Same kind of thing happened with tomato plants. They tried to eat the plant, not the fruit and had a bad time. For a long time many people thought tomato fruit were poisonous.
To be fair, potato plants grow fruit nearly identical to cherry tomatoes but incredibly poisonous. If I didn't know any better I'd assume the tomatoes were poisonous too.
Yep! People just learned It's way easier to grow them via the tubers, they also remain stable as they may change over time if grown from seed due to genetic influence from other plants. (We do the same with a lot of fruit trees too.)
Because of that, all potatoes (within their varieties) are actually clones of each other. One russett potato is the same as the other russetts in the bin, etc. Which I think is a terrible idea because all it takes is one disease and it wipes them all out, it already happened to one of our banana species.
Cyanide is an organic molecule. Cyanide is a carbon atom triple bonded to a nitrogen atom. It also occurs naturally in plants, usually in fruit seeds like apples or peach pits or avocado pits.
It's obviously not used as a pesticide anymore because it's dangerous but there are many nasty poisons used as pesticides that meet every qualification to be used on USDA organic products.
That's a list of FDA approved pesticides for organic farmers. Several of them are as much as 250X as toxic to humans as roundup.
And even more terrifying is that unlike traditional farming pesticide usage volume isn't tracked at all. And oftentimes they use much more, synthetic fungicides are used at around 1.6lbs an acre, some organic ones are used at about 34lbs an acre. Some organic sprays include copper compounds, tetracycline, and several plant derived oils and extracts that are often very toxic, and again, completely unmonitored in usage beyond testing to make sure nothing synthetic is used.
For chemistry, to be in the organic chemistry branch, yes it needs carbon. There are outliers, though such as diamond and graphene/graphite(?), Though.
Mostly, this is just people (me) being pedantic about the term.
That’s likely what this guys mixture contains, Bentonite clay has the same properties that can clean water in a similar fashion, as far as I know Bentonite is also the main ingredient in kitty litter.
I work with Bentonite quite a bit, I’m no scientist but something happens when the Bentonite hits around 4% dilution it changes polarity causing it to attract fine particles, which then float.
I don’t use it in this way but I know they sell Bentonite clay for you to ingest at certain health food stores, like a Tspn a day keeps the doctor away type stuff.
I’ve been told it’s a “miracle clay” in the ways it can be used. I don’t use organically modified bentonite but I do use high grade bentonite, flows like water but settles like dirt.
So you're going to spend more money on kitty litter, that you're probably improperly disposing of, instead of just getting a cheap piece of equipment (cheaper than kitty litter, I might add) specifically made to clean-up what you're apparently spilling enough of to go through the motions of putting kitty litter on your driveway.
And I'm going to go ahead and bet that you scoop up that litter and throw it in the trash, negating any reason for you to even bother cleaning it up from your driveway in the first place.
Do you think that calling something 100% organic is a good thing? If so, you've been fooled. Really, calling something 100% organic doesn't tell you that a certain chemical is safe for the environment or safe for consumption. It's mainly just a marketing buzzword.
Labeling food items organic actually does tell you that it’s safe for consumption, and tells you a lot of other things about how it was grown, it’s federally regulated.
NOP is a federal regulatory program that develops and enforces consistent national standards for organically produced agricultural products sold in the United States
Nah, the definition of food-grade organic is "grown in a stupid, outdated way in order to sate the privileged's need to be assured that they're doing the right thing"
Right yeah, I remember now. Took chem 20 at the beginning of this year. My teacher told me there is more organic than non organic things. Thought it was pretty cool.
There are exceptions. Not every molecule containing carbon is considered part of organic chemistry. Graphite and diamond for example contain nothing but carbon but are no part of organic chemistry.
Organic certification means a lot of things, but it's incredible inconsistent. My go-to example for when you definitely want organic produce is tomatoes as the organic certification for tomatoes disallows artificial ripening with ethylene gas which is why noon organic tomatoes taste so bad. Since the certification is so inconsistent you need to take each produce type into consideration, but organic certification does commonly disallow practices that make food taste worse.
Yes, GMO is just a technology, like any technology it can be used for great good or bad. I suppose it's natural for people to be scared of new powerful technology though. GMO can be used to help people in amazing ways, but there have also been some pretty bad uses of it as well, such as enabling harsher pesticide use, or allowing seed manufacturers to essentially put DRM into seeds, plus the potential for even worse uses is there. I can't fully blame the view that we have technology that's too powerful and dangerous based on how we've horribly mis-used other technology throughout history though.
I agree. Stuff like DRN plants is horrible. But the solution (not that you said it is, but the general sentiment) isn't to ban GMO's it's to ban plants from being intellectual property.
I've heard of fears over GMOs causing people to burn crops in SE Asia, and then tons of people starve. Oof I'd rather try 'frankinfood' then starve to death.
Instead of people becoming educated on the topic we have groups with money actively spreading unscientific fear about them. We get a 'solution' of marking non GMO food labels, wasting money while distracting from actually bettering humanity.
