Wookie,
I wasn't dumping on you personally, just some of the dumb things that are weaving in and out of this thread. But, if you want to hold some dumb thing close and personal, you do get to be some of the collateral damage.
First, you can't think you are somehow alone in any adventure of fixing something or some situation with chemicals and magic bullets. The red bloom in the Gulf, an unarguably toxic condition, is the result of thousands of farms, each alone in the same sense, overfertilizing and having the runoffs migrate eventually to the Mississippi. Bingo, a compounded problem built up of many, "Hey, it aint me...'s."
I also just came across a new (new to me anyway) brouhaha developing about "inert ingredients" in pesticides and such
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Inert Ingredients in Pesticide Products</b>
About Inerts
Listing of Inert Ingredients or Other Ingredients:
This page provides a brief description of, as well as links to, lists of inerts. Some of the inerts on Lists 2 and 3 are in the process of being reevaluated and reclassified.
About Inerts
Pesticide products contain both "active" and "inert" ingredients. The terms "active ingredient" and "inert ingredient" have been defined by Federal law, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), since 1947. An active ingredient is one that prevents, destroys, repels or mitigates a pest, or is a plant regulator, defoliant, desiccant or nitrogen stabilizer. By law, the active ingredient must be identified by name on the label together with its percentage by weight.
An inert ingredient is simply any ingredient in the product that is not intended to affect a target pest. For example, isopropyl alcohol may be an active ingredient and antimicrobial pesticide in some products; however, in other products, it is used as a solvent and may be considered an inert ingredient.
The law does not require inert ingredients to be identified by name and percentage on the label, but the total percentage of such ingredients must be declared.
In September 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued Pesticide Regulation Notice 97-6 which encourages manufacturers, formulators, producers, and registrants of pesticide products to voluntarily substitute the term "other ingredients" as a heading for the "inert" ingredients in the ingredient statement.
EPA made this change after learning the results of a consumer survey on the use of household pesticides. Many comments from the public and the consumer interviews prompted EPA to discontinue the use of the term "inert."
Many consumers are mislead by the term "inert ingredient", believing it to mean "harmless." Since neither the federal law nor the regulations define the term "inert" on the basis of toxicity, hazard or risk to humans, non-target species, or the environment, it should not be assumed that all inert ingredients are non-toxic.
http://www.epa.gov/opprd001/inerts/
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So, isn't that interesting? It turns out there are companies that turn out "inert ingredients" for whatever a customer needs. Pills, pesticides, you name it; we've got inert ingredients for you.
And these companies want to keep the lists of what they contain as trade secrets. Trade secrets meaning we , the great unwashed public, never get to know...
Here I thought, the<u> 98%+</u> contents were truly inert--as in harmless--and what I really got was 98%+ of semantics instead.
Here's another blippo on the radar screen:
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<b>What is a pesticide?</b>
Broadly defined, a pesticide is any agent used to kill or control any pest (1, 2). Pests can be insects, rodents or birds, unwanted plants (weeds), fungi, or microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses. Though often misunderstood to refer only to insecticides, the term pesticide also applies to herbicides, fungicides, microbiocides, rodenticides and various other substances used to control pests.
Under United States law, a pesticide is also any substance or mixture of substances intended for use as a insect or plant growth regulator, insect mating disruptor or egg sterilant, defoliant, or desiccant.
Many household products are pesticides, such as cockroach sprays and baits, rat poisons, pet flea collars, products that kill mold and mildew, and kitchen disinfectants.
<b>tMore About "Inert" Ingredients
Definition of Terms</b>
In evaluating pesticide information, several distinctions associated with pesticides are quite important.
* Active ingredients are the specific chemicals contained in a pesticide product that are designed to kill a particular pest. By law, the active ingredient must be identified by name on the label together with its percentage by weight.
* "Inert" ingredients are commonly mixed with the active ingredients to create a formulated pesticide product. See below for more information on "inert" ingredients.
