HI Michigan, to quantify:
The information that I posted did come from an MSDS but, just because something is in an MSDS doesn't necessarily make it correct or incorrect. It is up to learn-ed professionals to decide whether or not a posted fact is indeed true. Reading MSDS and peer reviewed journal articles is but, the very first step in ascertaining information on the properties of a situation.
For instance, on first glance; it would appear that methyl-bromide could contribute to the end of life as we know it (from an arm waver) but, upon closer examination; it is a highly toxic compound but, combined with chemicals that are naturally found in the environement, it can be moderated and it's affects alleviated.
Note that the MSDS describes that the chemical is highly toxic (and it is) but, given time it's effects can be subdued and even alleviated.
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opabinia51
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The Helpful Gardener
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Let's also keep in mind that virtually NO long term (ten plus years) testing is being done in this country nor is it mandated (or even mentioned on a MSDS). Look at the court case in Long Island last year where Preen got fined hundreds of thousands for using a new formula without licensing it in New York (saving untold testing costs; they probably weighed their options and said "Okay, we'll pay the fine..."). What you don't know CAN hurt you and they don't want you to know...
HG
HG
Last edited by The Helpful Gardener on Thu Mar 02, 2006 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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opabinia51
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Yes, that is why it is important to read all the information that you can and as Scott said before, be mindful of who is funding the research. It's called Critical Thinking and is very important for understanding the battery of information that is thrown at us.
Persons that I know whose crown corporations use round up to control vegetation growth continually advocate that round up is biodgradable. Well, this person has no scientific understanding whatsoever and glyphosate may be biodegradable but, it is very long lasting in the environment and causes a plethora of damage to living systems. Anyway, my point is to be wary of individual releases of information and to find as much information on topics as possible.
I think that we are all in agreement on that.
Persons that I know whose crown corporations use round up to control vegetation growth continually advocate that round up is biodgradable. Well, this person has no scientific understanding whatsoever and glyphosate may be biodegradable but, it is very long lasting in the environment and causes a plethora of damage to living systems. Anyway, my point is to be wary of individual releases of information and to find as much information on topics as possible.
I think that we are all in agreement on that.
Your local garbage pick-up company (excuse me, "solid waste provider" is the preferred term these days, but I've been an old fogey since high school 
) will know where hazardous wastes can be disposed of.
Your city or county government may operate such a site. My county does; my city refers everyone to the county's Hazardous Waste site.
Some HazWaste sites are open every day, some on weekends, some occasionally.
The City of Palo Alto (where I do gardening and yard work for my MIL) sponsors "turn it in" days a couple of times a year where Palo Alto residents put the stuff in their cars
and drive it to a parking lot near the recycling center, where a professional crew removes it from the trunk/car/truck bed and places it with others of its ilk. Gardening products, paint thinner, corrosives--all have their own location, and the Tyvek-suited crew put each container exactly where it needed to go. We were forbidden to get out of the car. It was definitely drive-through service.
We maxed out on the total volume permitted in several categories; it appeared that nothing--NOTHING--had been disposed of since the late '50s or early '60s, when both in-laws were in their 30s/40s and raising a family. My BIL and I--both of us have worked in the environmental remediation field--had to keep reminding DH and SIL (BIL's brother and sister) to wear gloves, not touch the face, don't eat/drink while we're doing this unless you go into the house, take off gloves, wash hands and face first, and so on. I remember there being a large 5-lb bag of loose powder with a chromium-based compound in it. There were other chemicals which are now illegal in private hands. Several items posed explosion hazards due to heavier-than-air vapor fumes. We had to make several trips, as there was a 5-gallon total per carload. (At least they let us come back multiple times when we explained MIL's health situation...)
So there are different ways that this service is provided, but the important thing to keep in mind is that it is no longer safe or legal to throw such things out in the regular trash--a point which, clearly, you already understand, and I hope many THG members do, too!
(Maybe you can tell that the Palo Alto experience was just a little stressful, huh?)
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
) will know where hazardous wastes can be disposed of.Your city or county government may operate such a site. My county does; my city refers everyone to the county's Hazardous Waste site.
Some HazWaste sites are open every day, some on weekends, some occasionally.
