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"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 It's one of the best-known preparations, not some new wizzo thing introduced by an agrichemical company only to be withdrawn twenty years later when they found out what it did.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 |
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