According to allegations by a former research fellow for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the EPA’s own documents indicate that false information may have been presented to the public regarding the agency’s testing of harmful contaminants in pesticides.
In May 2023, the EPA issued a press release stating that it had found no per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) “forever chemicals” in samples of particular insecticides, reported The Guardian. However, the press release contradicted a former study by an EPA researcher that had found PFAS in the cited pesticide products.
“It’s pretty outrageous,” said Kyla Bennett, director of scientific policy at PEER. “You don’t get to just ignore the stuff that doesn’t support your hypothesis. That is not science. That is corruption. I can only think that they were getting pressure from pesticide companies.”
The allegations by PEER, which is led by former employees of the EPA, were made on Tuesday.
Bennett said PEER obtained the contradictory pesticide testing data after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The opportunity to comment was declined by the EPA. The agency said “because these issues relate to a pending formal complaint process, EPA has no further information to provide.”
Recently, the EPA recognized that PFAS have the potential to contaminate pesticides and recently classified two PFAS as hazardous.
PFAS are used in various industries and consumer goods like nonstick cookware, food packaging, paints, electronics and cleaning products. Some of the chemicals have been linked to health problems such as immune system damage, cancer, birth defects and delayed development in children.
In a letter submitted to the EPA by PEER, the watchdog group demanded a correction to the public statement and retraction of the EPA’s research memorandum.
In its complaint, PEER said that by seeking to refute the study’s findings, the EPA was “guilty of numerous departures from both accepted scientific and ethical practices” and “provided misinformation to a national audience and intentionally damaged Dr. [Steven] Lasee.”
The study by Lasee from 2022 said the toxic PFAS perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) had been detected in six of 10 insecticides used on cotton and other crops.
The EPA responded by saying it had gotten samples of the same pesticides, as well as purchased other products with the same registration numbers. The agency said its scientists had not found any detectable PFOS.
PEER and Lasee said the new findings raised immediate questions of testing validity due to a number of deviations from scientific norms and other flaws discovered in the EPA’s testing analyses.
“When you cherrypick data, you can make it say whatever you want it to say,” Lasee said, as The Guardian reported.
Mexico City could be just weeks away from Day Zero, the day when the city runs out of water supplied by the Cutzamala water system. Water reservoirs in the city recently hit historic lows, and amid ongoing drought conditions and a heat dome, the city could face Day Zero by June 26.
The Cutzamala water system supplies about 25% of Mexico City’s water, while about 60% comes from underground aquifers that are over-exploited and have had issues dating back to the 16th century, CNN reported.
“When the Spaniards arrived on the continent, they drained the lakes on which the city was was built,” said Caroline Houck, senior editor at Vox, as reported by Marketplace. “And so all of the impervious surfaces that have been built on top of those don’t really allow for the rainwater that does fall to replenish the aquifers.”
As of March 2024, the Cutzamala water system reached a historic low of about 38% capacity, NPR reported.
Starting October 2023, Mexico City began tightening the amount of water supplied by the Cutzamala system and reducing the flow rate. The city has also called on citizens to drastically cut back on water usage.
However, while water conservation by the public has helped in similar crises, including one made famous in Cape Town, South Africa in 2018, Mexico City also faces major water losses from its infrastructure. As Fast Company reported, about 40% of the city’s water is lost through leaks, and additional water is lost to theft, as organized crime groups steal public water for agricultural use or to resell back to the public at inflated rates.
Without rain, Day Zero is expected to come by June 26, Mexico Business News reported.
“This problem has worsened in the last four years, there has been no rain, and for this reason the dams have very low levels,” Alejandra Margarita Méndez Girón, general coordinator of the National Meteorological Service, said in a press release. “We have had up to 93 percent of the region with severe to moderate drought.”
But even with rain, Mexico Business News reported that a 2022 study by the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) found only about 42.5% of the country’s groundwater was fit for human consumption. Further, experts fear that rainfall will bring false hopes, when the infrastructure still needs attention to prevent future shortages.
Officials noted that the El Niño climate event, heat waves and a decline in rainfall have all contributed to the current water shortages, although some politicians have argued there is no “Day Zero” ahead.
The rainy season is expected to begin in June. But many citizens have already reported water shortages, and some neighborhoods have experienced water scarcity for years, CNN reported.
