Rubber tire mulch is a pop choice for gardener and landscapers to help insulate plants , keep insects at bay , and give up weed and fungal outgrowth . But is it safe for flora and territory , and most importantly , safe for you ?
On its Earth’s surface , golosh tire mulch seems like a in effect musical theme for horticulture and landscaping – reduce , reuse , and recycle honest-to-goodness tire sit in landfills . But accord to garden myth buster Linda Chalker - Scott , Ph.D. , Horticulturist and Associate Professor at Puyallup Research Center , Washington State University , gum elastic tyre mulch present significant toxicity to plants and land and isineffective in oppress weeds .
consumer have also become worry , as parents in Mahwah , New Jersey asked their local school district toremove rubber tire mulch from elementary schooling playgroundsover concerns for cancer danger . In our nation ’s majuscule , the Washington , D.C. Council Committee on Transportation and The Environment fund a six - figure study to check the potentiallead contamination in D.C. playground materials .
What Is Recycled Rubber Tire Mulch?
Rubber tire mulch is simply recycle tire that have been tear up and sometimes paint or coated . The chop up tyre are then bagged and sold in a number of colour for landscaping and gardening use . The product promise to reduce insect and rodent plague , remain in place and not blow aside , and be fully rainproof and rainproof .
But subject field show that rubber tire mulch is not all its merchandising claims it is , and in fact can perplex a threat to the wellness of your plant , aquatic Pisces , and wildlife . reason to avoid rubber tile mulch admit :
virtually all the cautionary slug points above descend into two category , weed controller and toxicity .
Why rubber tire mulch is bad for your garden
It’s poor at suppressing weeds
In a consecrated bailiwick by the Horticultural Research Institute titledWeed Control Strategies for Field Grown Herbaceous Perennials , fourteen herbicides or weed killer combining ; wood chip mulch ; break off rubber tire mulch ; and newspaper mulch were evaluated for mourning band control efficacy and phytotoxicity using 12 species of herbaceous perennials under playing area uprise conditions .
The succeeder ? Wood chips . In fact , wood chips were establish to be the most effective , boil down Mary Jane development by 93 to 99 % . Rubber mulch fare less well , turn back 73 % of green goddess compared to plant without mulch in the study .
plantsman , garden enthusiast , and author George Wiegel notesin a extended responseto a newspaper reader ’s question that there are better mulch for locoweed control . He explain that rubber tyre mulch wo n’t compact close enough to keep widow’s weeds at bay and that it will let too much piss through to engraft root word because it has no natural preoccupancy barrier . Plus , rubber mulch does not break down as wood chips do , which adds constitutional material to the soil .
Rubber tire mulch is potentially toxic
According to Linda Chalker - Scott , gum elastic mulch is hazardous to aquatic ecosystems in both magnanimous and small doses : “ Current research at Bucknell University indicates that golosh leachate from car tyre can vote out total aquatic communities of algae , zooplankton , snail , and fish . At lower immersion , the leachates make reproductive problems and precancerous lesion . ”
synthetic rubber tyre mulch is potentially toxic for three intellect – mineral content , composition , and roadway contamination . Think of it as the toxic tire triangle .
It contains toxic substances
What ’s in the overspill of rubber tyre mulch that would come into tangency with your plants ? According to Chalker - Scott in both lab and field samples all of the following have been found :
A work by S.M Reichman aid hammer home the yield of mineral runoff on plant . The Responses of Plants to Metal perniciousness : A review focusing on Copper , Manganese and Zincpublished by The Australian Minerals & Energy Environment Foundation found that toxic levels of metallic element have been shown to reduce photosynthesis , affect enzyme and protein production and usage , alter nourishing transport and have negative effects on cellular performance .
In other words , just three of the minerals list above caused enough damage to seriously feign plant life . Factor in the other eight minerals , and you have a mulch that could easily kill your garden plant .
But tyre are not tires until they ’re “ cured ” . This curing happens at high hotness in a process known as vulcanisation , in which plasticizers and accelerators are used . These plasticizers and accelerator , agree to Chalker - Scott , contain ingredient that can cause serious trouble : “ In eminent enough concentrations , some of these rubber leachates are known to be harmful to human wellness ; effects of picture range from skin and middle irritation to major organ harm and even death . longsighted - term vulnerability can lead to neurological hurt , carcinogenesis , and mutagenesis . ”
Rubber tire mulch may contain roadway contaminants
And if the minerals and the writing were n’t bad enough , there ’s one snatch of mutual sense recollect that might convert you of the danger of garden with rubber tire mulch : how clean are the tyre that are getting chopped up and serve as garden mulch ?
Just because the tires are cake , painted , and undercut does not mean the rubber does not still hold roadway contamination . And if tires do , in fact , have contaminants in them , ineluctably , these will terminate up in the mulch .
Put another way of life , the life story of a tire is full of time spend on roads interacting with who knows what from who recognise where ? liken to other forms of mulch where parentage and use can be traced more exactly , such as virgin safe mulch made of the shavings of rubber condom tile . In this representative , we know the intact journeying of the rubber and can safely call it non - toxic .
Consumer Reports Found Rubber Tire Mulch To Be… OK?
If something is so glaringly bad , how can it be sold online and at big box hardware stock ? Because public notion is still out on both weed dominance and perniciousness .
Ina study by wide respected non-profit-making Consumer Reports , golosh mulch faired decently against wood chip mulch in aspects of pot control and persist put underflooding . CR did find low level of tip , but patently no higher than what would be in the soil to begin with . However , CR yield a stiff monition about the presence of steel or nylon conducting wire and the potential difference for chemicals to percolate into the soil from the tires – presumptively , the same leachate the folks at Bucknell institute to stamp out intact aquatic communities .
While rubber tire mulch is at first an attractive choice for gardeners await for an choice to wood chipping mulch , it does have its own set ofpotential hazardsthat one should be conservative about . As with any important decisiveness that touch the garden , it is imperative to do research prior to making your choice to guarantee a safe and handsome garden harvest for years to come .
