Pure nonesense!! Unless you happen to have rats and plan on injecting them with it!!
If you inject limestone into rats it will kill them too. If you feed them Diametacious Earth I would image they would bleed out. Same thing goes for a million other substances we use every day. Show me some research that shows any harm to humans from using it in they garden and then let's talk! The bottom line is don't inject it into rats unless you want to kill them. But if you don't plan on injecting any rats, use it responsibly to kill harmful insects when absolutely necessary.

They wont bleed out with DE, DE is actually used to controll internal parasites. But your point is still a good one, If you puree all the healthy veggies out of your garden and mainline them the blood clots would kill you dead real quick.

DE is in fact exceedingly harmful to breathe. I suspect it's also not a good idea to snuff Dipel. Which says little or nothing about rotenone, just as the fact that injecting rotenone is harmful doesn't mean that other forms of exposure to it are not harmful.

In low doses you are exposed to it is probably worth it. All pesticides are bad for some kind of animal, but getting a crop with a tiny little bit of Rotenone on/in it is typically going to be better than what you get at the store.

>It is a neurotoxin that has been linked to Parkinson-like disease when injected into rats. In your garden you are not injecting it, but do you want to risk it?

Certainly no one wants Parkinson's Disease and one does not have to work with PD patients to know that. But one wants facts, not suppositions or fear, upon which to base an educated opinion.

Please cite any scientific data you may have that directly links Rotenone, when used as directed, to Parkinson, and then you may tell us "The real reason not to use Rotenone."

Wayne

Hi, Wayne....here's a bit of reading for you. I'm sure that there is much more information on the web than I found with a 5 second search! I used 'rotenone parkinson's' as my search words.

Here is a link that might be useful: Click here

First, the article talks about "long term exposure" , which is certainly not occasional "emergency" use by gardeners. It talks about injecting it into rats. . . but how much! When is the last time you injected yourself with Rotonone??
What is usual in these types of cases, is that they feed or inject the rats thousands of times the amount any human might ever come in contact with normal living and use. And then it states that it can't be proven that Rotonone does ANYTHING harmful; they "suspect" it might!
I suspect that just about anything can be harmful and cause all kinds of illness if you inject or ingest enough of it, including just about every thing and anything in your home or garage. Push a needle full of liquified asparague into your veins, and I'm guessing you might have a problem. Are you gonna stop eating asparagus?
Until they have some scientific evidence to back up these scare claims, I plan to continue to use Rotonone when absolutely necessary . . . as I have done for the last 40 years or so.

>Hi, Wayne....here's a bit of reading for you. I'm sure that there is much more information on the web than I found with a 5 second search! I used 'rotenone parkinson's' as my search words.

Sorry, any 5th grader knows how to do a Google search. Your 5 seconds of "research" is unhelpful. Reading through the first few item's descriptions alludes to injecting the substance into rats, though one description does say "This study does not prove that rotenone causes Parkinson's disease in humans..."

If you want to convince anyone, tell me which of those 24 thousand links offers the direct evidence demonstrating that Rotenone causes Parkinson's. I am not going to to do the research that should have been done by Finnbiker before making unsubstantiated claims based on supposition.

If the sheer number of hits that a Google search returns is proof of the toxicity of a substance, than you had seriously better reconsider your consumption of water.

Google results:

Search: rotenone parkinson's Hits: 24,300
Search: water parkinson's Hits: 1,470,000

Now, is your responsibility to read through all those links to disprove my hypthetically implied claim that water causes Parkinson's? No. It would be my responsibility to provide appropriate references to material supporting the claim. Neither is it my job to read through the mass of Google returns that you list.

Wayne

Here is a list of articles published in peer-reviewed journals that relate to rotenone's neurotoxic effects. At least one of the articles is coming from the primate research lab. We are primates. Also, a number of these articles are discussing rotenone's effects IN THE ENVIRONMENT, not in an injection.

If you think rotenone is harmless, prove it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals about the toxicity of rotenone

You miss the point! You have it backward! The burden of proof is for those who make the claim that Rotonone is harmful to humans to prove their case.

The truth is that there are many things harmful to animals, including primates, that do not have any effect on man. None of these studies has ever shown that Rotonone has any adverse effect on man when used sensibly.

The question is, how much of the substance was given to test animals, under what conditions and for how long. Again, you can cause harm by injesting or injecting anything in the wrong amounts over extended periods of time, and the same can be said for the environment.

Limestone is good for an over acidic garden, but apply too much for too long, and you cause great harm. Manure is great for a garden, but apply too much fresh, hot manure and it will kill your plants. The examples are endless.

I challenge you to produce one study that PROVES that Rotonone, uses sensibly and according to directions causes serious harm to humans. Everythin else is just theory and panic!

Ron
The Garden Gay
http:www.TheGardenGuy.org

>If you think rotenone is harmless, prove it.

Crankyoldman, that's a trick that first-year high school debate team members know won't fly. One can't make a claim and "prove" it by insisting someone else disprove it. It is a sign that the one making the claim is either incredibly lazy or has no factual basis to support the claim.

As I said above, I am not going to to do the research that should have been done by Finnbiker before making unsubstantiated claims based on supposition.

But, since you've taken the time to read all those many papers, could you provide a brief summary of the authors' conclusions that demonstrate the direct causal effect of Rotenone in the development of Parkinson's when used as directed in a garden setting? (I assume you read all those papers.) Surely there must have been something in that long list of papers that provided the "smoking gun?" Please cite the papers that conclude that the occasional garden use of Rotenone causes Parkinson's

Was there a study that looked at application frequencies and concentrations? Did the studies that convinced you discuss exposure times? Did they discuss how the Rotenone enters the food chain, either by plant absorption or surface residue?

