Incidentally, I recall some years back a friend of mine bought a bush block which had a shed on it. When he opened the shed for the first time he found it was stock full of just about every noxious chemical known to man. There were drums of old, banned products like Rogor, Aldrin, arsenic pentoxide, and Dieldren, to name a few, and lots of bottles with stuff that the labels had fallen off of. I am sure he felt like locking the door again and pretending it didn't exist. Seems like he had bought someone else's problem. I'm not sure how he ever got on with that stockpile of old chemicals. I never heard any more about it and next time I visited he had the shed all cleaned out.
And speaking of arsenic pentoxide, which was very widely used in the old days for spearing the prickly pears, many farms still had stockpiles of the stuff by the time the cactoblastis moth had done its job of decimating the pest. And by the 1960s better chemicals came on the market for treating weeds. Arsenic pentoxide was no longer needed. It was very common for landholders to dispose of arsenic by dumping it in local dumps, or waterways, or down old mine shafts and wells. I have little doubt that suburbs now exist on old farms where this practice occurred. It was a different time and a different attitude I guess. But most people today are blissfully unaware that it ever took place. How many people get their bores tested for arsenic levels? Councils for that matter?
Well they now tell us that PFOS is basically harmless, or at least they are saying there is no clear evidence that it harms us. That was after making a huge issue out of it, and needlessly scaring a lot of people. Asbestos is still a scourge, but after I saw a neighbour's house getting its asbestos roof replaced by "professionals" I really wondered about how harmful it must be. The first day they wore suits and goggles. The next day they wore shorts and thongs and face masks. Yes really!!! The third day they had no protection at all, but were still throwing bits of asbestos off the roof. The wind was blowing a gale and they were throwing the broken sheets into an industrial bin. The dust was blowing all across the street and neighbouring homes. They left a pile of asbestos dust near my neighbour's back door and when he complained about it they told him to just sweep it up and throw it in his bin. The neighbour was picking up shards of asbestos roof from his lawn for many months after.
Last edited by vint_mow; 28/05/18 03:42 PM.
