"anton" wrote in message
...

sw wrote in message ...
anton wrote:

Nick Maclaren wrote in message ...
In article ,
Mary Fisher wrote:

No- not amazing. You've just proved that it's perfectly safe if
you follow the instructions on the can. Just like
pesticides ;-)

Sorry, but that's not true... organochlorines aren't 'perfectly
safe'
whether you follow the instructions on the tin or not :-/

Sorry, that's not true. PVC is an organochlorine and is
'perfectly safe' unless you start burning it.

Which organochlorines in which tins are you suggesting ain't
perfectly safe?

I'll get my chair ...

My tame biochemist is unable to think of any organochlorines that are
safe for mammals in large quantities.

Er- we seem to have an instance of moving goalposts. Safe
'if you follow the instructions on the tin' was the original target,
not 'safe for mammals in large quantities'.

Do you know the meaning of the word 'bioaccumulative'?

Yes. Munch on this ragwort.

Why is it significant that organochlorines such as aldrin and dieldrin
have 'half-lives' measured in years?


With respect to this argument, the half-lives of those compounds are of no
significance whatsoever..

It is possible that you misunderstood the concept of "half-life" in this
context. I (possibly wrongly) understand it to mean that if I ate a 1gm of
a substance now, the half-life of that substance in me is the time after
which there will still be 1/2 gm of it left in me. [Franz Heymann]

My suggestion was that
(garden) pesticides are perfectly safe if instructions are
followed. My suggestion was _not_ that previous generations
of pesticides were safe, so don't bother me with aldrin and
dieldrin, or I'll tell you about lead arsenate. Clearly in the light
of the toxicity of water itself my 'perfectly' is an exaggeration,
and I'll withdraw it if you like.

There are some serious health issues on the subject of
pesticides- the use of organophosphates by sheep farmers
for instance- but these hardly apply on a garden scale.

To return to the point, the kneejerk classification of synthetic
pesticides as 'poisons' is merely hysterical when there are so
many natural poisons in the garden, and so many other
'poisons' in all other aspects of modern life.

--
Anton