By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

For years we’ve been told that pesticides and herbicides are necessary for big agricultural operations because they increase yields.

But what if it weren’t true?

Recent research on potatoes showed that low levels of herbicides, which did not result in obvious damage to the plants above ground, negatively affected their underground growth, reducing yields.

The Oregon researchers tested low levels of herbicide to assess a plant’s resilience to exposures that would be assumed to be safe, because they weren’t concentrated enough to wilt the plant’s foliage or cause any obvious signs of damage.

Yet they found that the applications - seven different herbicides were tested and applied at certain times in the plant’s development - did affect the size and number of the potato tubers produced, according to a news release about the study by the American Society of Agronomy.

Potatoes were chosen for the project because scientists suspected that their plant structure would provide am easy way to check on the effects of low-levels of herbicides. The idea was to consider damage to a plant’s reproductive cycle, which is a criteria for studying the effects of toxins on animals but not plants.

“The stage of plant development when exposed to a pesticide has an important impact on what plant organs are injured. Vegetation may or may not display symptoms of injury when reproductive organs are severely damaged,” according to the news release. “Yield and quality reduction can have significant economic and ecological effects.”

The research by the U.S. EPA’s Western Ecology Division has been printed in the latest issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality, a peer reviewed publication put out by the American Society of Agronomy.

The article notes that American agriculture’s dependence on herbicides - a multi-billion dollar industry that annually dumps about 500 million pounds of herbicides on the land at last count - is worth evaluating because  of “potential risk are non-targeted crops, rare and endangered plant species, native plant communities, and organisms that are dependent on natural plant communities for food and shelter.”

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now

In its waning days, the outgoing Bush administration is promoting oil-shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming by passing midnight-hour regulations that would open public lands to oil-shale exploration, leasing and development. In November, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management put these regulations into effect to develop an oil shale program that the bureau says could add 800 billion barrels of oil from land in the Western United States.

In response, earlier this week, 11 environmental groups notified the administration and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of their intent to file federal lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act. The BLM has 60 days to respond. The environmental groups, which include the Sierra Club, the Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity, among others, want the administration to consider the effects that commercial oil-shale development will have on endangered species. [Read more →]

By Melissa Segrest
Green Right Now

Plenty of Hollywood celebrities profess their love of the environment and their green lifestyles. That ardor extends to their children’s clothes, but of course just any old socially conscious onesie won’t do. Thus, the rise of ultra-trendy kiddie clothing lines with an environmental bent.

Tiny Revolutionary T-shirts have shown up on the children of Sheryl Crow (with son Wyatt, left), John Travolta, Matt Damon, Courtney Cox and more. The makers say their kiddie T-shirts are “100 percent sweatshop free and earth-friendly” organic. Because a big chunk of the cost of a T goes to organizations such as Africa Aid and Hands to Hearts, these simple shirts can cost as much as Mommy’s Calvin Klein T ($40). And they’re funny, too. Among their cuter offerings are the Ghandi T proclaiming “Be the Change you Want to See in the World,” and the “More Milk, Less War” T-shirt.

[Read more →]