{"id":14577,"date":"2019-02-07T13:10:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T13:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/?p=14577"},"modified":"2025-03-10T10:22:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T17:22:00","slug":"arsenic-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/news\/2019\/02\/07\/arsenic-agriculture","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking the food system"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Adam
Adam Romero. Marc Studer photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Recycling has limits. Take arsenic, for example. After the Industrial Revolution, it appeared that the byproduct of copper smelting could be readily recycled as a pesticide for farming. Turning a toxic leftover into a commodity seemed like a win-win for the mining industry and agriculture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not, said Adam Romero, an assistant professor in UW Bothell\u2019s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences<\/a>. Rather, a problem isolated at smelters turned into a pervasive poison. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe took a waste product and spread it across the entire United States,\u201d Romero said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engaging the community <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Romero researches and teaches about the history of agrochemicals, such as arsenic, and the political and economic influences on food production. Some courses include The Industrial Animal, and Food and the Environment. Romero is also now writing a book, \u201cEconomic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of United States Agriculture.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He will share some of his research in a free, public lecture, “Arsenic and Old Waste,”<\/a> Feb. 26. It is the latest in a series of Pub Night Talks featuring UW Bothell faculty and other community experts speaking at McMenamins Anderson School in downtown Bothell. Talking about \u201cpoison agriculture,\u201d he said, is a vehicle to think about the industry in a more complex and nuanced way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Romero also enjoys meeting the public and answering questions as a volunteer in the King County Master Gardener program. A gift for greenery is evident in his UW Bothell office where potted plants vie for space with books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Challenging justifications <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Romero challenges whether it was even necessary for arsenic to become the basis for many pesticides in the period before World War II. The main justification for its use was the fear of hunger. But surplus was often a bigger problem for agriculture than scarcity, Romero said, and farming methods and practices were significant factors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t justify pesticides by saying we\u2019re going to run out of food. We continue to have global food gluts. People don\u2019t eat not because there isn\u2019t enough food,\u201d Romero said, \u201cbut because they\u2019re poor.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the crops that used the most pesticides in the United States was not a sustenance crop. It was cotton. The extensive use of pesticides, he said, also coincided with monocropping, the practice of planting the same variety year in and year out on the same land. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about apples <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Consider Washington\u2019s famous apple crop. Orchards were some of the largest users of arsenic-based pesticides until synthetic products such as DDT were introduced after World War II, Romero said. Most apples were grown for export rather than local consumption. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long after the apples went to the global market, soils in some orchards and farms retained high levels of arsenic, Romero said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still around. Mothers and fathers today are concerned about arsenic in rice, in baby formula, in apple juice. It\u2019s in wine,\u201d Romero said. \u201cSome of it comes from the environment, but a lot of it we put there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arsenic-based pesticides and herbicides were used extensively through the early 1990s, Romero said. Locally, the Asarco smelter in Tacoma processed arsenic that went into pesticides and wood preservatives. After operating nearly 100 years, the smelter was forced to close in 1985. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the history of agrochemicals is also \u201cthe history of pollution regulation and citizens pushing back against destruction from corporations,\u201d Romero said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connecting learning <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today, the same corporations that process most food have institutionalized organics. Romero is concerned for small farmers trying to produce alternate foods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow can we create programs and institutions that allow some of these young growers to get their own land?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many challenges, Romero said. \u201cRethinking the food system is more than rethinking how we grow food. It\u2019s rethinking the institutions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Historic
Float advertising arsenic, made by Anaconda Mining Company about 1915. Montana Historical Society<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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