On 20 Aug 2003 23:05:46 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Steve B wrote:
On 18 Aug 2003 23:01:13 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:


The spray is Bt.

Bt has been genetically engineered into cotton plants in an attempt to
resist the boll weevil, and they are quite widely planted.

So: do that with a few more plants (which no-one works with on a daily
basis or makes underpants out of), and we remove the need for
spraying, surely?

Isn't it witches don't like applying water?

Would the lint from Bt cotton undergarments cause any people more lung/eye
irritation than non-Bt cotton?

I think we do get nutrition through our lungs. Some things are directly
absorbed and some broken down a bit?

If Bt cotton is in the lungs will there be byssinosis more frequently than
for non-Bt?

Occupational disease affecting cotton workers, characterised by
chronic bronchitis, to save anyone else the effort of looking it up.
Happens more often on Mondays, apparently. ("Yeah, right!" some rooted
cynics may respond.).

http://chorus.rad.mcw.edu/doc/00053.html

[...]
Monday morning syndromes stemming from occupational exposure to toxic
substances have also been described in cardiology. One of the best
known is "Monday Morning Sudden Cardiac Death" among dynamite
manufacturing workers, most likely due to acute re-exposure to nitrate
esters upon return to work after a brief period of absence
[...]
from
Linkname: Proposed Agenda for OC
URL:
http://www.workhealth.org/Occ.%20Car...0for%20OC.html
size: 1268 lines

Seriously, I wonder whether there's a genuinely suggested cause for
this anomaly.

Apparently steam treatment of the cotton fibre is protective. Is it
killing bacteria which grow over the weekend, or moistening the cotton
fibers or otherwise making them stick into larger bundles?

Has anyone other than you, Brian, suggested there is more byssinosis
from Bt resistant cotton?

discussed on `byssinosis' thread.

On a cursory scan I can see nothing
(unfortunately, there's someone called Butcher, BT, who seems to have
done a lot of work on byssinosis and cotton, but not as far as I can
see on Bt).

Who is going to bother to research it?

Who is bothering with the lungs of child outworkers helping their parents
to get paid for their contracts?

Please explain this further [child outworkers helping their parents
etc]

Cath


I'm sure you'll have a reference or two (URLs only, please).

Meanwhile, let the double-blind underpant trials commence. I'd be a
lot less nervous about taking part than I would about using unbleached
loo-paper and bringing my sensitive underparts in contact with the
proven carcinogens secreted by those nasty trees.

I think the strong perfumes put into toilet paper may be troublesome.
Maybe they swell the tissues into piles, same as might be a result in some
people of using anti-angina nitroglycerin spray standing up. I wonder.

In sci.agriculture wrote:
On a cursory scan I can see nothing
(unfortunately, there's someone called Butcher, BT, who seems to have
done a lot of work on byssinosis and cotton, but not as far as I can
see on Bt).

Who is going to bother to research it?

Who is bothering with the lungs of child outworkers helping their parents
to get paid for their contracts?

Please explain this further [child outworkers helping their parents
etc]

Linkname: Jan 2001, Child labour in Australian garment industry
URL: http://www.cleanclothes.org/campaign/00-01hwaus.htm
size: 105 lines

I think I have posted in the past refs to lists of companies who do or
don't adhere to a code since then.

I suppose some famrers will have tales to tell about child labour on
farms. Gordon has related stuff to us about the old days.

A problem with some farms is the back-breaking work. There is room for
ingenious inventors of hand-tools. My back was bad when I was young, but I
wasn't doing bend over work. Now I am experimenting with not eating grain,
even rice, and my lower back is much better.

In a homogeneous society one way may suit everyone, but it may be cruel
when people are different. For some the chemicals are the trouble, and
they can't read the labels very functionally.

Then who is to know when nettles start growing in a Roundup Ready soy,
corn, or cotton field, and Roundup lets them grow, and someone says you'll
have to get Pursuit and mix it. It works but do they know the extra
cautions? The company wants to make money, and may not be the best
advisor. Who else is there?

Idiot, BT cotton kills boll worms no boll weevil.

Gordon
"Steve B" wrote in message
...
On 18 Aug 2003 23:01:13 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:


The spray is Bt.

Bt has been genetically engineered into cotton plants in an attempt to
resist the boll weevil, and they are quite widely planted.

So: do that with a few more plants (which no-one works with on a daily
basis or makes underpants out of), and we remove the need for
spraying, surely?

Would the lint from Bt cotton undergarments cause any people more
lung/eye
irritation than non-Bt cotton?

I think we do get nutrition through our lungs. Some things are directly
absorbed and some broken down a bit?

If Bt cotton is in the lungs will there be byssinosis more frequently
than
for non-Bt?

