Poison! (Garden Fertilisers, Pest Control and Herbicides in general)

Member Name: Aspen

Product:	Garden Fertilisers, Pest Control and Herbicides in general
Date:	13/01/01 (196 review reads)
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No, nothing to do with Alice Cooper. This is a serious one.

Those of you who have had the misfortune, or simply the poor taste, to read some of my other opinions, will know that I have great difficulty in staying serious all the way through. It’s probably some deeply rooted personality defect, or it may be just because I think opinions, like life, should always have room for a bit of fun.

But some things worry me enough to kill off the fun element, and I’m not just talking about my overdraft.

I have heard enough horror stories involving garden chemicals to last me a lifetime. And while I do believe that whatever help in the fight against pests and diseases the industry can offer, that help should be available to all, I cannot help but wonder when I browse the Garden Centre shelves.

I wonder at the array of attractively packaged, seemingly innocuous poisons on general sale. I wonder about the morality of the marketing strategy of a product, which tells us in big letters on the front that it will perform the miracle we all want, and in microscopic print on the back, it lists the scientific names of the chemicals it contains. I wonder why all it tells us in this microscopic print are scientific names. Which mean nothing to most of us.

I mean, “contains N-phosphonomethylglycine”. What does that mean to you or me? Well, I’ll tell you what it means to me. It means, one drop of neat N-phosphonomethylglycine could kill you. That’s what it means. But it doesn’t say that in so many words. Of course not, that would be bad marketing.

All garden chemicals are hazardous. Don’t let anyone tell you different. But herbicides are the worst (the magic products we naively think of as “weedkillers”).

And among the weedkillers, the most dangerous of all are the ones popularly marketed as “instant” or “fast acting”. Because they are generall
y based on paraquat, or a closely related chemical – and paraquat is one we’ve all heard of, haven’t we? Look at the packet closely. Very closely. Tell me how closely you’ve had to read before you find the minuscule word, paraquat? In fact, how many of us actually read the back of the packet at all?

And as an aside, these potentially dangerous so-called “fast-acting” herbicides are a con anyway, because all they do is burn off the green foliage, and sooner or later the weed produces new growth from the roots, which have been unaffected. Believe me, the only herbicide worth buying is one which takes at least a week to show signs of working. Because it takes that long to kill the roots.

But I digress.

I have a question to ask. I have asked it in many places, many times, but have not yet had a satisfactory answer.

As a professional gardener, I have had to undertake an extensive (and expensive!) training course, followed by a stringent test, which I may or may not pass, in order to be issued with a Certificate of Competence to apply garden chemicals. If I come to your garden, and apply a herbicide without a certificate, I can, and probably will, be prosecuted. This is not a sour grapes thing – I believe this is totally right and proper. But my question is this – These same chemicals are on sale in the Garden Centres to the general public (or even their kids!), under Brand Names. Why? The fancy packaging doesn’t alter the fact that these products contain chemicals covered by the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (1988).

This is not about the rights and wrongs of using chemicals in the environmental sense. That’s a different issue. This is simply about your health and your safety. Which is being ignored because as we all know, the big chemical companies have more clout than the Government. So I can’t see this situation being regulated in the
foreseeable future.

Which is why I urge you to READ THE LABELS, treat every garden chemical you buy as a POISON, and use them as carefully and sparingly as you can.

And by the way, the unpronounceable chemical I mentioned earlier? N-phosphonomethylglycine is the active constituent of glyphosate, which is the main chemical component of Round-Up. Sound familiar yet?

Please, take great care.

And sorry about the lack of fun, but this just ain’t a fun topic.

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