The City of Palo Alto (where I do gardening and yard work for my MIL) sponsors "turn it in" days a couple of times a year where Palo Alto residents put the stuff in their cars
and drive it to a parking lot near the recycling center, where a professional crew removes it from the trunk/car/truck bed and places it with others of its ilk. Gardening products, paint thinner, corrosives--all have their own location, and the Tyvek-suited crew put each container exactly where it needed to go. We were forbidden to get out of the car. It was definitely drive-through service. We maxed out on the total volume permitted in several categories; it appeared that nothing--NOTHING--had been disposed of since the late '50s or early '60s, when both in-laws were in their 30s/40s and raising a family. My BIL and I--both of us have worked in the environmental remediation field--had to keep reminding DH and SIL (BIL's brother and sister) to wear gloves, not touch the face, don't eat/drink while we're doing this unless you go into the house, take off gloves, wash hands and face first, and so on. I remember there being a large 5-lb bag of loose powder with a chromium-based compound in it. There were other chemicals which are now illegal in private hands. Several items posed explosion hazards due to heavier-than-air vapor fumes. We had to make several trips, as there was a 5-gallon total per carload. (At least they let us come back multiple times when we explained MIL's health situation...)
So there are different ways that this service is provided, but the important thing to keep in mind is that it is no longer safe or legal to throw such things out in the regular trash--a point which, clearly, you already understand, and I hope many THG members do, too!
(Maybe you can tell that the Palo Alto experience was just a little stressful, huh?)
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
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The Helpful Gardener
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[url=https://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Product.jsp?REG_NR=03395500533&DIST_NR=000192]Sevin[/url] is a horror show retired from use for some VERY good reasons. Carbaryls are totally deadly and destructive to environment...
Look at it this way, with all the other nasty chems still allowed to market, our government looked at this one and said "Oh, this one here HAS to go." If that's not warning enough, then it's simple Darwinian selection, feel free to continue to use this on your food crops
I use [url=https://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC34291]pyrethrin[/url] instead of Sevin; based on a chemical found in daisies. But let's be clear; more people poisoned themselves with this product last year than any other in the States. There are no such thing as safe pesticides, just safer ways to use it. I prefer some of the pesticides and methods because they have shown to be much safer than the stuff we are using but that doesn't mean I am ready to drink this stuff either. We must be aware that the BEST pesticide is the one not applied at all. Personal safety is only one important factor to me; my understanding is that pyrethrin breaks down rapidly after dispersal. It doesn't stand up in sunlight worth a darn, breaks down to harmless compounds by the end of a day usually. High toxicity, low residual is the mantra for good ones to use in my mind...
BEE safe out there...
GO Organic!
HG
Look at it this way, with all the other nasty chems still allowed to market, our government looked at this one and said "Oh, this one here HAS to go." If that's not warning enough, then it's simple Darwinian selection, feel free to continue to use this on your food crops
I use [url=https://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC34291]pyrethrin[/url] instead of Sevin; based on a chemical found in daisies. But let's be clear; more people poisoned themselves with this product last year than any other in the States. There are no such thing as safe pesticides, just safer ways to use it. I prefer some of the pesticides and methods because they have shown to be much safer than the stuff we are using but that doesn't mean I am ready to drink this stuff either. We must be aware that the BEST pesticide is the one not applied at all. Personal safety is only one important factor to me; my understanding is that pyrethrin breaks down rapidly after dispersal. It doesn't stand up in sunlight worth a darn, breaks down to harmless compounds by the end of a day usually. High toxicity, low residual is the mantra for good ones to use in my mind...
BEE safe out there...
GO Organic!
HG
Man, am I glad I found this site. I've retired, moved back to Smalltown, and am re-learning gardening after 40-some years.
I was all ready to join in the war on bugs using Sevin, the insecticide du jour around here, but the hype sounded too good to be true -- no protective clothing required, etc...
I googled, found this site, read some of these posts and reconsidered. I then remembered -- "D'oh, I was in QualityAassurance and System Safety -- We used MSDSs all the time". Looked it (Sevin MSDS) up and guess what -- it reads nothing like the label and adverts.
Thanks to you all.
I was all ready to join in the war on bugs using Sevin, the insecticide du jour around here, but the hype sounded too good to be true -- no protective clothing required, etc...
I googled, found this site, read some of these posts and reconsidered. I then remembered -- "D'oh, I was in QualityAassurance and System Safety -- We used MSDSs all the time". Looked it (Sevin MSDS) up and guess what -- it reads nothing like the label and adverts.
Thanks to you all.
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The Helpful Gardener
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Thanks for the kudos and the affirmation, EW. That's exactly why I talk about these products, because the people peddling them are not giving you the whole truth. They DO NOT tell you what you deserve to know, or even need to know to be safe.
