30 September 2005

Protecting property without dying from it

White ants and other insects were bombarded with pesticides (chlorinated hydrocarbons, e.g.Dieldrin) well into the 70s in Australia. Rarely a house, wood or soil was not doused in this deadly stuff. The nerve poison, chrome arsenate used to impregnate housing timber at present, ' has recently been banned from use on children's playground equipment'. The discovery of a native plant of the (over-exploited) sandelwood family is found to have natural repellent properties against unwanted bugs. But first it has to be bottled & commercialised to protect property from insects, unless everyone were to grow a beautiful sandelwood forest around their infrastructure. Lets hope they haven't cleared it all yet.

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