by emurphy
BPA Testing in the Plant Material
9:03 pm in Education, environmental impact, Help the project by testing this, Materials and Resources, Projects in Process, Version 1.0 Reservoir System, Version 2.0 airlift system, Version 3.0 Modular Airlift Columns by emurphy
I was asked by Andrew Carter to do some testing of plant material to see if any unwanted molecules worked their way up the root system into the plant. I haven’t received the samples yet, but I’d love to keep people up to date with the testing process and where I am at. I will be posting again tomorrow with the details of the research I’ve done so far and the testing methods I plan to peruse. I just wanted to introduce myself to the site, and open lines for any specific questions people might have!
Great to hear this is being researched – are you testing plants in general, in a special setup, or straight from a field ?
@emurphy I’m glad you are doing some testing. I’ve been researching toxins in plastics for several years and try to use my website: http://plasticalbatross.org to spread the word here in Brooklyn, NY
When I created my window farm, my aim was to create a Plastic-free Window Farm. You can see some images here: http://our.windowfarms.org/2010/05/05/plastic-free-window-farm
Looking forward to seeing the results of the tests. Hopefully the BPA and Phthalates in the plants themselves will be minimal.
So far the experiment will consist of testing the edible material of the leaves, some soil and we going to do a quick hexane wash of regular poland springs bottles to see what is leeching out of the plastic. We will be using control plants that haven’t touched plastic and then plants grown in the set-up. So a bit of both samenrahmen. I’ll keep the updates coming!
I’m also interested to hear about this. What types of plastic are you testing?
Was there ever any results from this testing? I want to try windowfarming but am worried about BPA leaching into the plants. I read about the Nalgene bottles but that sounds like an expensive alternative.
So the status of the project is that I am still waiting for the samples grown in the window farm setting from my correspondents in New York. I have been testing Nestle water bottles. So far even under extreme heating and extraction with DCM/Hexane solvent mixtures I am not getting any traces of BPA. There are however traces of other plasticizers present.
Very interesting I want to get started on my 1st window farm but I’m worried about chemicals leeching into my plants
@emurphy Have you came to a conclusion to this experiment?
Any updates?
Might try glass otherwise…
traces of other plasticizers was my concern, are there any updates on this?