Cyanobacteria Toxicity

You may have heard of toxic algae that can create a thick green slime that could cause activities like swimming or fishing to be shut down, or maybe a red tide causing hundreds of fish to be killed. These kinds of events are caused by specific species of algae and are called Harmful Algal Blooms, or HAB’s for short. There are cyanobacteria found almost everywhere around the world, especially in oceans, lakes and rivers, and commonly noticed when they reproduce exponentially to create an algae bloom but, not all cyanobacteria are harmful.

Chemically derived fertilizers like urea can be spread over a farm, but the plants don’t absorb even half of what is applied to the land. The rest of the unabsorbed fertilizer gets washed away and becomes runoff that gets dumped into our watersheds and coastal ecosystems. When the chemical pollutants and excess nitrogen enter the water they can spark huge Harmful Algal Blooms which can severely impact the ecosystem’s health as well as humanity’s health. Nutrient dumping like this is leading to mass amounts of harmful algal blooms and as a result we are seeing increases of eutrophication, dead zones and fish kills. We can also see an increase in various forms of shellfish and fish poisonings, birth defects and decreased water quality as a result of Harmful Algal Blooms.

Luckily, if you have any concern over HAB’s and are worried at all about filling your farm or garden with algae, you have nothing to worry about. The species that we use in our Live Algae Soil Amendment are non-toxic and are completely safe to use in your garden or on your farm. We have performed a microcystine test on our strains and can confirm that our Algal Biofertilizer is non toxic.

If you would like to read more about HAB’s and cyanotoxins go here