[Cricket Tragic]

Hi macg, firstly simazine is not a poison in capital letters, unless you are a plant. The LD50 in rats is > 5000 mg/kg, which makes simazine less acutely toxicity than common salt. The NOAEL is 5 mg/kg/day, for comparison the NOAEL of the vitamin Niacin is 7 mg/kg/day. If your neighbour was spraying simazine, you long shower was pretty much a waste of effort. A quick rinse of affected areas would have been more than sufficient.

Secondly, what I hope you are trying to do is to change your neighbour’s behaviour. Taking the approach suggested by S will be unlikely to result in a change in behaviour to the behaviour you want. It might make you feel better, but is more likely to cause an escalation of hostilities. You could talk to anyone in extension about changing behaviour. To change behaviour, you usually need to do two things. You need to work out the reasons for the current behaviour and then you need to convince the person that the new behaviour will produce a better result. The reason you need to take the running is that you are the one who wants a change in behaviour on her part.

Here is where some basic understanding of herbicides might be useful. First thing to understand is that simazine has virtually no leaf absorption, it is absorbed via the roots. To get root absorption, you need to hit soil, herbicide on leaves is wasted. Therefore, larger droplets are better. This will have the added benefit for you of reducing spray drift and so you will be much less likely to be sprayed in the future, regardless of whether she checks if you are present or not. Because simazine is soil absorbed rather than leaf absorbed, there is no point in using a wiper. It simply won’t work because the herbicide won’t hit the soil. The reason you have seen people using wipers with glyphosate is because it is the opposite type of herbicide, with 100% leaf absorption and no soil absorption. In the case of glyphosate herbicide hitting the ground is wasted.