“There is a clear unequal access to water in the city and this is related to people’s income,” Fabiola Sosa-Rodríguez, head of economic growth and environment at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City, told CNN.
As a writer, I obviously have a fondness for words. I believe in their power — while also recognizing their limitations. Much as we try to “show, not tell” through the written word, an article can’t quite approximate letting someone see or experience something for themselves. Photos and videos, on the other hand, come pretty darn close.
Visual storytellers have to be immersed in the scenes they capture, up close to the people, animals, plants, and landscapes they create images of. They document things that many people otherwise wouldn’t get to see with their own eyes. It’s a powerful medium, with a well-established history of stirring viewers to care about climate change and conservation. But high-quality, thought-provoking photography and film is also time-consuming and expensive to create, putting it out of reach for many would-be climate communicators and storytelling organizations.
It’s a problem that Kogia, a nonprofit media library, is attempting to solve. The library offers photos and video clips, free of charge, to scientists, conservation organizations, artists, activists, and others.
“Our mission has been to democratize access to this media in a way, and to elevate the voices of those who are on the front line of conservation and just give them the best tools possible for them to tell their stories,” said Nessim Stevenson, a filmmaker and photographer who founded the project along with his cousin, and fellow photographer, Karim Iliya. They saw a great need to make high-quality images more readily available to conservationists and mission-driven organizations as an essential communication tool.
“I had a lot of nonprofits that were asking me for photos and videos to use as I was photographing underwater worlds — whales and turtles and manta rays and coral reefs, from the big animals to the little tiny creatures,” Iliya said. He knew other environmental photographers must be getting the same types of requests, and wanted to create a platform that would enable these organizations to get the resources they needed to further their work, while easing some of the strain on individual creators fielding these requests. The pair published a beta form of the project in the spring of 2023, which Stevenson describes as a “clunky version that we made ourselves in Squarespace.” Still, they quickly garnered more than 100 members, from over 40 countries. This year, on Earth Day, they launched Kogia 2.0 — a more robust library that they built out with the help of a volunteer web developer, featuring the work of over a dozen creators.
The library also creates an opportunity to divert a certain type of waste. Only a tiny fraction of the images a photographer creates in the field will actually get licensed for prints or articles or other uses. The rest tend to sit on hard drives, essentially becoming “digital trash,” as Iliya put it. “It’s difficult to make money off of it, because it’s like the 10th best photo of a clam or a whale or a clownfish, and not the best one.” But these excess images are still good quality, and can be a gold mine for small organizations and individuals that don’t have the budget to license or commission original photos or film. “So we’re trying to reuse and recycle — basically put to use this stuff that would’ve just sat and rotted away,” Iliya said.
Kogia is ocean-focused right now, but Iliya and Stevenson ultimately plan to expand the library to include land ecosystems as well. They’re also starting a fellowship program that will involve sending out camera kits to young photographers and videographers all over the world who want to document conservation stories from a local perspective.
“The way we’ve been seeing some of the media used, from the anti-whaling movement in Iceland to student-led groups educating young kids about nature and their environment in South Asia, it’s been really surprising and exciting,” Iliya said.
Stevenson and Iliya shared a selection of their favorite images from the gallery, gathered below. These come from some of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth — like Palau, part of a coalition of small island states that have banded together to hold large nations accountable for climate impacts (and recently won a major victory from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea). Although some of the images in Kogia’s library offer a look at the impacts of climate change, industry, and pollution on ocean ecosystems, the majority, including these, focus instead on their beauty and how much there is to protect.
— Claire Elise Thompson
A freediver in a cave in Vava’u, Tonga.
Blacktip reef sharks in Palau.
Golden jellyfish in Palau.
A green turtle swimming over seagrass in Puerto Rico.
While showing the vibrance and beauty of marine wildlife and ecosystems, visual storytelling can also introduce a harsh juxtaposition with the threats those ecosystems face. This photo, for instance, shows an overhead view of an oil refinery off the coast of Long Beach, California. At first glance it looks peaceful, almost pretty. But a closer look reveals its sheer scale, and its nearness to the shoreline — where residents face some of the worst pollution in the country.
IMAGE CREDITS
Vision: Grist
Spotlight: Karim Iliya; Nessim Stevenson; Pier Nirandara, Sophie Hart, Kieth Ladzinski, Cedric Dageville, Michel Zoghzoghi, Raja Iliya
When Cortni Borgerson thinks about the trillion or so periodical cicadas emerging from underground, she sees more than clumsily flying insects flitting from tree to tree in search of a mate. She sees lunch.
