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Utility Uses of EM and Miscellaneous Articles:

Various Utility Uses of the Antioxidant (aka Reducing or Reductive) Effects of EM

Details on Uses of EM in Removing Rust, Corrosion and Tarnish (Gunk and Crud) from Metals, a Fun Demonstration with Some Practical Applications!

EM and Its Acidity -- Dangerous for Plastics?

Effects of EM Upon Some Plastics and Rubber, and on Some Fabric Dyes

A few of the uses for EM culture and products which are discussed herein may be contrary to regulatory rules or guidelines in your country, state, province, county or region.  Further, some practices may be frowned upon by qualified health professionals, and some practices could be dangerous to human health, or could be dangerous to animal health (or crop health!) if performed or processed incorrectly.  This site and these pages are offered for educational and informational purposes only.  If you choose to use EM or any other microbial inoculant products in any way for any application, you must first check with your local and national authorities to determine if your planned use complies with all applicable rules, regulations and requirements.  If you choose to use EM for any purposes involving human ingestion (or placement upon skin, etc.), I recommend that you first research all relevant information available in the literature and on the web carefully, and review the recommendations in the regulatory guidelines for your country or region.  Further, if brewing EM products for human or animal consumption, you will also wish to employ common sense and careful techniques.

A number of the utility and nutritional applications of EM take advantage of the powerful antioxidant power offered by the fermented end-product liquid, such as Activated EM (AEM) or various brews intended for human use.

Hints on Making a Stronger Antioxidant and Deodorizing EM Product
As noted on other sections and pages on this website, the antioxidant and deodorizing power of Activated EM (AEM) increases with the passage of time and the concomitant length of fermentation, and also increases as the ratio of molasses to water is increased from 1:20 to perhaps 1:10 or even stronger, such as 1:6 or 1:3.

Carcasses and Meat
I was recently given a dead road-kill deer in the early spring, which I butchered in my backyard (I live in a wilderness area...).  I ended up with about 40 pounds of venison and deer organs in large plastic dishpans, covered in plastic.  I knew that I would not quickly (if ever!) get around to cleaning and bagging the meat for the freezer, and so, to prevent the meat from putrefying in the wrong way, I sprayed all the pieces of meat with a 1:100 mix of AEM five days after butchering.  Well, more than three weeks after butchering, the meat was still sitting in the dishpans in my fridge, and was still fine. I continued to eat a little bit every day... and someday I may get around to washing it and bagging it for the freezer. There is no hurry, thanks to EM!

After butchering the deer, I dragged the carcass across my yard to a spot behind some bushes.  I sprayed the area where I had butchered the deer with a bit of AEM spray (AEM and EM ceramic powder in water) to manage any odor which might arise from all the blood and bits of flesh, and also sprayed the deer carcass with the same.  No smell then, nor since then.  There were two days when it had rained the night before and when I could smell the carcass faintly when I got within 6 feet of it, but I could smell nothing at any further distance.  Normally the carcass of a butchered deer will stink strongly for a radius of many hundred yards.

Deodorant and Deodorizer
Many folks use AEM as an air freshener and deodorizer spray in their horse or cattle barns. Most also spray some on bedding to actually decompose the odor-causing substances where they get their start, and to promote better health for their livestock. Of course, as covered elsewhere on this site, many folks feed EM (usually in the form of AEM in water and also EM bokashi top-dressed on their feed) to their animals to increase their levels of health and vitality, and to drastically reduce waste odors.

Many folks, myself included, use EM as an underarm deodorant. Works great! You may be able to find far more details on this and other related human uses of EM in the "Human Uses" section on another page on this website.

Composting
I have had a five gallon plastic compost bucket in my kitchen for years, in which I throw all my kitchen food waste, primarily veggie and meat waste.  It is really not a true compost bucket but rather a holding pail to store my kitchen waste until I can dump it on the compost pile or give it to the chickens, who eat anything.  When I started working with EM, I started spraying each layer of stuff in the bucket with AEM spray as added.  My intent was not particularly to compost the stuff in the bucket, but rather simply to manage odors and pests, and to ensure that as the material decomposed in the time (usually two weeks) before I could give it to the chickens, it would decompose only in a healthful, life-giving way which would improve the nutrients.  The fun thing about all this is that it means that I do not need any fancy grids, screens, false bottoms or spigots/valves at the bottom of the bucket.  Rather, it is still just the same old unmodified 5 gallon (actually 6.5 gallon) plastic bucket, filled with kitchen waste which has been sprayed with EM. 

