Silent Spring – Realms of the Soil

[Book Club Host]

Does anyone know what impact the neonics are having on soil?

[TomTheobald]

The general consensus is that the neonics have a very damaging effect on a wide range of soil life-forms. Here is one study on the effect on earthworms:
Earthworms are more susceptible to neonicotinoids than to other modern synthetic insecticides http://www.farmlandbirds.net/en/content ... secticides .
I will see if I can come up with others if I have time, Some of you might do the same search and let us know what you find. Tom T.

[TomTheobald]

Here is a longer list of studies from Henk Tennekes' site. Not all deal directly with soil, but most do.
Tom
http://www.farmlandbirds.net/en/search/node/soil

[Book Club Host]

Thanks, Tom. These are interesting.

Thinking "Realms of the Soil" may just be my favorite chapter in Silent Spring. Carson describes the soil life so vividly. I can see how reading for the first time in the 60's may have felt like an awakening.

Living things began to work their creative magic and little by little these inert materials became soil. Lichens, the rocks’ first covering, aided the process of disintegration by their acid secretions and made a lodging place for other life. Mosses took hold in the little pockets of simple soil—soil formed by crumbling bits of lichen, by the husks of minute insect life, by the debris of a fauna beginning its emergence from the sea.

I'm thinking about the first time I went scuba diving, how amazing it was to discover a whole other world under the sea. Wonderful.