Some may find that idea revolting, a belief often, if unknowingly, steeped in colonialism and the notion that eating insects is “uncivilized.” But Borgerson, an anthropologist at Montclair State University, is among those eager to change that perception. She’s a big fan of dining on bugs of all kinds, but finds cicadas particularly appetizing. “It’s one of the best American insects,” she says.
Their texture, she says, is something like peeled shrimp, and their taste akin to what you’d experience “if a chicken nugget and a sunflower seed had a baby.” She recommends first timers cook them like any other meat and try them in tacos.
Borgerson’s not alone in her fascination with edible insects. In the lead up to this spring’s dual-brood emergence, a flurry of cicada recipes, sweet treats and culinary odes have sung the bulky bugs’ praises. The interest is part of a growing social movement in favor of alternative proteins among consumers increasingly demanding a more sustainable food system.
“They’re this magical-looking insect that crawls up, that people are excited and interested in,” she says. “People are more excited about eating it than they might be about other types of insects.”
“Some insects have an incredible opportunity, and a potential, to reduce our carbon footprint in a delicious, but sustainable, way,” she says.
Roughly 30 percent of the world’s population considers insects a delicacy or dietary staple, a practice that goes back millennia. A study published earlier this year found that over 3,000 ethnic groups across 128 countries eat 2,205 species of Insecta, with everything from caterpillars to locusts appearing in dishes of every description. These invertebrates are a rich source of protein, fat and vitamins. The creatures are most commonly eaten by consumers in Asia, North America — predominantly Mexico, where people enjoy 450 varieties — and Africa.
The idea remains a novelty in the United States, where just six species are regularly consumed (crickets being the most popular). Consumer attitudes, based on old stigmas, remain a hurdle to broader acceptance.
“Disgust is felt very viscerally and biologically,” she says. “So to tell somebody their aversion to insects is cultural and not physiologically programmed is a difficult thing to wrap your head around, because you can feel your stomach turn, you can feel the gag reflex come up if you are disgusted by the idea of eating insects. But disgust is one of the few learned emotions. So we are disgusted by the things our culture tells us to be disgusted by.”
Joseph Yoon, founder of Brooklyn Bugs and chef advocate for the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development, forages for cicadas. Jennifer Angus
Such a reaction also can be a sign of internalized prejudice, she says. Indigenous peoples throughout North America once consumed a variety of insects, a practice European colonists deemed “uncivilized” — a way to “other” nonwhite communities and cultural practices. “Is it racist? Yes, simply put,” Lesnik says.
“The very notion of edible insects, I believe, has people think about the lowest denominator,” says Yoon, the founder of Brooklyn Bugs and chef advocate for the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. “It’s for the apocalypse. It’s for poor people. It’s for marginalized communities in developing nations. And so the very notion of this creates a sense of fear, anger, resentment. Instead of putting insects in a silo because you don’t understand … we can work together to provide solutions for our global food systems.”
Eleven years ago, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization called bugs a promising alternative to conventional meat production. In the decade since, a surge of North American startups have launched to make insects into a primary food source for humans, an ingredient (flour is common), or as feedstock for cattle and pets. The market for such things in the United States is expected to hit $1.1 billion by 2033; globally, the figure is more than three times that.
Still, for an industry in its infancy, the viability of scaling insect protein into a legitimate climate solution remains a burning question, one Rachel Mazac has studied intently. Mazac, a sustainability researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, is among the scientists that have attempted to quantify the carbon footprint of producing things like crickets, mealworms and black soldier flies on an industrial scale. So far, she’s found that insects make “extremely efficient” use of land and water compared to conventional livestock. Although she acknowledges the dearth of data on the subject, Mazac thinks insects warrant further consideration as a feasible alternative to more common — and carbon-intensive — meats.
Not everyone sees insects as a climate solution, however. Matthew Hayek, an environmental researcher and assistant professor at New York University, co-authored a 2024 survey of more than 200 climate and agricultural scientists that showed widespread support for greater efforts by governments and the private sector to incentivize alternatives to meat and dairy. But he doesn’t believe insects belong on the slate of urgent solutions. Among other things, he questions the environmental impact of feeding them to livestock, and whether the creatures can be raised and harvested humanely.
