While other food (health/culture/safety/fitness) blogs guide you through the showroom, I like to take you into the garage. Sure, people love photos of marble counter tops and canning tips and photos of children with cookies. Those things have a place, and that place is far, far from here. Today I want to talk about using tiny sharp bones as a sort of mechanical poison.
You can refer to diatomaceous earth as “D.E.,” if you’d like to sound especially hip and well-versed in the siliceous sedimentary rock scene. I’d argue that correctly pronouncing the product in all its polysyllabic Greek glory is a more certain path to impressing your friends, but the choice is yours. I’m sure we can agree that impressing your friends (and sales people at health food stores) is of capital import.
So we’ve established some options on how to ask for diatomaceous earth. Perhaps we should proceed to why you may want to ask for it. Or even, "what is it?"
“Diatomaceous” is an adjective meaning “from diatoms.” In simple terms, diatoms are algae with a crunch. These tiny phytoplankton number some 100,000 estimated species, but they all crunch the same. Their cell walls, known as frustules, are made of porous silica. The diatoms’ fossilized remains form a fine white powder en masse, and thus you have “diatomaceous earth.”
While D.E. has a great many uses industrially and domestically, it crosses the radar of the average person as a pest control agent. When an arthropod goes all Scarface on a big powdery pile of D.E., its exoskeleton begins losing its lipid coating, and dehydration ensues. Dehydration spells death for most living things, and common pests are no exception. Sprinkling diatomaceous earth along pest hots spots in your home is a safe way to eradicate the insect menace without endangering your pets or children—provided the D.E. is “food grade.” (Food grade diatomaceous earth is available at Foods For Living, of course.)
Obviously, the term “food grade” implies ingestibility, but what does it mean in the case of D.E.? Simply that it is free of pesticides and additives.
It should be noted that many people eat diatomaceous earth as a dietary supplement. Like most supplements, a quick Google search will unearth many hyperbolic claims about D.E.’s wondrous benefits. That isn’t to say that ingesting D.E. doesn’t have benefits. When any product begins to gain traction in the health industry, one can be sure that a league of opportunists and wild claims will be close behind. If you’re interested in using D.E. as a supplement, it’s beneficial to understand the nature of silica, how D.E. kills pests, and the different forms of D.E., along with their associated risks and benefits. A full exploration of the claims, studies, and evidence surrounding D.E. ingestion exceeds the scope of this post, but information on the subject is plentiful. Understanding even a little science behind the action of a product like D.E. can help you filter out the benefits from the hype.
Speaking of filters, there’s a lot to like about diatomaceous earth besides its potential for insect genocide. D.E. is used as a filtration agent for everything from swimming pools to wine to drinking water. It is used to clean up toxic spills. It’s in some cat litter. It’s an anticaking agent used in bulk feed storage. It is added as a “marker” to food in livestock nutrition experiments to measure how much of a given nutrient has actually been digested. Less experiment-concerned farmers add it to feed so as to keep horse and cow excrement free of flies. It was a stabilization ingredient in “Nobel’s Blasting Powder,” better known as “dynamite.”
If you haven’t gotten the drift yet, I’m going to spell it out: you come into contact with D.E. every day, whether you like it or not. Think you escaped somehow? It’s in many face scrubs and toothpastes, as well. Nice try.
So this stuff is great, and we use it for everything. Is there a downside? Well, try not to breathe in the “crystalline” form. The common “amorphous” form is essentially harmless, but there is usually some degree of the crystalline form present in D.E. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulates the crystalline content of D.E. in consumer products (currently 1%). The safety hazard posed by breathing commercial D.E. dust is truly negligible, but you may want to think twice before pursuing a career in mining the stuff. While you may get to travel to places as England, the Sahara, Czech Republic, and Santa Barbara County, prolonged exposure in mining conditions can result in silicosis. (“Silicosis” is the official name, but all the cool kids are calling it “potter’s rot” or “grinder’s asthma” these days.)
Heating D.E. to high temperatures changes much more of it into the crystalline form, which poses a greater health hazard. This requires industrial processing, so don’t worry about leaving your earth on the windowsill. But this distinction is why you should make sure you always get food grade D.E., which will not be crystalline, for home use.
You're not the only one excited about spring. There are armies of equally elated bugs who are elated. Get some D.E. and sprinkle away. Worried about sustainability? New diatoms are born every day, and it only takes about 65 million years for their fossils to be viable for killing bed bugs. (Just kidding. While D.E. is not exactly a “renewable resource” in the most literal sense, there are deposits of the stuff that are miles thick in some places. We’re not going to run out any time soon.)
If you have further questions/concerns/want to buy some, your local Foods For Living associate will be happy to help. Refer to the pronunciation aid if need be, deliver your request with conviction, and prepare for impressed double takes in your direction.