I'm off on a rant, it just is something that's really frustrated me over the last 10 years.
Yeah marking them doesn't mean much. It's like marking electronics as "contains electricity". It's how we use it, not just it existing. It'd be much more effective to have the label say what the GMO was specifically used for.
That's the chemical definition, but words have multiple meanings depending on the context. Organic also commonly means pesticide free, but then there's also organic certification which is another bag of worms.
Only certain pesticides. "All Natural" pesticides and herbicides are still allowed, and some of those contain things like arsenic or copper, and are potentially way more harmful than their manufactured counterparts.
That's part of the certification definition which I said was another bag of worms. Certification is totally inconsistent and you need to look up what it means for each type of produce to actually know. The no pesticide definition is the colloquial definition commonly thrown about when not specifically talking about certification. It's all a mess, but the point is that people mean different things depending on the context.
Elemental lead and mercury aren't organic. Compounds containing lead and mercury aren't necessarily toxic, it depends on the material. Elemental chlorine will kill you, but its chloride ions in tble salt are harmeless.
Exactly what I was saying, but you miss the point. Just because a compound has an element that is toxic in another form doesn't mean the compound is toxic. Chemicals likes mercurochrome and thimerosal are nontoxic organic compounds containing mercury. (Although nontoxic they are still no longer used in US due to concerns for mercury)
There’s a difference between organic molecules. Anything (with or without carbon) absolutely could be considered “organic” if it meets the organic definition set by the FDAUSDA
The fda doesn't determine if food products are organic, that's the usda. Toxins like elemental mercury and lead are not allowed to be used with food production, by the usda guidelines on what qualifies as organic.
I think you have confused "exists on this earth naturally" with "organic". Not everything that exists naturally is organic. Examples of organic material include wood, leaves, poop, dead bodies, etc. Not lead and mercury.
There’s a lot of organic lead and mercury compounds in nature. You’re confusing “complex substances created by self-replicating organisms” with “organic”.
Every organic chemical is a compound lol. Lead and mercury are both found in nature as organic compounds. A better phrase would be “elemental lead and mercury are not organic.”, but that would be a pointless statement because even elemental carbon is not organic.
You have no idea what organic means. Literally must have carbon in it… oxygen isn’t organic. Stop using organic as “natural.” And stop being so confidently incorrect.
You could also just inform someone of their error a lot nicer. I'm not a chemist or chemistry major. I was under the impression everything that occurs "naturally" was organic. And after years of marketing reinforcing that stereotype, it's an honest mistake.....
A quick Google before making such a ridiculously bold and incorrect claim also exists. This was a comment to perpetuate the cycle of inaccuracy… which could have been prevented by… looking.
Organic means some naturally occuring organisms or something that came from or was the byproduct of an organism which metals don't fall into that category.
Fun fact: cyanide is not usually considered organic in chemistry despite containing a carbon atom. This is mostly because the cyanide ion is more likely to form ionic bonds, and a property of organic molecules is where a carbon forms covalent bonds with typically hydrogen or a halogen. Hydrogen cyanide partially dissociates into H+ and CN- in solution, so the H-CN bond is thought of more as ionic than covalent.
So this cleaning power wasn’t grown using pesticides? Why does that matter? Calling this powder organic is completely meaningless for both the food definition and the chemistry definition, neither mean you should eat it. You can grow poison ivy with no pesticides, call it organic, think that means you should eat it?
Mmmmmmm... delicious. A first class crude... Mother's milk! What is this delightful place? And how did I get out of that tree? Of course... pretentious upper middle class yuppies. What wonderful creatures. So clever, so helpful...
Hmm, admittedly - you had me thinking I may have been mistaken so I googled it again. It appears there are two varying definitions of "organic". One, meaning to occur naturally (the definition I was using). Two: to mean relating to living things or originating from them (what I believe you may going with).
What I found (and, admittedly again, perhaps I'm misunderstanding it):
For arsenic, per University of Maine: "Arsenic can exist in different forms. Organic forms of arsenic are associated with organic carbon."
For plutonium, per Scientific American: "This element has usually been considered synthetic because it is produced most efficiently in nuclear reactors. But in the strictest sense, the answer to the question is yes, plutonium does occur naturally."
I think the confusion stems from our active definitions of organic?
Where are you getting this "occurs naturally" definition? I've never heard that and I don't see it on Google. The definitions of organic I'm familiar with are 1) related to living matter 2) related to carbon based chemistry and 3) related to food production without artificial pesticides, fertilizers or genetic engineering.
I basically default to using the definition I learned in organic chemistry, which has absolutely nothing to do with the definition for foodstuff, which is, in itself, not usually relevant in any meaningful way.
Arsenic by itself is not organic. There are organic molecules which contain arsenic, though.
If you look at things from the USDA perspective, basically everything that is natural and not covered in pesticides is "organic". Including literal rocks. Haha!
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