Occupational disease affecting cotton workers, characterised by
chronic bronchitis, to save anyone else the effort of looking it up.
Happens more often on Mondays, apparently. ("Yeah, right!" some rooted
cynics may respond.).

http://chorus.rad.mcw.edu/doc/00053.html

Seriously, I wonder whether there's a genuinely suggested cause for
this anomaly.

Has anyone other than you, Brian, suggested there is more byssinosis
from Bt resistant cotton? On a cursory scan I can see nothing
(unfortunately, there's someone called Butcher, BT, who seems to have
done a lot of work on byssinosis and cotton, but not as far as I can
see on Bt).

I'm sure you'll have a reference or two (URLs only, please).

Meanwhile, let the double-blind underpant trials commence. I'd be a
lot less nervous about taking part than I would about using unbleached
loo-paper and bringing my sensitive underparts in contact with the
proven carcinogens secreted by those nasty trees.

Steve B.

On Tue, 19 Aug 2003 22:55:44 -0500, posted:

And cotton crops are often sprayed to kill the leaves prior to the
bolls being harvested.

Cath

But cotton fibre is virtually pure cellulose, natures own plastic,
polyglucose.

Gordon Couger wrote:
Idiot, BT cotton kills boll worms no boll weevil.

Thanks, Gordon. We note you gave a good explanation on a previous
article.

I understood that boll weevil has to be treated separately taking
care not to kill beneficial organisms. Are the `beneficials' you
wrote of

i) necessary pollen spreaders
ii) parasites or predators which kill boll worms?

It is all quite complex and maybe the knowledge of the farmers of
old will pay off.

Now they are finding in China that mixing lots of different rice
produces much more yield, makes better use of soil micro-organisms
and produces less greenhouse gas - methane.

If you happen to want individual types of rice maybe the technology
these days could go into designing a machine to do the job. That
might cost a bit but the extra yield could more than make up for it.
In the old days the technology to design the machine would nto have
been so easy. Same with all sorts of weeding technology, too.
Sorting could even develop to sort crops from beneficial weeds which
might grow with them, and perhaps shade other weeds to stop them
growing.

As Jim said billions has gone on BSE research which may have saved
more lives elsewhere. We weren't quite sure about that. But since
weeds are getting resistant to Roundup, or the weeds which were
already resistant are much more prevalent, and so many billions have
been spent on producing the Roundup Ready system, it might have been
better to spread the research a bit.

On 20 Aug 2003 05:19:17 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

Mooshie peas wrote:


This reminds me of the story I read long time ago of the aerial crop
duster who thoroughly cleaned his tanks and filled up with water
flavoured with dark grape juice (toxically purple). He then
deliberately oversprayed a residential area, and the influx of
diseased and dying residents was overwhelming

I have had breathing troubles from some brands of grape juice. Some of
them use a sulphur compound as preservative.

SO2, but this will oxidise and dissipate on being sprayed.

To make water purple with grape juice would take quite a lot, and
breathing such is not normal, and might provide a medium for bacteria to
grow, too.

They weren't breathing it, it just landed as droplets on the
environment. I don't even know if this is true or just an urban myth.

Yes nocebo(?) effects can occur, as with Pavlov's dogs, but escape or
constriction gets attached to certain signals.

And I think you will find some people suffering and bearing it rather than
be called susceptible to psychogenic factors. The website Brian Harmer
referred to links to results of a big study which includes trouble with
animlas, too, greater than what I would say could be transferred in
sympathy with their owners worries.

Thanks for "nocebo" I'd not heard it before. Useful!

On 20 Aug 2003 05:47:08 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

In nz.general cp1c wrote:

The spray is Bt.



with all due respect the spray is not BT.
the active ingredient is BTk.

Yes, Bt kurtaski.

98% of the spray is Ingredients identified in the Foray 48B spray are
methyl paraben
(methyl 4-hydroxybenzoate), benzoic acid/sodium benzoate,
propylene glycol, potassium sorbate, sorbitol, hydrochloric acid,
and polyacrylic acid.

The other ingredients - Btk, fermentation solids and water - are already
publicly known.

The water would be the main component.

I agree the other components could be a problem. For me hydrochloric acid
is a bit of a constrictor. Polyacrylic acid looks a problem. As I have
posted on sci.med.dentistry rabbits exposed to acrylic acid vapour get
nasal inflammation. Maybe there is a connection to the bad dermatitis on
hands of dental technicians who frequently work with methacrylates. Then
di-methacrylate, a basis in much modern white dental filling material, is
a very potent sensitizer. (di being `two' - on the way to `poly'.)

all harmless by themselves

Not for all people.

but some people react badly to this combination
in a very fine aerosol when inhaled

And animals.

