In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
In message , Steve Newport
writes
I have a new brasier (spelling?) and have used it a lot. Now its over
half full of ash.

Is it safe to dump this, and dig it into the vegtable plot?

Depends what you've been burning. If you've been burning wood treated
with, for example, Chromated Copper Arsenate (Tanalith) added the ash to
a vegetable plot would probably not be a good idea.

POSSIBLY not a good idea. If growing plants on soils containing those
metals made them toxic, the Welsh would have died out years ago.
Also, we need a fair amount of copper in our diet, a trace of arsenic,
and possibly even some chromium (I can't remember). It is primarily
too much of those that is the problem! Eating that ash is definitely
a bad idea, but it is likely that plants will filter most of the
heavy metals out.

What I don't have a clue about, and I am damn sure that none of the
Whitehall and Brussels bureaucrats making the rules do, either, is
what the effect of such residues is (a) on the soil ecology and
(b) on the uptake in food plants. A certain amount of playing safe
is justified, but hysteria is not - and many of our regulations are
made by ignorant and negligent bureaucrats following campaigns by
a hysterical gutter press.

There. That's nailed my colours to the fence!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.