The only reason it is not criminal is that the government that is supposed to be protecting us from this sort of thing is in collusion with the industry producing it. We need to wake up our congresspeople and get big business OUT of EPA, get some teeth back in the oversight end of that organization and fund testing at the governmental level, rather than rubberstamping proprietary reports from the very companies submitting product...
HG
The only reason it is not criminal is that the government that is supposed to be protecting us from this sort of thing is in collusion with the industry producing it. We need to wake up our congresspeople and get big business OUT of EPA, get some teeth back in the oversight end of that organization and fund testing at the governmental level, rather than rubberstamping proprietary reports from the very companies submitting product...
HG
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jal_ut
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Material Safety Data Sheets are to inform us of the risks. They also give suggestions as to proper and safe handling of the chemicals involved, whatever it may be. I worked at a factory on the maintenance crew, for 18 years and we had lots of chemicals around. They all came with the MSDS or we could get it for the asking. Since we were all over the plant and exposed to everything, we got regular safety training. Many chemicals, though dangerous and or poisonous, can help us improve our standard of living, or get our work done, however, we should always take care to follow instructions, and use chemicals only in ways consistent with their labeling. It is also good to ask for the MSDS. You can probably got an MSDS for most things online. Just Google it.
I am going with those who said, lets be informed, do the research then decide for ourselves what is allowable in our gardens.
I am going with those who said, lets be informed, do the research then decide for ourselves what is allowable in our gardens.
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The Helpful Gardener
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Jal, if the testing was done by a non-involved third party, or even our government (carbamates are actually one of five chems currently undergoing governmental testing, so expect to lose Sevin for good shortly), I'd agree.
But the ugly truth is that there has been little or no governmental oversight of pesticide registration, other than the rubber stamping of test data submitted by manufacturers. Until the latest administration, EPA was in a decade long process of being gutted and dismantled (indeed their library of test data was cut due to "budgetary constraint", the card catalogue was destroyed, and the whole mess that was left was warehoused in an old unused cafeteria).
I have personally created an MSDS (it was for compost extract, so not really a highly dangerous product), and there is no oversight, no review board; once you submit to EPA for review they yea or nay you and nays are conspicuously rare. So my faith in that particular process is not as adamant as yours...
If you were able to show without doubt that you were able to contain your pesticide use indefinitely within the confines of your property, I would also agree with the caveat emptor approach. But as the record shows time and again, these compounds and their break-down components routinely turn up downstream, in watertables and air samples, and therefore become part of the public commons (carbamates are actually a posterchild for this phenomenon). With new testing and data coming available daily, I have llittle doubt these products will be banned shortly, and we will continue to see better and better reasons why as responsible third party testing is performed.
In the meantime it will be the considered opinion of this site (and Canada, and the European Union, who have passed it into law) that the Precautionary Principle be the guiding rule for pesticide use; if you cannot prove the product safe it should not be used. There is a very good reason the chemical lobby (under the harmless sounding acronym of Responsible Industriesfor a Safe Environment, also known as RISE) is fighting said principle tooth and nail.
The majority of their products can't pass the test. Good enough reason to stop right there...
HG
But the ugly truth is that there has been little or no governmental oversight of pesticide registration, other than the rubber stamping of test data submitted by manufacturers. Until the latest administration, EPA was in a decade long process of being gutted and dismantled (indeed their library of test data was cut due to "budgetary constraint", the card catalogue was destroyed, and the whole mess that was left was warehoused in an old unused cafeteria).
I have personally created an MSDS (it was for compost extract, so not really a highly dangerous product), and there is no oversight, no review board; once you submit to EPA for review they yea or nay you and nays are conspicuously rare. So my faith in that particular process is not as adamant as yours...
If you were able to show without doubt that you were able to contain your pesticide use indefinitely within the confines of your property, I would also agree with the caveat emptor approach. But as the record shows time and again, these compounds and their break-down components routinely turn up downstream, in watertables and air samples, and therefore become part of the public commons (carbamates are actually a posterchild for this phenomenon). With new testing and data coming available daily, I have llittle doubt these products will be banned shortly, and we will continue to see better and better reasons why as responsible third party testing is performed.
In the meantime it will be the considered opinion of this site (and Canada, and the European Union, who have passed it into law) that the Precautionary Principle be the guiding rule for pesticide use; if you cannot prove the product safe it should not be used. There is a very good reason the chemical lobby (under the harmless sounding acronym of Responsible Industriesfor a Safe Environment, also known as RISE) is fighting said principle tooth and nail.
The majority of their products can't pass the test. Good enough reason to stop right there...
HG
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