By the way, when using EM in such a kitchen waste storage bucket, there may be times, especially as lots of liquids accumulate, that some odors may still be noticeable. In such cases, all you need to do is to add -- I use a spray bottle -- some sugar or molasses to feed the beneficial EM organisms, and the odor will disappear in short order. I got this last tip from Eric at EMRO USA.

Fly and Pest Control
AEM is used around the world for fly control in barns and livestock pens. In addition to adding AEM to drinking water and top-dressing feed with EM bokashi, any waste accumulations or bedding are sprayed lightly with a dilute mixture of AEM in water, or sprinkled lightly with EM bokashi.  The EM organisms help to drastically reduce fly infestations around barns and livestock by decomposing organic substances in the waste in such a way (a reductive, or antioxidant means, rather than oxidative putrefaction) that they are not very edible to fly larvae, thus making it very hard for fly larvae to thrive. It has also been suggested that the EM even affects the mortality rate of the fly eggs as well.

Mosquito Control
AEM is used around the world for mosquito control in open bodies of water. Simply add some AEM every week or two to any large tank or open container of water which would normally be a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Much in the same way as it helped drastically reduce fly infestations around barns and livestock, EM microorganisms in the decompose organic substances in the water in such a way (a reductive, or antioxidant means, rather than oxidative putrefaction) that they are not very edible to mosquito larvae, thus making it very hard for mosquito larvae to thrive.

Controlling and Remediating Rust, Tarnish and Corrosion
....see below; this material has been broken out into its own section!

The Ability of EM to Remove Rust, Corrosion, and Deposits of Oxidative Corrosion (Crud and Gunk)

Introduction
It is quite well-known that AEM, much like a few antioxidant nutritional supplements, can remove (and prevent) rust and corrosion from metals, both of which are almost always examples of oxidative "destruction". Two sections follow immediately which offer some examples and photos of such removal of rust and corrosion in the real world by AEM. For further information on this topic, with more examples and photos of rust removal by EM brews, and with some further information on the antioxidant properties of EM brews, you may wish to see the Technical Information: Antioxidants, Oxidative Stress, Lab Tests page on the Antiox Brew website, at http://www.antioxbrew.com/science-backgnd-test-results-1.html

Galvanized Steel Water Pans for Poultry
I have two galvanized steel water pans in my duck, goose and chicken pen; they have been there for a year (well before I had started working with EM...).  After just one month of use, the interior of each developed a heavy rust-like discoloration on the inner surfaces, due to corrosion and oxidation; I found it impossible to scrub this off or remove it in any other way.  Well, I started adding AEM to the water in January 2003, and within a month, I noticed that all (previously tarnished and oxidized) metal surfaces which were exposed constantly to the EM-laden water were now sparkling clean and looked as clean and new as the day I had purchased the pans at my local Southern States feed and grain store.
 

The photo above shows the bottom of much of the pan as it is today. The pan normally sits on a sloping hillside, and so the water in it does not sit level but rather slopes toward the front of the picture. For the purposes of photographing it, I raised the upper end of the pan even further to expose some of the metal surface. However, the photo clearly shows the bright clean metal of the pan bottom, in contrast to the corroded, "rusty" metal on the sides (walls) of the pan near the top of the photograph.  Before using EM, the bottom of the pan had shown the same degree of oxidative corrosion and tarnish as seen on the walls.

Better, the EM manages the problem I had previously had with the water getting stinky in warm weather due to all the mud and food debris which my ducks and geese drag into these pans and also some 20 and 100 gallon wading pools in their pen.  No smell, and the water remains far more healthful for my bird friends.

Another Example: Nails and Rust
Lanox is an EM nutritional supplement beverage made in Korea, mentioned elsewhere on this site under human uses of EM and the nutritional antioxidant effects of EM.  One of the pages on the Lanox website shows pictures of nails in two side-by-side glass dishes, one nail immersed in water for a few days and the other immersed in Lanox for a few days. As you probably would expect if you have read this far, the nail immersed in Lanox shows no rust, while the one immersed in water shows considerable rust. 

Beware!
Of course, the ability of EM to remove rust and corrosion (including deposits from corrosive oxidation) can sometimes lead to problems! If EM products are used, for example, on a metal pump or engine which is highly corroded and which is literally "held together" by deposits of "crud" and "gunk", the pump or engine may well fail totally as the deposits are removed, since there is not enough metal left to provide the proper seals and clearance needed.