* Formulated pesticide products are the form of the pesticide that is available to the consumer, grower, or pest control applicator, and may take the form of sprays, bait stations, fly strips, flea collars, dusts, etc.
<b>More About "Inert" Ingredients</b>
Inert ingredients include solvents, emulsifiers, spreaders, and other substances mixed into pesticide products to increase the effectiveness of the active ingredients, make the product easier to apply, or to allow several active ingredients to mix in one solution.
An inert ingredient is simply any ingredient in the product that is not intended to affect a target pest (3). Inert ingredients can be as much as 99% of pesticide products. Both U.S. EPA and California Department of Pesticide Regulation require pesticide manufacturers to identify inert ingredients in their products but do not disclose this information to the general public because the pesticide industry considers product formulations trade secrets, protected by law.
<u>Many inert ingredients have adverse health effects and may themselves be used as pesticides. </u>In fact, at least 382 chemicals on the U.S. EPA list of pesticide inert ingredients are or were once registered as pesticide active ingredients (4).
Eight inert ingredients are considered by U.S. EPA to be "of toxicological concern" and another 75 are "potentially toxic." The U.S. EPA strongly encourages registrants (manufacturers and companies who buy and repackage pesticides for market) to substitute less toxic substances for these hazardous inerts in pesticide products. Nevertheless, a large but unknown quantity remain in use (5).
While the identity of specific "inerts" in a particular pesticide product is not available to the public, it is possible to estimate the quantity of inert ingredients released into the environment using California Pesticide Use Reporting (PUR) data.
In 1998, a total of 215 million pounds of pesticide active ingredients and 134 million pounds of inert ingredients were applied in California. Pesticide products used in urban areas typically contain more inerts than agricultural-use pesticides.
The Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides has an extensive web site on "inert" ingredients and their campaign to make them public (6).
References:
1. What is a Pesticide?, U.S. EPA. Viewed on October 31, 2002.
2. What is a Pesticide?, California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Viewed on October 31, 2002.
3. Other Ingredients in Pesticide Products, U.S. EPA. Viewed on October 31, 2002.
4. S. Marquardt, C. Cox, and H. Knight, Toxic Secrets: "Inert" Ingredients in Pesticides 1987-1997, Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides and Californians for Pesticide Reform (San Francisco, 1998), download. Viewed on October 31, 2002.
5. List of Other (Inert) Pesticide Ingredients, U.S. EPA. Viewed on October 31, 2002.
6. Inerts Disclosure Campaign, Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides web site. Viewed on October 31, 2002.
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I'm sure ths all will engender a new series of hootings and catcalls from the tiny-twig brains that believe with all their souls that they are scientist/practicioners with a handle on most everything, and who positively know that all the subtle ways that living things work, are reducable to simplistifications and dismissive farts. Such is the audience that arises often here, and I'm always surprised by the energies they bring to the debates.
Here's the deal: We aren't very bright--and we've been well-trained from birth to avoid the complex and suckle on the simplistic. That's us; the great consumer public; able to roll over and accept any delusion from anti-bacterial Windex to chasing after those still-gossamer weapons of mass destructions.
Hell, what we do know; we'll forget anyway. And there's always some salesman eating one product or another, showing us how harmless it is to get us past our attention span deficits. (I stlll remember in 1965, a salesman at a trade show, spraying WD-40 in his mouth to show how safe it was. It was just as stupid then, as all this is now.)
Anyway, Wook, living longer absolutely depends on staying smart and informed these days--in being aware that someone will be happy to swap your health and safety for a buck or two. Beware also, the mutterings of the likes of us on these pages--if we could do better, we wouldn't be reading and writing here; know what I mean....
Good luck and keep writing,
Bob "Remarkably Inert" Wulkowicz
Now I know what natural selection is all about. Why take the chance? Sounds like a Darwin award in the making to me.
