On 28/04/2011 13:01, alan.holmes wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:33:02 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Apr 26, 3:28 pm, wrote:
I am unable to buy this at garden centres as elf and safety have banned
it, or so they say. However I can buy it off the net, doesn't make
sense. Is there a good source of it, I find that the postage cost on the
net are rather high?
--
Residing on low ground in North Staffordshire

It is banned as it can be used to make explosives. So you can thank
our Pakistanis friends for that.

The IRA surely?

A very long time ago a cousin of mine was interested in chemistry and taught
me how to make explosives using Sodium Chlorate, it was a very interesting
experiment, and another using red top matches!

The most common beginners explosive mixture using chlorate is very
tetchy and generally associated with the loss of fingers and/or limbs.
You were lucky to escape intact.

Modern fireworks factories are obliged to keep fabrication of chlorate
compositions entirely separate from gunpowder based ones to avoid such
disastrous spontaneous detonations during manufacture.

Even a century ago major disasters at fireworks factories were
frequently attributed to bad handling of bulk chlorates and owners
prosecuted accordingly eg.

http://www3.gendisasters.com/new-jer...osion-may-1904

There was a bad one a few years back with similar root cause.

Regards,
Martin Brown