[Magdalen] To the chemists among us...What You Need To Know AboutNALED (Dibrom)

[Charles Wohlers]

Replying here finally - "recovering" from a 6-mile, 1400' elevation gain, 
hike up (& down) Middle Mt., which is north of Island Pond, near the Quebec 
border.

The link you provide is, firstly, designed to make people afraid of naled. 
It is not dispassionate, to say the least. The studies referenced mostly are 
of other organophosphates, not naled. I wouldn't put much faith in it. A 
Google search gives two reasonable sources - Wikipedia and one from Cornell. 
The Cornell article does make it sound scary (under the section "Acute 
Toxicity"), but remember the concentrations mentioned are all very high - do 
take note of Jim Handsfield's response. One good thing noted is that it 
decomposes very quickly once it comes in contact with any water, so, once 
sprayed, it won't stick around.

I'm not so sure about the EPA article on Naled at the top of the Google 
search results - it seems designed to put you at ease about the stuff.

EEE is fairly rare, but can be quite dangerous if you contract it - it does 
kill people. It was a yearly problem back in Mass., and aerial spraying was 
done some years, about this time of year. It think malathion was used, and I 
don't recall adverse affects.

That said, organophosphates can be nasty and they can affect mammals like 
us - albeit at fairly high concentrations. Just this week the lead article 
in C&E News (the news magazine of the American Chemical Soc.) was on 
chlorpyrifos, another widely-used organophosphate which the EPA was about to 
ban on food crops, before Trump was elected - now they've put that off. You 
can read the article here: http://cen.acs.org/magazine/95/09536.html. It is 
a good example of balanced reporting, unlike the one you provided.

My sense is that problems may arise from this spraying, but, if so, it would 
very likely be because somebody screwed up - sprayed it in the wrong place 
or at too high a concentration.

Hope all this helps a bit.

Chad Wohlers
Woodbury, VT USA
chadwohl at satucket.com

-----Original Message----- 
From: Lynn Ronkainen
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2017 4:22 PM
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: [Magdalen] To the chemists among us...What You Need To Know 
AboutNALED (Dibrom)

This is being sprayed by the USAirforce over the areas of flooding in TX 
from the coast north to Houston and E/W from there

Sounds like it might be worse than the potential mosquitoes... thoughts?
Lynn

http://www.wtv-zone.com/infchoice/naled.html