Some people are advised to use a mask when dealing with soil and Btk is a
soil bacteria.

The soil is full of many different bacteria. We are warned about
Legionella in potting mixes here.

In reply to another poster yes the cotton could have had herbcide applied
to dry it out prior to harvest. Roundup has been used to dry out some
crops prior to harvest. Then the question is what do the farmers use as a
`dessicant' if the crop is genetically engineered to be Roundup resistant.

Any other cheap, suitable herbicide.

I have posted an article with `byssinosis' in the title and it may not
have appeared on all servers on the groups in the header, but I see it has
got on nz.general on my server.

A ref I gave asks whether a GM herbicde tolerant crop turns the herbicde
into a toxic degradation product which may increase byssinosis lung
disease of cotton workers.

Then the question is whether washing would wash
that out. But it could not wash out the Bt or herbicide degradation
protein which I presume are a part of the fibre structure and which would
touch against lung tissue.

The fibre is practically pure cellulose. Poly glucose.

It might be intersting to do immune reaction tests on workers. They have
shown positive on Auckland people exposed to the spray.

But cotton?

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:
Idiot, BT cotton kills boll worms no boll weevil.

Thanks, Gordon. We note you gave a good explanation on a previous
article.

I understood that boll weevil has to be treated separately taking
care not to kill beneficial organisms. Are the `beneficials' you
wrote of

i) necessary pollen spreaders
ii) parasites or predators which kill boll worms?
Parasites to kill other insects. Boll worms are the most important.

It is all quite complex and maybe the knowledge of the farmers of
old will pay off.

Now they are finding in China that mixing lots of different rice
produces much more yield, makes better use of soil micro-organisms
and produces less greenhouse gas - methane.

If you happen to want individual types of rice maybe the technology
these days could go into designing a machine to do the job. That
might cost a bit but the extra yield could more than make up for it.
In the old days the technology to design the machine would nto have
been so easy. Same with all sorts of weeding technology, too.
Sorting could even develop to sort crops from beneficial weeds which
might grow with them, and perhaps shade other weeds to stop them
growing.
==========
Mixed varities give you a better shot at different conditions and if they
have different disease resistance it is more difficlut for disease to spread
and the uneffected rice will yield more than it would if it had healty
competition. I don't know about rice but it make little differce if the
ground is clean if you plant 25 or 125 pounds of wheat per acre on the
yeild.

There may be an exception but I never saw a weed that didn't reduce the
yeild of the crop and I have seen a lot of both.

As Jim said billions has gone on BSE research which may have saved
more lives elsewhere. We weren't quite sure about that. But since
weeds are getting resistant to Roundup, or the weeds which were
already resistant are much more prevalent, and so many billions have
been spent on producing the Roundup Ready system, it might have been
better to spread the research a bit.
========
First most of it was private money on the Round up ready system and it
replaces herbicides that have a very negative effect on the environment.
There are weed resistant to every herbicide but there are ways to manage
them. It took over 20 years for 4 or 5 weeds to develop resistance to Round
Up.

The money spent 600,000 cattle and 120 people with BSE would have save more
lives applied to almost anything safety related. Finding one cow with BSE in
Canada wrecked their beef business for at least 3 years over something that
has less risk than being hit by lighting.

You have no perception of risk analysis when you are concerned with GM crops
and BSE while there are drunk drivers on the road, west Nile virus, and
people refusing to vaccinate their children. All things that something can
be done about.

Gordon

On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 18:59:59 +0000, "Uncle StoatWarbler"
posted:


What fruits naturally contain salicylate?

I can understand it if they were chewing willow bark...

Apples...?

On 20 Aug 2003 23:05:46 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

On a cursory scan I can see nothing
(unfortunately, there's someone called Butcher, BT, who seems to have
done a lot of work on byssinosis and cotton, but not as far as I can
see on Bt).

Who is going to bother to research it?

Plenty of scientists looking for phenomena to explore, or at least
I've known a few.

Who is bothering with the lungs of child outworkers helping their parents
to get paid for their contracts?

See above.

I'm sure you'll have a reference or two (URLs only, please).

Meanwhile, let the double-blind underpant trials commence. I'd be a
lot less nervous about taking part than I would about using unbleached
loo-paper and bringing my sensitive underparts in contact with the
proven carcinogens secreted by those nasty trees.

I think the strong perfumes put into toilet paper may be troublesome.

Which ones? Using the generic term "perfumes" is as useless as using
the generic term "pesticides". They are both a very broad group of
substances.

Maybe they swell the tissues into piles, same as might be a result in some
people of using anti-angina nitroglycerin spray standing up. I wonder.

