What is the answer?

[forfismum]

Mac,you have my full sympathy and understanding on this one as I have seen so much bad behavior over the years.I have always been able to handle it but far too many folks get bullied by neighbours and its wrong.I have seen folks sell up and move due to having neighbours from hell but the laws in Europe are moving towards preventing these incidents.Strict controls on leylandii hedges for example and rules on spraying chemicals ,just as in your case.
I had one fight about 6 years back and the culprits have kept away ever since for some reason...........
What they did was to dump timber pallets and the plastic straps from a delivery of concrete blocks into the top corner of my place.This was an area of nettles and brambles which I was cultivating for me butterflies etc and was very important to me.I must say that these people were not farmers,they were thick townies who had moved in.Anyways I read the riot act to them and to get their own back they came on Saturday night after pub closing and emptied their dirty old van of all its junk into my drive way,a real mess. So I called the cops and made a complaint and was told that it would be hard to prove who did it.Not so,sez I, they left a bag with the culprits name on it !!!! So that was that.

[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.

[macgardener]

Hmm, less toxic than common salt. Where have I seen that sort of comparison before? Oh yes, on the documents we were given by a pest control company when we requested MSDS's. Not having seen an MSDS before we didn't realise until later that the single page of reassuring advertising was not in fact the information we had asked for. I've had a rather negative view of the salt comparison ever since. Actually I haven't often come across it since, though I suppose it could be seen as a way of explaining something scientific in terms that your average fast-food consuming ignoramus might understand.
I'm afraid that LD50's of active ingredients don't address all my concerns about pesticide use anyway. Solvents? Synergists? I know a couple of mothers whose children have reacted (in different ways) to exposure to pesticides (in one case at least it was more likely the solvent). I have sensitivities myself. On this occasion no apparent immediate harm was done but I can't always be sure what will happen. I wonder what is the LD50 of a surface cleaner popular with shop assistants. Inadvertently going within a few metres when someone sprays leaves me with stinging eyes for some time afterwards. I was pleased to see in a local dress shop recently that the shop assistant was cleaning the mirrors with a refillable bottle of water. I asked her about it and she said it was in response to complaints by others like myself who are bothered by chemical cleaners. Another plus in not using a chemical is not having the packaging to dispose of afterwards. And that's applicable to pesticides too.
I wish I could persuade more people to have a garden like mine, where the strongest things I use are a bit of muscle, and seaweed solution, but some people prefer to use those easy quick fixes which they are led to believe are safe. I don't particularly wish to debate the safety of any specific product, I always feel that lurking amongst the current "safe" products is the next DDT, asbestos, thalidomide, diethylstilboestrol, etc. For me it's more about the whole attitude. You know the "reduce, reuse, recycle" saying? Surely pesticides are an area where, with a change in attitude, we can significantly reduce, with all the benefits that it could bring.

Forfismum, thanks for sharing that story.

[spadlet]

Ok, I completely misunderstood your objective in the original post Macgardener. Can I add a request for tips on handling neighbouring builders, other than mentally tellint them to fuck off and stop looking at me, when their presence a few meters from my door is pushing the boundaries of personal space?

*Dreams of the time when the outside of the building will be finished so all of hte workers will be kept INSIDE*

[Cricket Tragic]

Originally Posted by macgardener

Hmm, less toxic than common salt. Where have I seen that sort of comparison before? Oh yes, on the documents we were given by a pest control company when we requested MSDS's. Not having seen an MSDS before we didn't realise until later that the single page of reassuring advertising was not in fact the information we had asked for. I've had a rather negative view of the salt comparison ever since. Actually I haven't often come across it since, though I suppose it could be seen as a way of explaining something scientific in terms that your average fast-food consuming ignoramus might understand.
I'm afraid that LD50's of active ingredients don't address all my concerns about pesticide use anyway. Solvents? Synergists? I know a couple of mothers whose children have reacted (in different ways) to exposure to pesticides (in one case at least it was more likely the solvent). I have sensitivities myself. On this occasion no apparent immediate harm was done but I can't always be sure what will happen. I wonder what is the LD50 of a surface cleaner popular with shop assistants. Inadvertently going within a few metres when someone sprays leaves me with stinging eyes for some time afterwards. I was pleased to see in a local dress shop recently that the shop assistant was cleaning the mirrors with a refillable bottle of water. I asked her about it and she said it was in response to complaints by others like myself who are bothered by chemical cleaners. Another plus in not using a chemical is not having the packaging to dispose of afterwards. And that's applicable to pesticides too.
I wish I could persuade more people to have a garden like mine, where the strongest things I use are a bit of muscle, and seaweed solution, but some people prefer to use those easy quick fixes which they are led to believe are safe. I don't particularly wish to debate the safety of any specific product, I always feel that lurking amongst the current "safe" products is the next DDT, asbestos, thalidomide, diethylstilboestrol, etc. For me it's more about the whole attitude. You know the "reduce, reuse, recycle" saying? Surely pesticides are an area where, with a change in attitude, we can significantly reduce, with all the benefits that it could bring.

I gave the common salt analogy to provide an idea of the level of toxicity we are talking about. I could have used a whole range of other chemicals, but many people will not have come across them. Salt they do know. It is as you say useful to allow lay people to come to grips with comparative toxicities. Toxicity is a property of the chemical itself and natural chemicals can be just as toxic as synthetic chemicals.

I suspect you don’t understand MSDSs if you think they are advertising. They are intended to give safety information to users. Frankly they tend to be overly conservative recommending unnecessary safety precautions, but given that many users of all sorts of chemicals are untrained in safe handling, this is understandable.

You are correct to question the focus on the LD50 of the active ingredient where exposure is to the formulated product. In the case of simazine, the usual formulation is an SC (suspension concentrate). The other ingredients include dispersion agents like alkylene glycol and suspension agents like diatomaceous earth. In the case of simazine, these other compounds result in reduced acute toxicity of the formulated product compared to the active ingredient.

I work a lot with farmers and quite a bit of our focus is on reducing unnecessary pesticide use. There are 2 main reasons for this, one is the cost and the second is the off-target effects. For example, we work on substituting soft insecticides for broad-spectrum insecticides as much as possible in order to maintain natural enemies in the system. A second example, is growing rust-resistant wheats instead of relying on fungicides. However, there are some areas where the damage from the alternatives are much greater than the damage from the pesticides. One example is the use of glyphosate for pre-seeding weed control instead of tillage.

[macgardener]

Spadlet, I was venting about my neighbour's thoughtlessness. I was also wondering if there is some kind of effective response to people who shrug off the concerns of others with "you can't worry about everything, etc". In this case it's pesticide use but I've heard people say that about other issues. It's a response I loathe. We actually need to give some serious thought to a lot of things.
Sorry you're enduring builders next door. Been there done that, fortunately with a reasonable buffer zone, though there were times I stood at the window willing some of my shrubs to grow another metre overnight please! I hope the builders aren't making too much of a mess. Some of them here drop their lunch wrappers and empty drink bottles everywhere. I hope things get better for you very soon.

Cricket Tragic, sorry if I didn't make it clear. I don't think real MSDS's are advertising. In the case I was referring to the company didn't provide us with the MSDS's as requested but with single page information sheets which didn't contain much information at all apart from how much safer than salt the products are.

[forfismum]

can we spray spammers?