http://www.soilmoist.com/products/landscapers.php
Has anyone used this? I am interested in using it as a packing medium for transporting bare root trees. I have received bare root trees packed only in some kind of gel.
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I use these a lot in my potting mix and in transplant holes . I first saw it as packing also .
I would be pissed if someone sent me bareroots shipped in polyacrymamide.
I worked for decades pouring polyacrylamide gels in molecular biology
research. Soil Moist are polyacrylamide gels as are other less well known hydrogels. A polymer is a long
chain of monomers bound together. In this case acrylamide, a cumulative
neurotoxin that is absorbed through the skin.
The polymerized version (polyacrylamide) is not a neurotixin. However,
in all polymerization reactions there is a small percentage of
unincorporated monomer that is trapped or reversibly bound on the
polymer chain. In this case small amounts of neurotoxic acrylamide are
present within the polyacrylamide gel. Soil Moist washes a lot of it
out, but they cannot get it all. Some of the cheaper stuff ordered from
China on eBay I suspect don’t bother to even do that.
We always handled all polyacrylamide gels in the labs with gloved
hands. Indeed, I wore goggles and a filter mask when weighing raw
acrylamide powder out to make gels. This is not stuff to be taken
lightly.
But the real killer for me in using this for potting mix as I see in so
many nurseries is this polymer breaks down after a year or so. What
does it break down to? Into its cumulative neurotoxic monomer
acrylamide! So imagine that planted into the ground. Your ground. And
then wonder if it readily crosses your skin just how good are roots
going to be at excluding it from transport throughout the plant? Damned
if I know but damned if I am going to experiment on myself to find out.
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Yikes,
Maybe i will stick to sheaded paper and peat moss.
Fascist nattion, thanks for the info and links. I try to avoid toxins and carcinogens in my garden too. Almost everyone in my family has had cancers, and most died from them. I prefer not to add other diseases to the list. A neurotoxin is not necessarily a carcinogen, but who wants neurotoxicity too? I grow fruit for pleasure, flavor, economy, and health.