Ummm, the mechanism of haemorrhoid formation and the action of
nitroglycerin on smooth muscle are hardly connected, I would have
thought. Haemorrhoids are genetic, in the main. Even with NO
constipation during one's life, they will form in some, and with
chronic constipation all ones life some will avoid them.

On 21 Aug 2003 06:56:45 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

A problem with some farms is the back-breaking work.

That's why they have invented machinery

There is room for
ingenious inventors of hand-tools.

In what area? Haven't most jobs got a wealth of tools available for
their carrying out?

My back was bad when I was young, but I
wasn't doing bend over work. Now I am experimenting with not eating grain,
even rice, and my lower back is much better.

From the hand harvest? Really?

In a homogeneous society one way may suit everyone, but it may be cruel
when people are different. For some the chemicals are the trouble, and
they can't read the labels very functionally.

Then the folks who know about this tell them IME.

Then who is to know when nettles start growing

Perhaps the half intelligent farmer and above?

in a Roundup Ready soy,
corn, or cotton field, and Roundup lets them grow, and someone says you'll
have to get Pursuit and mix it.

And they don't know all about this long ago?
Strange scenario you paint.

It works but do they know the extra
cautions?

Um, they read the label, authorised by the EPA?

The company wants to make money,

That's their sole and proper aim in life.
Caveat emptor.

and may not be the best
advisor. Who else is there?

EPA, Ag department, Ag advisor, farmers groups, internet.

"Mooshie peas" wrote in message
...
On 21 Aug 2003 06:56:45 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

The company wants to make money,

That's their sole and proper aim in life.
Caveat emptor.

exactly, it is only by making money that they can pay employees and also pay
tax which goes towards the paying of all those civil servants, public health
workers, and similar

Jim Webster

In sci.med.nutrition Jim Webster wrote:

"Mooshie peas" wrote in message
...
On 21 Aug 2003 06:56:45 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

The company wants to make money,

That's their sole and proper aim in life.
Caveat emptor.

exactly, it is only by making money that they can pay employees and also pay
tax which goes towards the paying of all those civil servants, public health
workers, and similar

But it also means they may not bother to be too careful about
helping their customers to attend to the proper choices, the refuges
if it means selling less GM seed, or herbicide or pesticide if it
frightens the customer off to draw their attention to the
instructions.

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
In sci.med.nutrition Jim Webster wrote:

"Mooshie peas" wrote in message
...
On 21 Aug 2003 06:56:45 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

The company wants to make money,

That's their sole and proper aim in life.
Caveat emptor.

exactly, it is only by making money that they can pay employees and also
pay
tax which goes towards the paying of all those civil servants, public
health
workers, and similar

But it also means they may not bother to be too careful about
helping their customers to attend to the proper choices, the refuges
if it means selling less GM seed, or herbicide or pesticide if it
frightens the customer off to draw their attention to the
instructions.

You might as well, and with as much evidence, claim that actually it is the
civil servants living of these immoral earnings which drive them to it.

Jim Webster

In sci.med.nutrition Mooshie peas wrote:
On 20 Aug 2003 23:05:46 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

On a cursory scan I can see nothing
(unfortunately, there's someone called Butcher, BT, who seems to have
done a lot of work on byssinosis and cotton, but not as far as I can
see on Bt).

Who is going to bother to research it?

Plenty of scientists looking for phenomena to explore, or at least
I've known a few.

And who wants to fund it?

Who is bothering with the lungs of child outworkers helping their parents
to get paid for their contracts?

See above.

I'm sure you'll have a reference or two (URLs only, please).

Meanwhile, let the double-blind underpant trials commence. I'd be a
lot less nervous about taking part than I would about using unbleached
loo-paper and bringing my sensitive underparts in contact with the
proven carcinogens secreted by those nasty trees.

I think the strong perfumes put into toilet paper may be troublesome.

Which ones? Using the generic term "perfumes" is as useless as using
the generic term "pesticides". They are both a very broad group of
substances.

Maybe they swell the tissues into piles, same as might be a result in some
people of using anti-angina nitroglycerin spray standing up. I wonder.

Ummm, the mechanism of haemorrhoid formation and the action of
nitroglycerin on smooth muscle are hardly connected, I would have
thought. Haemorrhoids are genetic, in the main. Even with NO
constipation during one's life, they will form in some, and with
chronic constipation all ones life some will avoid them.

Some types of haemorrhoids are filled with blood more than others.
Sometimes the doc will let the blood out.

Smooth muscle is the muscle of the arteries. Nitroglycerin relaxes
the smooth muscle and so blood pressure drops as more blood flows
through relaxed arteries. Any tendency to a haemorrhoid may be
supplied with more blood. If the patient is walking the haemorrhoid
may grow and get pinched by the anal sphincter. Inflammaiton may
occur causing swollen tissue in the area, too.