Another Striking Example of Rust Removal by EM
Recently, Sharon Rose, who runs the EM_WG email list group (a list group devoted to EM and its relationship with monatomic or ormus elements) at Yahoo Groups, and who is a fellow EM experimenter, sent me the following letter and photos:

Hi Vinny,

I just completed an experiment that demonstrates the antioxidant capacity of EM. This experiment began in 1997 when I had a bunch of tools that had rusted, and had heard that EM removed rust, so I thought I would try using EM on an old horseshoe first, in case it didn't work.

If you don't have horses then you may not know that they are severely prone to rust, I presume because of the nature of their metal compounds. My horse shoer always bemoaned how he could not prevent his BRAND NEW horse shoes from rusting. These pictures [editor's note: photos below] show the horseshoe that I soaked in EM SIX YEARS AGO! I only soaked half of the shoe because it was too large to fit into the container I was using. Now I am glad I did that because it leaves a 'before & after' effect.

Recently I noticed that the clean side of the horseshoe was beginning to rust, ever so slowly though. So I decided to give a portion of it another EM bath. The bowl I used had a total of 4 cups of liquid in it. I used slightly hot tap water, added 1/3 cup of EM, and later added 1/4 cup of old coffee to insure that the microbes became active. The first picture (HRday0) shows the EM bath before adding the coffee.

The water turned a bit darker after adding the coffee, but the extreme color change seen in the other photos is due to the rust that was being removed. In the last picture of the EM bath water (HS36hrsWaterOnly), was taken just before I threw it out. You can see there was actual sediment floating on the top. This sediment looked like dry drops of carbon, as though it had been sprinkled over the top of the bowl and had not yet been absorbed by the liquid. But this of course was not the case. The dry carbon-like powder had floated up from the bowl.

I stopped this experiment after 36 hours because I believed the EM was exhausted. Merely intuition. The EM I used, although properly stored, is several months old and had been previously frozen, so I was impressed by its voraciousness.

Each photo of the horseshoe is marked with numbers 1, 2 & 3. The lines one and two denote the boundary from this current experiment where only the tips of the horseshoe were bathed. The number three denotes the boundary from the first experiment done 6 years ago when only the left half of the shoe was soaked. Take a look on the two photos depicting the back of the horseshoe only (HSback24hrs & HSback36hrs). In the lower left corner there is the shoe size number nine stamped into the tip that becomes increasingly apparent within only 12 hours.

You may use these photos anyway that may be helpful. If you put them on your website would you post to the group so they may see these images?

Thank you,

Sharon

Photographs just below....

Prolonging the Life of Razor Blades With Activated EM Soak

Briefly, if you immerse a razor blade in a solution of full-strength AEM or EM-X at all times when you are not using it -- in other words, in between uses, it will drastically prolong the life of the blade, and apparently prolong it even far longer than the various patented treatment devices that involve placing the blade above the tips of small aligned pyramids, or inside a larger pyramid, or placing it so that it is bathed in the "energy field" caused by two opposing north poles of permanent magnets.  In fact, Dr. Higa goes further, and goes so far as to claim that all of the microscopic pitting and dents in the razor blade from use will fully repair overnight..... then he gets in to talking about negative entropy and all that funny science-fiction stuff... sounds to me like cheap pulp science fiction techie-talk translated from German to Japanese and then to English

So, basically you want to build a holder or reservoir that will hold at least 2 to 4 ounces of AEM, and then cut a rectangular slot in top that will allow you to immerse the blade portion of a razor. The razor would be placed in the AEM treatment reservoir at all times when it is not in use. So long as the reservoir will hold at least 2 to 4 ounces of AEM, and so long as the rectangular slot is small enuf that there is not undue evaporation, you should need to replenish or replace the AEM in the reservoir only once every 4 to 6 weeks. 

You can see below two photos of a homemade razor blade sharpener which sits in my bathroom cabinet.  The sharpener is simply a 6.5 ounce Rubbermaid rectangular serving saver container, with a small rectangular slot in its cover, and filled nearly to the brim with activated EM (AEM.)  You will note that a simple makeshift holder is used to hold the lower portion of the blade handle elevated slightly to allow the head of the razor to fully dip into the bath.  As you have likely already guessed, the other device in the photo is one of many patented commercially-available magnetic field "razor blade sharpeners"; this one I purchased for $20 several years ago from Sharper Image. 

