“Rock Dust and the Environment”
by Donald J. Supkow
Chapter 1 Questions and Answers about rock dust.
The following chapters are contained in the book. Information on purchasing the book is listed below.
Chapter 2 Investing in the environment
Chapter 3 Soil remineralization by Frederick I. Scott, Jr.
Chapter 4 Rock dust vs. pesticide residues and soil contamination
Chapter 5 How dusty is stone dust?
Chapter 6 Rock dust and the vitamin content of vegetables
Chapter 7 Rock dust vs. the ozone hole
Chapter 8 Organic vs commercial food: The rock dust connection
Chapter 9 The toxic legacy of acid rain lives on
Chapter 10 Why do we have global warming?
Chapter 11 Summary of rock dust benefits
To obtain a copy of “Rock Dust and the Environment” send $10 to the Starduster Society, 28 Sefton Circle, Piscataway, NJ 08854
Recent Questions and Answers pertaining to “rock dust”.
The Starduster Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping improve the environment through educating the public about the environmental benefits of world wide soil remineralization and reforestation. Your comments and support are welcome. If you would like to become a Starduster, please contact us at
28 Sefton Circle, Piscataway, NJ 08854
Phone: 732-752-3189 FAX: 732-752-0899
Recent Questions:
Q: If I am not mistaken lava contains basalt. Shouldn’t lava contain all the necessary trace elements or should others be specifically added?
Answer: The trace elements that occur in various types of volcanic rock are generally similar to each other in terms of chemical composition. The main difference is in the concentration of each individual element which may vary from one type of volcanic rock to another. The concentration of a particular element, say magnesium, may even vary in a certain rock type such as basalt, depending on which quarry it came from and even from which layer it came from within a particular quarry. When lava flows cool, some heavy minerals such as olivine, settle out to the bottom of the layer.The famous cliff called the Palisades of the Hudson on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, is an igneous rock intrusion which never escaped to the land surface while it was cooling. It contains an olivine rich layer at the bottom contact with the underlying shale. Thus elements contained in the olivine crystals are enriched at the bottom of this rock layer while these same elements are somewhat less concentrated in the upper part of the layer. The main thing to consider is that most igneous or volcanic rocks contain all of the trace elements found in the chemist’s Periodic Table of Elements. When plants grow, they pick and choose what elements they need from any rock dust which is added to the soil.
The most important factor in rock dust is the degree of fineness of the rock dust. The finer the rock dust is, the more easily soil bacteria decompose the dust particles and release the trace elements contained with them, putting the trace elements into a form which the plant roots can absorb. The type of igneous rock that the rock dust comes from is only of secondary importance compared to the fineness of the fork dust. If you read the carrot study done at the John Love organic farm in Minnesota, you will notice that the rock dust used in the experiment was simply made from gravel that had been dredged up from the Mississippi River. This gravel was probably composed primarily of granite pebbles.
