I don't feed my pets heavy metals, so they must be transmuting their
organic food into heavy metals. Think of that! the ancient alchemists
must have been looking in the wrong place if they failed to create
valuable metals from dross. (PS: I'm an omnivore, so I should check my
output also).

On the other hand, maybe they're chewing on my car when I'm not looking.


Bioamplification--little things eat minute amounts of heavy metal which
concentrate in their tissues. Larger things eat lots of them and amplify the
concentration. Those critters are eaten by even larger ones, and so the
process goes. This was the whole pesticide and eagle problem--by the time you
were up the food chain to fish that eagles ate, the toxins were at high enough
concentration to cause genetic damage. If your dog only eats dog food,
probably not an issue, but if it's a farm dog or one that otherwise has a lot
of time alone outside.... Even then, do you know what the food chain leading
up to your commercial dog food was? You may very well be feeding your pet
relatively high levels of heavy metals.

--
The US government wants the power to read citizens' email, but refuses to
defend the nation's borders. What's wrong with this picture?

Yes, it is a problem with human waste as well. That's why the human waste that
is spread all over farms in many states is first spun to remove the heavy
metals. It's a natural part of humans, dogs, cats etc. waste and when it's
concetrated to one small area, (your garden) the heavy metals can and do build
up to toxic levels. Do a quick search and look at all the court case documents
where farmers are sueing because their fields are ruined.

I disagree that herbivore feces contains nearly the amount heavy metals that
carnivore feces contains. This is taught to first year ag and biology
students.

Laura B.
(who's keeping the dog, cat, human crap out of her garden so she doesn't get
brain damage as well)

--"If heavy metals were a problem in your cat & dog feces, it would be from
something in the immediate environment, & their heavy metals would
possibly match those of all the people in --the same environment."

In article ,
(Thalocean2) wrote:

Yes, it is a problem with human waste as well. That's why the human
waste that
is spread all over farms in many states is first spun to remove the heavy
metals. It's a natural part of humans, dogs, cats etc. waste and when it's
concetrated to one small area, (your garden) the heavy metals can and do build
up to toxic levels. Do a quick search and look at all the court case
documents
where farmers are sueing because their fields are ruined.

I disagree that herbivore feces contains nearly the amount heavy metals that
carnivore feces contains. This is taught to first year ag and biology
students.

Laura B.
(who's keeping the dog, cat, human crap out of her garden so she doesn't get
brain damage as well)

Provide citations. If it's a first year ag thing then you should have
fifty at hand, pick two that are least suspect. This must be done when
there's a risk of bullshit being composted on Usenet, so I will do
likewise. I've read scores of articles (many peer-reviewed) & never seen
any that stated carnivore poo is a heavy metals problem distinct from any
other poo. The primary sources are always listed. I will repeat them, with
some citations. If the one you would cite instead, "carnivore poo," has
even the junior high school first year biology citation you allege, should
be easy to list by author & date so that the rest of us can extend our
knowledge too, supposing we're not already braindead that is. Because the
literature I've seen when comparing, say, hog manure to chicken manure
finds chicken manure to be a huge source of heavy metals, but hog manures
have much less\

Primary sources of heavy metals in garden composts:

Pesticides [plus #1 source of dangerous organic pollutants]
[Tuft & Nichols. Poultry Science 70, 1991]

Feeds that enter into farm manures
[Sims & Wolf. Adv. Agron. 52, 1994. Van der Watt et al. J. Environmental
Qual, 1994.]

Poultry & livestock feeds which metals & metalloids As, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn,
Se, Zn -- much of it intentionally fed to them to increase egg production.
[Tuft & Nichols. Poultry Science 70, 1991]

Farmyard manure, mineral-fertilisers, & atmospheric precipitation
[Kranert & Fruth. Proceedings of Composting 2002 Symposium, Ohio State Univ]

Farmyard manure
[Reinhoffer et al. Proceedings of Composting 2002 Symposium, Ohio State Univ]

MUNICIPLE sludge & treated sewage sometimes goes into commercial composts
& while these are not in garden composts, they can enter gardens by
purchasing commercial compost products. All of the above are also sources
of heavy metals in municiple sludge & sewer-based composts, but the
primary source is a bit different:

1. Industrial waste
2.Consumer products
[Barker & Bryson, Scientific World Journal 2, 2002]

It is difficult to oversimplify because different heavy metals come from
wildly different sources. According to the Cornell University Solid Waste
& Compost Fact Sheet, the foremost source of Cadmium in solid waste &
compost is tobacco ash. Cadmium is absorbed especially well in mushrooms.
Mushrooms can thus be a source of cadmium in diet if grown in contaminated
composts, or in mushroom composts per se. But the original source even in
municiple waste is smokers. Every metal has a different story -- none of
which, it turns out, have anything special to do with carnivore poo.

Further, why farmyard manure is the most cited after pesticides &
fertilizers as the origin of heavy metals in composts, with chickens feeds
being the foremost source followed by cattle, even these are in great part
actually pesticide & fertilizer in origin, except the extravagant
pollutants from chicken manures which are heavy metals intentionally fed
to chickens.

Although kennel wastes go into municiple sludge for composts, no article
even hints that this is a source of heavy metals. Although Zoo Doo
programs nationwide compost herbivore & carnivore waste together, research
continues to indict chicken manure composts formost.

The great number of (misguided) compost experts who do not approve of
including dog & cat feces in composts use the (in great part irrational)
fear of toxoplasma as the reason -- NOT this trumped up heavy metal
argument. Toxoplasma is a red herring because kissing your dog or cat or
letting them poop ANYwhere is the actual threat & no compost worker has
EVER been documented to have contracted roundworms from compost. Heavy
metal is an even bigger red herring since each metal has a different story
about its first-source & how it gets into sewage waste &/or into composts,
& no study I can locate even hints that carnivors have anything whatsoever
to do with it, though chicken feeds & fertilizers & pesticides &
industrial wastes are mentioned repeatedly.

So if this is "first year biology" info you've shared, I strongly suggest
your junior high school biology teacher misled you. If among the thousands
of ACTUAL scientific reports on these issues you can find the rare one
about carnivore poo I will certainly read it & extend my knowledge. But
fairly obviously it's awfully far down the list of possible sources for
heavy metal contaminants since the major ones are well-documented in
scientific journals while the dumbass stuff about the extra dangers posed
by carnivore poo seems to be found chiefly among editorialists who did no
studies at all, & have no sources for their allegations.

The comical thing is, of course, IF there were any truth to the silly
notion that cats & dogs waste is a major source of heavy metal pollutants,
the only thing that could be done about it is to kill all the bloody
little *******s & let them go extinct. Because whether you throw their
turds in the garbage so that they go to landfills, down the toilet so they
end up municiple waste, or leave them in the lawn to break down naturally
then discard or compost the clippings, it all ends up ultimately in the
same environment. Fortunately, this is one dread that even the paranoids
among us can shunt aside, & worry a bit more (if you must worry about
something) about what is being fed to the chickens.

-paghat

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/