“It’s a worthwhile area of investigation for fundamental science and research and development,” he says. “It is not worthwhile as an actual climate solution at a market level for somebody to invest in a climate solution.”
Jeffery Tomberlin, an entomologist at Texas A&M University and director of the Center for Environmental Sustainability through Insect Farming, doesn’t buy that. He says every possible alternative protein needs to be on the table because meeting the climate crisis requires reforming the global food system. “We should be looking at all options when we talk about how to be better stewards of our planet,” he says. “We need to diversify as much as possible.”
Doing that, however, will require consumers and policymakers to put aside old ideas and consider new possibilities. That, Tomberlin says, would prompt the kind of research and funding needed to “safely and efficiently” develop the processing and production practices needed to make insect protein a viable, scalable alternative to other meats. Only then will the idea of eating insects be more than a flurry of trendy headlines, and cicada tacos more than a fleeting novelty.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration unveiled new guidelines on “responsible participation” in the voluntary carbon market, or VCM — the system that allows companies to say they’ve canceled out their greenhouse gas emissions through the purchase of carbon credits. Theoretically, every carbon credit a company buys represents one metric ton of CO2 that has been reduced or avoided through projects that wouldn’t have happened without the funding — like tree-planting or the installation of wind turbines.
The guidelines, signed by President Joe Biden’s top climate and economic advisers, as well as the secretaries of Treasury, Energy, and Agriculture, are intended to boost the market’s credibility following a series of investigations that revealed numerous credits to be ineffective.
One guideline calls for credits to meet “credible atmospheric integrity standards,” and another says companies should complement offsetting with the reduction of their own carbon footprints. The guidelines also call for environmental justice safeguards to ensure that credit-generating activities — many of which are in the Global South — do not harm local communities.
For the most part, the 12-page document reflects existing guidance from informal overseers of the voluntary carbon market, including the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market and the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity initiative. In this way, the guidance is a sort of endorsement of the work those nonprofit governance bodies have already been doing — and of carbon markets themselves.
The new guidelines are intended to help address a crisis of confidence in carbon credits, many of which have been found by recent studies and investigations to be ineffective. Some credits come from renewable energy projects that would have been built anyway, even without funding from the VCM. Others are generated by protecting natural ecosystems that were never under threat. Still others are based on projects that store carbon in ways that are unlikely to last more than a few years. Last year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — a federal regulator — created a new task force to address potentially widespread fraud and market manipulation within the VCM.
According to a 2022 analysis from the World Economic Forum, less than one-fourth of 137 global companies surveyed planned to use carbon credits to achieve their emissions reduction targets; 40 percent of them cited the risk of reputational damage.
Some environmental groups hailed the Biden Administration’s guidance as a way to add legitimacy to the voluntary carbon market. Amanda Leland, executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s “vote of confidence” could help the VCM reach $1 trillion by 2050, implying that this growth would funnel money into green jobs and climate resilience in the developing world.
The global VCM is currently valued at around $2 billion. It grew rapidly in 2021 before declining in 2022 and 2023.
Critics said the new rules fail to address more fundamental concerns about the effectiveness of carbon credits. Some VCM offset projects send only a small fraction of the funds they generate to the communities they’re supposed to benefit, while the rest of the money gets gobbled up by traders, registries, investors, and other middlemen. And for a number of reasons, scientists say it’s inaccurate to equate a ton of carbon stored in biological systems with a ton of carbon released from the burning of fossil fuels — yet this assumption undergirds the VCM.
Proponents of carbon markets are still trying to “fit the circle of climate science into the square of carbon accounting,” Steve Suppan, a policy analyst for the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told Grist.
Peter Riggs, director of the nonprofit Pivot Point and a co-coordinator of the Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance, said the federal guidelines are more concerned with creating a smooth market environment than with the integrity of carbon credits.
“Generating rules for secondary markets and the clearing of credits may help with carbon market liquidity,” he told Grist. “But if the underlying accounting is still flawed, these moves just create systemic risk — in much the same way that credit default swaps did during the financial crisis.”
Instead of carbon markets, Riggs and others have advocated for a system of climate finance that allows countries, companies, and other polluters to support conservation and carbon-sequestering activities without claiming them as offsets.
