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Re: [RC] [RC] Horse Fence Paint - Diane TrefethenDon't get me wrong. I have no doubt that creosote can be dangerous and carcinogenic. However...1) Wikipedia is not a good source for a serious discussion. As I understand it (they may have changed their policies), anyone can post to it and though they encourage alternative/contradictory information, there is no guarantee they will either get it or post it. 2) "Brief direct contact" is not "10 seconds of contact with the skin" or "2 hours of inhaling vapors". Without specific limits, that phrase is meaningless. 3) Again, if contact with "large amounts" may result in "even death" while contact with "low levels" result in lesser injuries, what is "large" - a full body submersion? What is "low levels" - hanging your saddle on the fence? You just don't know. 4) "Animals fed large amounts of wood creosote had convulsions and died, while those fed lower levels had liver and kidney problems." But then again last January according to: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/18/national/main2369761.shtml “Jennifer Lea Strange, a 28-year-old mother of three, was one of about 18 contestants who tried to win a Nintendo Wii gaming console by determining how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom...Strange participated in the contest during the morning in the studio and was found dead that afternoon.” BTW, can you spell lawsuit? One thing that gives me pause about the warnings concerning creosote, as diluted and used to treat fences to discourage horses from chewing, is the total lack of statistics on real people who actually used the stuff over the at least 80 years when it was freely available at your local General Store or Feed Store. I don’t see any. If in fact people did suffer and die, it must have been when they were about at the end of their run anyway because it sure didn’t make any headlines. Many things are dangerous used one way but safe if used another. Chemical companies and tool makers go crazy trying to word their “Warning” labels so they can’t get sued and lose everything when all the dang idiots who buy their products abuse (kill/injure themselves) them instead of use them. Another item to give one pause is the relative lack of the above mentioned lawsuits. Plenty of folks jumped on the lets-get-Dow-Chemical and asbestos-causes-lung-cancer bandwagons. But where are the my-dad-died-in-his-prime-using-creosote or the my-prize-bull-died-from- chewing-his-fence bandwagons? My guess it that it is the workers who worked with it in a manufacturing process, not the farmers and ranchers who used it or their stock, that got sick and “even” died. If so, that strongly suggests that what gets you is years of 8 to 5 exposure to the chemical, not keeping it in a shed and then painting a fence every 3 or 4 years. So what do the feds do? They ban it to the casual users but not the companies that buy it to preserve wood... you guessed it, 8 to 5 every day. More irony, John :) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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