Final Notes
To some extent, AEM immersion will also apparently sharpen and repair minor damage to blades of scissors, hatchets, tools, etc.  Dr. Higa claims this effect goes beyond antioxidant activity, and encompasses negative entropic re-generation.... but a simple country boy like me (I was jes' out in the henhouse visiting my hens) cannot quite get a handle on all that.
 
 

I seem to receive questions about once per week about whether it is safe to brew and store EM in plastic containers because it is "acidic"; the authors express a fear that the acids will somehow dissolve the bottle and leach out harmful substances; there is a large fear about plastics being "eaten" by the "acid".  Unfortunately, due largely to cultural misconceptions and old science fiction movies and comic books, many folks seem to have the idea that ALL "acids" etch away at ALL things, and destroy them.  In fact, while some metals can be etched or corroded by acids quite easily, many other things are not particularly prone to etching by acids. In any case, the acidity (pH from 3.9 down to about 3.4) of most EM brews is FAR LESS than even that of the fluids in your stomach, and also less than that of many common substances (including soda pop, wine, seltzer water, fruit juices, orange juice, etc....)  Many plastics are extremely resistant to etching or corrosion by acids, and, indeed, most strong laboratory acids are stored in plastic bottles made of plastics very similar to what most of us use to brew AEM and EM brews. 

Any tiny amount of plasticizers from plastic which might enter an EM brew are hardly of concern, since it is exactly such things which EM critters (well, the PNSBs) love to eat and turn into antioxidants.  In any case, the incredible benefits from the other stuff in the EM brew would overwhelm any tiny negative effect from any plasticizers which may have migrated from the container wall. 

However, for a very closely related topic, see the next section....

Strangely, the EM critters, if stored in plastic containers for a real long time, will eventually -- although this varies depending more or less on the type of plastic used -- get around to digesting the container wall slowly (although not with "acids"!), eventually destroying it.  However, this digestion is very slow and gradual, and could take many years.  I have heard that this phenomenon has actually caused container failure at times wherein EM was stored for a very long time in a flimsy plastic container, but it is not of concern for most of us who brew EM products. I seem to recall that PET is one of the plastics most susceptible to being digested (over a long time) by EM critters.   Practically, we are hardly likely to drink an EM product which has been stored in plastic for four years.... and, in any case, it is likely that the critters digest the stuff and turn it into something harmless, since they are even used to remediate really nasty toxic wastes (often in a matter of days) and even really toxic waste military explosives such as RDX, turning them into CO2, water, and antioxidants.  This information is right out of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and NOT some kind of fringe/alternative/fuzzy/New Age assertion.

Mortality of Cheap Spray Bottles
On a more practical note... the one place those of us who use EM may see the effects of EM eating plastics is when we use EM in certain types of plastic spray bottles. In my experience (and I have been doing experiments with this lately, because I at first doubted the veracity of what I seemed to be observing), EM products such as AEM seem to rather rapidly age and eventually destroy certain types of plastic pump mechanisms on cheap plastic spray bottles, particularly some of the types with a trigger which must be squeezed and where the pump-action plastic piston/cylinder are located immediately behind the trigger. These are the ubiquitous spray bottles which are often sold for 50 cents to $1.99 in the household sections of stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart, and I should note that even in this genre, there are certain brands and styles of spray bottles which seem to be rather hardy and resistant to the problems I have described above. Further, the spray mechanism (a vertical white pump) on the little blue glass (for example) spray bottles often used for bottling herbal sprays and natural cosmetics seem to be immune to this problem, likely due to the type of plastics used as well as better design.

In any case, this problem was just commonplace enough, and disabled enough of my spray bottles, that I finally did some research....  I had along ago eliminated the possibility that it might be particles from the AEM clogging the mechanism, since many of my failed bottles actually had filter screens on the intake. I then purchased a number of brand-new cheap (one dollar price range) trigger-type spray bottles, in several different brands/styles. I filled two of each type with well-filtered AEM spray, and two of each type with tap water, and used each for a few minutes daily. Within 10 days, the AEM bottles were experiencing real problems with the spray mechanisms, while the water-filled bottles were functioning perfectly.

