"Mike Lyle" wrote in message
...
Tumbleweed wrote:
"Mike Lyle" wrote in message
[...]
Nippon liquid really is safe, you know. It's based on borax, which
you can use to treat mouth ulcers. Nippon's been around for many
decades with no known ill effects on mammals or, in these trifling
quantities, the environment. It's one of the best-known
preparations,
not some new wizzo thing introduced by an agrichemical company
only
to be withdrawn twenty years later when they found out what it
did.
As far as I remember, it doesn't even hurt bees (but my memory is
long out of warranty).

I don't see how you're going to get pyrethrum powder into the nest
without tipping out the tree, which you said wasn't a realistic
option. So use Nippon without a qualm.

--
Mike.


Isn't it interesting when people use the word 'natural' to imply
something is safe?
"...or pyrethrum powder. Both totally natural " Pyrethrum is in
fact
slightly poisonous, certainly much more so than, Nippon, especially
as the nippon will be within a small container accessible only to
ants and the Pyrethrum spread around liberally.......but never
mind,
its natural :-)

Fancy a glass of hemlock, OP?

I understand. But what I also understand is that we and other
life-forms have evolved in the presence of a lot of natural poisons,
and a lot of benign naturally-occurring substances which can become
harmful in certain circumstances. Our data on the effects and
behaviour of most of these is much longer-term than any we can
possibly have on the effects of synthetic compounds: hence the very
conservative approach many of us choose to take.

--
Mike.

Agreed, its just the unthinking (not targetting you here) use of the word
natural to equate with safe that I was talking about. Also, evolutionary
speaking, we havent evolved in the presence of most of the natural poisons
we ingest, since they are very new to our diet.

There is very little data on the long term effects of natural poisons,
especially those that form a part of our diet. Most of our foodstuffs are,
evolutionary speaking, brand new, and so we havent really developed a
tolerance for them yet but the effects may still be significant but low
enough no one would ever notice withour large scale studies.

Some food items we routinely eat are significantly more toxic than most
man-made pesticides (simply because rigorous testing has eliminated the
latter). Amongst those are lettuce and coffee. Really this should be
unsurprising, because many chemicals in plants have evolved to be
specifically toxic to either insects or mammals. Yet you'll find people
drinking coffee and smoking*, campaigning about the minute and largely
theoretical effect that a man-made pesticide might have. Oliver Goldsmith,
who edits 'The Ecologist', would be a good case in point.

--
Tumbleweed

*plus the huge effect on the environment caused by growing tobacco

email replies not necessary but to contact use;
tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com