My "emotional" remark where I say the idea of spraying San Francisco once a month for ten years is 'beyond horrifying'?
Your language was not that of a calm, collected person seeking to reason out the details of the issue.
You began by marginalizing the significance of the presence of this moth; brushing it aside with the casual observation that it hasn't done any damage. Sorry. you don't get to say, “that's not important,” without also saying why, because anyone who actually reads the linked article will discover that the moth -- if it spreads east over the Altamont or up the delta, or north into the Wine Country, or south into Gilroy, Salinas, and beyond -- constitutes a very serious threat to the agricultural enterprises in this state. This moth that isn't worth spraying for could potentially cost agriculture in this state billions of dollars, and who knows how we'd be rid of it if it got well established in active growing regions.
Your favorite organically grown veggies won't likely be very tasty after this moth works them over, and the price for the ones that escape will be higher. Perhaps much higher.
Frankly, I consider that threat to be of sufficient magnitude that I'd be willing to put a relatively small area of this state through some discomfort now to prevent a huge area of the state being infested with a serious agricultural pest; spend a little bit up front to prevent far greater long-term damage to this state's economy; an ounce of prevention every square mile, once monthly for a few years is well worth it if it will prevent this moth from getting a foothold in California. It might be easy to think that those agricultural concerns out there in the farmlands don't impact you, but if they take a financial hit you'll suffer at the cash register every time you pay for groceries, and not-so-conservative Legislators in Sacramento will be peeking into your pocketbook in search of tax revenue to replace what the ag business used to pay.
The picture just isn't so simplistic as you'd like it to be; there's a whole lot more in the balance than just some occasional dust from the sky during the wee hours of the morning. Yeah, that could be an issue, but — there again — you haven't specified any reasons why; you simply assert — in a complete vacuum — that it is “beyond horrifying”, and conclude in a continued absence of facts that “the health implications are enormous.”
Thoughtful conservatives not prone to jump at media hype are left more than a bit cold by all of this. “Beyond horrifying”? How so? “Enormous” health implications? Of what sort, and what severity? The questions beg for answers, but you make no effort to enlighten anyone by providing substantiating evidence in either of these areas. You only provide links to non-credible websites cluttered with voices more hysterical than your own.
Now, none of this is to say you CAN'T be right; you may well be, but grace us all with some supporting data from unbiased sources. Cold facts and an absence of panic is what we need, here. Others have brought up the Material Safety Data Sheet for the specific compound being sprayed. Among the information in that document you might find a rational basis for your as-yet-unfounded assertions, but rather than refer to the MSDS and tell us what horrifying thing it says, you seem to expect everyone to accept that this spraying plan is “beyond horrifying” without that information. Why? Is the MSDS not scary enough?
If this compund is that bad, that same MSDS would contains information about exposure limits. Does it? If so, what are those limits, and will the spraying expose anyone to higher amounts? If so, how many people are at risk for such overexposure, and over what time period?
See, these are the kinds of things level-headed people post when they seek a rational discussion of something. They're called “facts”, and I'd dissuade you from making further assertions unless/until you provide a few that support your claims. And do include references to your sources.
That you are convinced of your claims, is obvious, but you fail to be convincing to anyone else if, instead of presenting evidence that can convince, you repeatedly emphasize how convinced you are. Fine. You're VERY convinced. We get that. Now, please explain the factual reasons why. If you present a sound argument with real facts undergirding your claims, you may well be taken as seriously as you originally hoped that you would.
To that end...
Tetradecen-1-yl-acetate MSDS
aka
tetradecenyl acetate
NFPA HEALTH=1, FLAMMABILITY=0, REACTIVITY=0
Oral 50LD (50% lethal dose) for rats: 17,600mg/kg of body weight. [YIKES!!]
Do you realize that means in order to kill half the rats in the test group, they had to force feed them 17.6 times their own body weight of this stuff. Under those conditions, the cause of death was more likely clogged intestines than material toxicity.
Putting that in human terms... If you weighed 114 pounds, you would need to ingest a ton of this stuff -- a whole 2,000 pounds -- to have your chances of survival reduced to 50/50.
These kinds of data are what you needed to kick off with, but you didn't. Actually, this information just isn't scary enough to support your initial claim that a monthly spraying regimen would be "beyond horrific". so, you either need to find credible data that is, or stop using language that seeks to make others as edgy and panicky about this as you seem to be.
Please don’t send out stuff like a shotgun. Nothing in this post is of concern to me. You want to reply to me do it.
You know that's like mixing an acid and base. The meltdown is inevitable, if mildly amusing.
L