I have found that the high-end pump-type air pressure spray bottles are the most resistant to such damage. These are the type of spray bottles where the pump mechanism (usually a vertical pump piston with a handle) simply forces air into a strong bottle (plastic, usually), which pressurizes it and forces the liquid out via a spray nozzle. Although these spray bottles are usually a bit larger than the cheap and flimsy $1 bottles, ranging in size from 3/4 quart to 2, 3 or 4 quarts, and in price from $5 to $15, they are of far higher quality and the bottles themselves are made of really thick tough plastics. They seem to last almost forever, and, since the pump mechanism is not in direct contact with the EM, and since the types of materials used are far more robust and tough, they are really easier to use and more reliable as well.

Since first posting my notes on the web about the effects of EM on cheap plastic spray bottles, I have received several fone calls and e-mails from folks thanking me for the spray bottle information, and telling me that they too had been experiencing rapid and frequent spray bottle morbidity and mortality once they started putting EM in the bottles, and that my letter confirmed their suspicions.

Effects of EM Upon Other Plastics, Some Rubber and Some Fabric Dyes
Have you ever seen the lever-type bottle stoppers for beer and wine bottles?  They cost about two bucks apiece, and are a combination of a metal lever, a plastic body, and several rings of red rubber and plastic, which provide a very positive and secure seal, as you insert them and then throw the lever from vertical to horizontal, compressing and expanding the red rubber rings to seal the neck of the bottle.  Well, when I use these stoppers on my bottles of EM brews and elixirs, which are usually in 12 ounce beer bottles, I notice after a month or two that two things happen:
-- the color of the red rubber rings near the bottom of the stopper, where it is exposed to the liquid, starts to become bleached and lose most of its color
-- the same (now-partially bleached) rubber rings start to slowly disintegrate, slowly losing their structural integrity, with a granular broken appearance much like that of an old rubber band.  The photo below shows some of the bleaching of the lower part of the stopper, along with the granular disintegration of the rubber.

This effect does NOT happen to the same type of stoppers when used only to stopper bottles of beer or wine, but, rather, only with EM products.

These phenomena described above are due to the same processes which destroy the spray mechanism in cheap spray bottles, and which bleach most of the purple grape color from my grape brews, and which can bleach clothing in your washer, which is why the EMRO folks recommend that you only use significant amounts of AEM in your laundry primarily with white and very light-colored clothes (BTW, I now use a few ounces of AEM in every load of my laundry instead of an oxidizing bleach; it deodorizes and freshens clothing.)  However, even though the bleaching we are all most familiar with is due to oxidation by oxidizers such as chlorine (e.g., as in chlorine bleach) or by hydrogen peroxide (as in Clorox II non-chlorine bleach) or other highly reactive oxygen-bearing compounds, the bleaching done by EM is actually done by the powerful reducing (antioxidant) activity of the PNSB organisms, particularly the hydride ions which they produce. 

Indeed, one of the simple, cheap and easy tests which I stumbled upon several years ago for demonstrating the powerful antioxidant (reducing) effect of MegaHydrin (MH) was to crush a MH caplet and add it to a mug or bowl of water to which a tablespoon or so of frozen red (purple) grape juice concentrate had been added.  In a short time, the MH would bleach away most or all of the red/purple grape color, due to the release of the negative hydrogen (hydride) ion. Oddly, a lot of those pigments in grapes are phenolic compounds, which are already antioxidants, and the research literature and my work seem to indicate that the "bleaching" by the hydride ions increases the antioxidant potency of the grape pigments even further. Even so-called alkaline ionized water, more properly named Electrolyzed Reduced Water (ERW), has the same effect on grape pigment, although it can be more subtle, since the ERW cannot provide the same reservoir of negative hydrogen ions provided by MH.

While such powerful antioxidant effects are often beneficial in biological systems (our bodies and those of our chickens, dogs and cats), they can be a bit hard on some inanimate objects such as some rubbers and plastics! However, it is primarily by this process and related mechanisms that EM is able to digest toxic wastes and transform them into harmless and even beneficial substances, and the same way that the PNSBs in EM can dissolve and remediate toxic waste sites heavily contaminated with highly-toxic military explosives such as RDX. It is also the same process used by EM organisms when they act on the antioxidant and anti-tumor substances in turmeric and potentiate them and make them more bio-available, and when they act on substances such as vitamin C and vitamin B12 and convert them to highly potent and bio-available versions of the same.
 
 

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