Responsible sourcing is becoming a central focus for retailers as a way to strengthen their appeal to consumers while addressing expectations from investors and regulators. This includes de-linking their supply chains from deforestation, natural ecosystem conversion, and human rights abuses.
On May 3 and 4 of this year, Data for Progress and nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen surveyed 1,206 likely voters in the United States, asking the question of whether respondents believed that “oil and gas companies should be held legally accountable for their contributions to climate change,” including impacts on extreme weather and public health.
“[V]oters strongly want to see companies held accountable for their harmful actions,” said Grace Adcox, Data for Progress senior climate strategist with Fossil Free Media, as The Guardian reported.
Lawsuits against big oil have been ramping up all over the world. Communities across the U.S. have been suing fossil fuel companies for allegedly misleading the public regarding the climate crisis, and just last week France brought the first-ever criminal lawsuit related to climate.
Currently there are 40 civil lawsuits brought by cities and states in the U.S. against oil majors.
Last year Public Citizen also proposed filing criminal charges against fossil fuel companies.
One argument for this strategy is that oil and gas companies knowing their pollution had potential deadly consequences while delaying climate action could be possible grounds for reckless or negligent homicide charges.
According to Aaron Regunberg, Public Citizen’s climate program senior policy counsel, while the idea received some skepticism, several district attorneys’ offices gave it “real, serious interest,” reported The Guardian.
The Data for Progress poll showed that 62 percent of voters surveyed said fossil fuel companies “should be held legally accountable for their contributions to climate change.” This included 84 percent of Democrats, 40 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Independents.
The survey also asked, “Knowing what you do now, do you support or oppose criminal charges being filed against oil and gas companies to hold them accountable for deaths caused by their contributions to climate change?” to which 49 percent of respondents said they would “somewhat” or “strongly” support such action, in comparison with 39 percent who indicated they would not.
Regunberg said this shows that Americans may not feel the idea is too “out there.”
Regunberg went on to say that 68 percent of Democrats indicating support for criminal charges being brought against big oil was “huge,” since the party’s districts were more likely to bring that type of legal action. Almost a third of Republicans — 32 percent — said they would back the idea.
“A significant number of Republicans would support these prosecutions, even if none of their party’s leaders have the courage to buck their fossil fuel donors,” Regunberg said, as The Guardian reported.
Adcox added that, while gaining political support for criminal lawsuits against fossil fuel companies might not be easy, the survey indicates it could be possible.
“These national findings show these cases may be able to earn popular support, particularly in blue jurisdictions,” Adcox said.
Fossil fuel companies in the U.S. have not yet been forced to face criminal climate charges, but energy companies have. BP and PG&E both pled guilty to charges of homicide and paid fines and penalties in the billions of dollars.
“The fact that this hasn’t been done before may lead many to say, well, it can’t be done, there’s no precedent. But there was no precedent for anything until there was,” said Chesa Boudin, former San Francisco district attorney, as reported by The Guardian.
With Heat Action Day approaching on June 2, a new report from World Weather Attribution, the Red Cross Crescent Climate Centre and Climate Central has found that the planet experienced 26 more days of “excess” extreme heat on average in the past year, which most likely would not have happened without climate change.
Last year was the hottest ever recorded, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate observation program.
“Flooding and hurricanes may capture the headlines, but the impacts of extreme heat are equally deadly. That’s why Heat Action Day matters so much. We need to focus attention on climate change’s silent killer. The IFRC is making heat — and urban action to reduce its impacts — a priority and remains committed to working with communities that are at risk of extreme heat through our global network of National Societies,” said International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Secretary-General Jagan Chapagaina in a press release from IFRC.
Heat Action Day brings attention to the dangers of extreme heat and steps that can be taken to mitigate it. All over the world, Red Crescent and National Red Cross Societies are sharing strategies on a dedicated website. People are also being encouraged to share artwork and hold events that underscore the dangers extreme heat poses to lives and livelihoods.
The ongoing Asia heat wave has been bringing excessive temperatures to Bangladesh, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Nepal, causing many deaths and heat-related health issues.
In Bangladesh, the extreme heat has affected more than 120 million people, and Myanmar experienced its hottest temperature ever recorded of 118.8 degrees Fahrenheit on April 28.
Heat waves most affect those who work outside, as well as vulnerable populations like the old, young and poor.
