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

[Lynn Ronkainen]

Thanks to all who replied. The link was one provided by a neighbor. I appreciate the detailed remarks. 
Lynn 

On Sep 14, 2017, at 8:29 PM, Charles Wohlers <chadwohl at satucket.com> wrote:

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