As I sit in my plant propagation class down at the greenhouse on the south side of campus at the agriculture school my teacher every day goes over the chemicals used in commercial plant propagators operations. Methyl Bromide being one of them, a fumigated gas that is a sterilizer, is sprayed onto the “media” or the material being used to grow the plant in. The chemical comes in a brick like aerosol where it is placed on top of a media that is only 12 inches thick. The media needs to be on concrete or pavement due to its toxicity. The aerosol bricks are then placed on the media and a piece of wood with a nail attached, a canvas tarp is then placed over the entire operation to keep the gas trapped. Canvas is used instead of plastic because the plastic will melt. The wood with nail attached are then stepped on to release the chemical and it sits for 48 hours before the tarp is removed and the chemical is released into the atmosphere. The 1987 Montreal Protocol called for the phasing out of this chemical worldwide with a few exceptions, the United States being one of them. This chemical has been proven to be a carcinogen and a direct correlation to prostate cancer. Supposedly to be totally phased out by 2016. Further research shows that the chemical is also used to sterilize band-aides, hypodermic needles and other medical items.

My original thought was they let release this stuff into the air? My attention was soon diverted to the even bigger picture. In Mckay Jenkins book, What’s gotten into us?, he talks about water from our tap and the local tap water of Delaware. To me this was the most interesting chapter thus far. Last spring semester I took Jerry Kauffman’s watershed management class where we canoed down the Brandywine River. We analyzed watersheds and wastewater treatment plants and listened to his ideas on “the solution to pollution is dilution”. One of the most interesting topics we covered was storm water runoff, especially here at the university. If you take a visit to George Read and Independent Hall dorms you will see that they are essentially on the top of a steep hill and looking at the large pavement parking lot you can notice it runs off towards the lowest point of the parking lot. One of Jerry’s projects at the time was looking at the runoff of that parking lot into the White Clay Creek watershed below. After showing us pictures there was about a 4-6 foot vertical drop from the edge of the impermeable surface to almost a straight edge, muddy, eroded path heading directly towards the creek below. The pictures are astonishing, it almost looks like a waterfall. If you really think about it, making an estimate there are roughly over one thousand cars in that parking lot. All of the chemicals that they carry not including the sand and salt put down during the icy winters, runoff into one already damaged creek. Not that we get our water directly from White Clay watershed but it gives you an idea of what the farms, industrial buildings, living complexes that are in Wilmington or even upstream in Pennsylvania on the Brandywine. There are over 4 million linear miles of public roads in America not including 43, 480 square miles of parking lots and other impermeable surfaces, all of which directly leads to rivers and watersheds that eventually lead to wastewater plants. (143,Jenkins) That brings back chemicals like Methyl Bromide a chemical so strong that it is mixed with tear gas so you know when you are ingesting it directly because of its toxic effects; a chemical so strong that it can burn through plastic when it is released into the air. Whether it is released into the air or is sitting on the pavement it ends up into our water and eventually us. It is hard to say that there is nothing I can do about these chemicals reaching my body but ultimately it is the consumer world we live in and the one thing that is in my control is my direct decisions and work that will effect my generation and the future of the world.