“This report provides overwhelming scientific evidence that extreme heat is a deadly manifestation of the climate crisis. This wreaks havoc on human health, critical infrastructure, the economy, agriculture and the environment, thereby eroding gains in human development and decreasing wellbeing – especially for poor and marginalized communities in the global South,” said Aditya V. Bahadur, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre director, in the press release.
In the study, the researchers looked at the top 10 percent of temperatures for each country studied during the period 1991 to 2020. They then examined the 12 months from May 15, 2023 to May 15 of this year in order to find out the number of days temperatures were within or above the previous range.
Using peer-reviewed methods, the scientists then looked at how climate change had influenced each of the excessively hot days.
Their conclusion was that, over the past year, “human-caused climate change added an average of 26 days of extreme heat (on average, across all places in the world) than there would have been without a warmed planet,” the report said.
The report also said that, in the 12 months of the study period, approximately 80 percent of the world’s population — about 6.3 billion people — experienced a minimum of 31 days of extreme heat, AFP reported.
Across 90 countries, 76 extreme heat waves occurred, with all continents except Antarctica affected. Five of the most impacted countries were in Latin America.
“That’s a lot of toll that we’ve imposed on people,” said Andrew Pershing, one of the study’s researchers and Climate Central’s vice president for science, as The New York Times reported. “It’s a lot of toll that we’ve imposed on nature.”
The report highlighted that, without climate change’s influence, Ecuador would have recorded roughly 10 days of extreme heat instead of 180; Panama 12 rather than 149; El Salvador 15 not 163; Guyana 33 rather than 174; and Suriname an estimated 24 instead of 182 sweltering days of excessive heat.
“Extreme heat is known to have killed tens of thousands of people over the last 12 months, but the real number is likely in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Unlike sudden ‘event’ weather disasters, heatwaves kill more slowly and less obviously; they are often exacerbators of pre-existing medical conditions,” IFRC said.
While you may get noticeable joy from feeling the soil outside on your fingers or seeing your first tomatoes pop up on the vine, even indoor gardening can bring some helpful benefits for your well-being, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Helsinki, Natural Resources Institute Finland and Tampere University have uncovered the benefits of microbial exposure that happens during urban indoor gardening.
Previous studies have unearthed the benefits of exposure to natural materials rich in microbes, like soil, on the human microbiota, but the researchers in this study looked specifically at whether urban, indoor gardening could have any similar impacts.
When using a microbially rich gardening soil for their indoor gardens, the study participants experienced an increase in microbiota diversity on the skin, plus some anti-inflammatory benefits. The findings were published in the journal Environment International.
“One month of urban indoor gardening boosted the diversity of bacteria on the skin of the subjects and was associated with higher levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines in the blood,” Mika Saarenpää, doctoral researcher from the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, said in a statement.
As Saarenpää explained, these benefits were found in a trial using a growing medium similar to soil found in a forest.
But some participants were given a microbially poor soil made with peat, which is a common type of growing medium that has become controversial. That’s because harvesting peat means destroying peatland ecosystems, an important carbon sink, as reported by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
For the gardeners using a peat-based soil, there were no changes to skin microbiota or anti-inflammatory blood molecules.
Participants used flower boxes and store-bought peas, lettuces, beans, mustard, garlic and ginger plants (in a variety of forms, such as seeds, rhizomes and bulbs). Participants using the microbially rich soil experienced the benefits within only about a month of indoor gardening.
Gardening equipment provided for the participants consisted of a plastic planter, lamp, bulb, spray bottle, crop species and growing medium. Environment International
The increased diversity in skin microbiota is important, as the researchers noted this can contribute to immunoregulation.
“We know that urbanisation leads to reduction of microbial exposure, changes in the human microbiota and an increase in the risk of immune-mediated diseases,” Saarenpää said. “This is the first time we can demonstrate that meaningful and natural human activity can increase the diversity of the microbiota of healthy adults and, at the same time, contribute to the regulation of the immune system.”
As a bonus, the indoor garden required little money or space to start, and many of the participants expressed interest in continuing with their gardens after the experiments ended, with some even planning to switch to outdoor gardening.
“We don’t yet know how long the changes observed in the skin microbiota and anti-inflammatory cytokines persist, but if gardening turns into a hobby, it can be assumed that the regulation of the immune system becomes increasingly continuous,” Saarenpää said.
