto Lobbyist, do you really want to believe any thing these people say? I can post more articall s,but I will not, enough has been said,if you are interested at all, in what you, your children,and grandchildren are eating, do your research,,make up your own mind,in the mean time,keep saving your seeds.You might want to google, how many seed saving banks are left here in the U.S., compared to how many there used to be, and why. cAROL

I work with an NRCS agent, and hes a great guy, you have to remeber the agents we see in the office are not politicians, they are , excuse the phrase flunkies, . My agent Dan went to work with the NRCS back in the 90s, he wanted to work in wildlife and conservation, and he did for the first few years, and the office staff supported a agent in charge of ag. Budget cuts and the ag agent was given early retirement and no replacement was hired, they told Dan he would have to fill both the conservation job and the ag job, but Dan freely admits he knows little about ag, but that does not matter. Dan does his best, hes helping me put in better rotational grazing infrastructure, piped water, gravel pads, and good fencing, hes got 75 percent of my cost shared by the govt, plus a incentive payment for keeping the cows out of the woods. But as hes worked with me , he keeps telling me to tell him what I need cause he isnt a farmer. Its the politicians who are at fault, they cut budgets everywhere except in thier own pockets, my dad retired from the army, and growing up Id see politicats come in limos, thousand dollar suits, and five hundred dollar haircuts, theyd smile and shake my dads hand and say how much they appreciated him. But meanwhile while dad was serving, my mom had to apply for foodstamps to feed us. These politicians are already wealthy when they get into office, then taxpayers pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year plus transportation, clothing and other perks. They say we need to control spending, unless it means it affescts them. Originaly in the foundings of this country congress was not paid, it was made up from the wealthier citizens and they paid thier own transportation and was not paid for thier time. Now the wages for congress is an astronomical figure, all together I mean. Im not talking any brand of politics here, whichever way one leans Im sure everyone agrees that the politicians are greedy and self serving. And any bill they right they are going to stick a carrot out there wehter or not it makes sense just to try to appease the masses. One thing I learned growing up and watching dad in the service, is to try to legaly get whatever the govt offers, as an American citizen we dont seem entitled to much, so get what you can. josh

Wayne, here's the headline...Crystal power Palmtop Nuclear Fusion Device Invented By Michael Schirber LiveScience Staff Writer posted: 27 April 2005 01:00 pm ET The nuclear reaction that powers the Sun has been reproduced in a pocket-sized device, scientists announced today. Researchers have for years tried to harness nuclear fusion to power the world. But its cousin, nuclear fission -- the breaking apart of atoms -- is the only method so far commercially viable. The latest invention is not in the same league as efforts to build complex commercial reactors. The new device creates a relatively small number of reactions, and requires more energy to operate than it produces. The Real Deal (AP) - Previous claims of tabletop fusion have been met with skepticism and even derision by physicists. In one of the most notable cases, Dr. B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in England shocked the world in 1989 when they announced that they had achieved so-called cold fusion at room temperature. Their work was discredited after repeated attempts to reproduce it failed. Fusion experts noted that the new UCLA experiment is credible because, unlike the 1989 work, it did not violate basic principles of physics. "This doesn't have any controversy in it because they're using a tried and true method,'' said David Ruzic, professor of nuclear and plasma engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "There's no mystery in terms of the physics.'' -- Associated Press But the configuration is so small and simple that its creators think it may inspire unforeseen applications. "I certainly find it interesting that you can heat a cubic centimeter crystal in your hand, then plunge it in cold water and it will cause nuclear fusion," Seth Putterman from the University of California Los Angeles told LiveScience. Putterman's lay description greatly oversimplifies how the compact apparatus works. Specifically, Putterman and collaborators heat a pyroelectric crystal, lithium tantalite, from minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit to plus 45 in a matter of minutes. This generates an electrical charge -- 100,000 volts -- across the tiny crystal, which is housed in a chamber filled with deuterium gas, a heavy form of hydrogen. The high voltage is focused onto a needle-thin tip, which strips electrons from nearby deuterium nuclei and then accelerates them at a solid target containing deuterium. When two deuterium nuclei collide together at high speed, they fuse to form helium. The Sun also fuses atoms in thermonuclear reactions that create light and heat. The byproduct of the newly discovered lab reaction is a particle called the neutron. The scientists detect about 1,000 neutrons per second. Because neutrons are so penetrating, Putterman said that a hand-held neutron source might one-day be used to do geologic surveys or to look into cargo containers for nuclear devices. "Current neutron generators are extremely cumbersome," Putterman said. "They are about as big as a dentists X-ray machine, so you canÂt carry them into the field." Pyroelectric crystals could also provide a beam of ions for use as a microthruster in a miniature spacecraft. The research is described in the April 28 issue of the journal Nature.