[Terrapreta] why is carbon black?

[Kurt Treutlein]

MFH wrote:
> Kurt
>
> Thanks - good sense and you answered the question. Char absorbs or adsorbs,
> but the "nasties" remain. For how long, and how are they released, opens
> another debate.
>
> The bottom line appears to be that (at least) char doesn't neutralise
> "toxins". Whether or not 10 months or 10 years or 1000 years changes this is
> another puzzle. What happens when some char with these added toxins is added
> to active soil? Where indeed to the toxins go - into your tummy? 
>
>   
The charcoal itself may not neutralise the toxins, but we must remember 
that there are an awful lot of microbes around that can do many things, 
including for example eat jetfuel and crude oil. There is nothing to 
stop such microbes setting up house in a lump of charcoal and going to 
work on whatever is contained therein. Additionally, that sort of 
chemistry often works best on surfaces and charcoal has a lot of 
internal surface. Of course, unless you have the particular microbes for 
a particular de-tox job, that may not happen spontaneously.
> Seems to me that in the headlong rush to major agri-business, the
> bean-counters have dominated over the millenniums of farmer's knowledge. 
>
> I'll be forever reminded of the clear evidence in the Whagi Valley in PNG
> that formal agriculture existed 10,000 years ago, some 4000 (not 40 or 400)
> years before the so-called beginning of Ag in the Mediterranean Circle. And,
> many include Papua New Guineans amongst the groups of "primitive people"
>   
We often see stone implements as a sign of "primitiveness". Often they 
are just an indication of technology not yet discovered. Then again, the 
culinary habits of the Mianmin people of the upper Japsiei River do seem 
somewhat primitive.
>
>
> I suspect that some of us would like to get off this pollutive bus and live
> tomorrow in splendid isolation. But there isn't any real escape from what
> "we" have wrought other than try and fix it. 
>   
True----But, I'm told that, from the Arthur River mouth, looking West 
the nearest land is Chile, So Tassie seems to be one of the better hidey 
holes. Which is partly why I'm down here, in Paradise.

Kurt