I don't know if Rotenone, when used as directed in the garden, will cause Parkinson's in humans or not, but I'm not making the claims that it does. I'm not trained in molecular biology, (perhaps you and Rhizo_1 and Finnbiker are,) but I do know enough about science to ask for proof and not suppositions before making a decision to change my gardening methods.

Wayne

Even strictly organic no-spray vegetarians are exposed to and eat all sorts of chemicals that are designed to harm or kill other biota. Cyanide in almonds, for example, and probably a whole witch's brew of tannins, caffine, and other organic chemicals of malevolent original purpose in coffee and tea. One must reasonably assume that we have evolved to withstand, or even use, low levels of much of this stuff.

adirondackgardener and organicguy, perhaps you were not aware that you can read the abstracts of these papers just by clicking on the article title. I guess neither of you bothered to do that. An abstract, for people who don't know, is a one-paragraph summary of a journal article. If it is too much for you to read an abstract, all I can say is you should not be allowed to handle any poisonous substances whatsoever, because there is no indication you would bother to read the caution label.

Pub-Med, where I found these articles, is an excellent source, by the way, for info about various medical treatments and conditions. I used it quite a bit when I had to have some surgery recently. It's run by the National Institute of Health as a gathering-place for all articles published in all peer-reviewed journals about any scientific subject. A peer-reviewed journal is one that requires that any article before publication be reviewed by a panel of anonymous scientists in the field. This provides some level of preventing bogus crap from getting published. It doesn't mean that no bogus crap or bad science is published. But it does mean that articles published are more likely to actually show something one way or the other. If there are conflicting perspectives on a subject, you will be able to get the various views from a source like Pub-Med. Now, it's true that it's not easy reading. If your reading is normally confined to the crawl underneath the Fox News broadcasts, you are going to have a dickens of time understanding it. But the thing is that acquiring knowledge is work, plain and simple, just like gardening is work.

Now I've given you a list of articles including their abstracts that indicate that a number of people working in the areas of biology and environmental science have shown that rotenone is toxic in our environment. Instead of saying "Thanks!" and having a look and who knows, perhaps actually changing your behavior based on information you were previously unaware of, you respond by digging in your heels and insisting that it's okay for you to keep on spreading rotenone around in your yard if you just do it now and then and you have an "emergency," like your tomato plants have bugs on them, oh the humanity. If you want to poison yourself, far be it from me to stop you, but poisoning your environment is another matter. Ask yourself this question: do you know exactly what happens to the rotenone you spread around in your yard? Are you absolutely sure that nothing that you or anyone else handles or eats in your yard has any rotenone on it, now or in the future? Are you completely certain that it does not get into the food of the animals that frequent your yard, the fish that swim in the runoff from your yard, the people that drink the water in that runoff, etc.? Positive? You can't be, because you are not informed about this chemical. Yet YOU are the ones who are adding a poison to an environment where it does not occur. That means the burden of proof that it is harmless is on YOU, NOT on others.

The argument that we have evolved to withstand rotenone is bogus. Rotenone is refined from a tropical leguminous plant. Are you going to argue that we have evolved to withstand ricin? That's a toxin that comes from a tropical legume also.

The same argument that you are using here--a little poison never hurt anyone--has historically been used by large chemical companies to make excuses about why it's okay to dump toxic waste in the ocean, to bury it in the ground, to release it into the air, or to include poisonous substances in consumer products. Do you really want to place yourselves in that camp?

VoR to the Mountain Curmudgeon.

Lloyd

Hi Folks...think I will still use rotenone..when needed...per the label directions. Don't have the training some of you guys have so will pass on given my opinion on whether it's bad to use it or not. Franklin

I did not say that rotenone caused Parkinson's. I said it was shown to have neurotoxic effects in the environment, and I posted that and the list of article citations in response to statements made by you and others dismissing the OP's warning about rotenone on the basis that in the study the OP cited, rotenone was injected into rats. You and others stated that rotenone is okay to use in garden "emergencies" like you've been doing for 40 years. I posted those citations in order to demonstrate that since rotenone is neurotoxic in the environment, you don't have to inject it for it to be problematic. IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TO CAUSE PARKINSON'S TO BE A PROBLEM. Do you not think there is a reason why OMRI has restricted it? I would not be surprised to see it being removed completely from the list of permitted substances in organically certified growing in the near future.

It's ridiculous to me that you have dug your heels in so much over this issue. It would seem to be helpful for everyone to know that rotenone is a neurotoxin and has negative effects in the environment (that means US, folks). But all you can see is that someone out there has come up with information that challenges your long-standing practice. Good grief.

Well, that's not true! As I tried to demonstrate, there are a lot of sunstances that are perfectly healthy if used sensibly, but toxic is abused - organic or chemical. You are aware, I assume, that some of the medicines in used today are also considered neurotoxins, right!

Rotonone, by your own statement, is still recognized as perfectly safe and acceptable for organic gardening . . . in spite of all the speculation and fear tactics. This has nothing to do with someone disagreeing with something I have been using for 40 years. If there is ever any real evidence that Rotonone or anything else is toxic or harmful under normal use, I will be the first to stop using it.

Personally, I believe that we ought to consider facts, and make decisions based upon sound science. I am guessing that if Rotonone is ever proven to be what you seem to believe it is, it will no longer be considered safe for organic gardening. Let's stick to the provable facts!

"Rotonone, by your own statement, is still recognized as perfectly safe and acceptable for organic gardening ."

Er, no. It's restricted by OMRI.

I looked into the rotenone question further, because I found info that OMRI, which is the certifying organization for "Certified Organic," does allow the use of rotenone, but only under restricted circumstances. I looked at their website to see if I could find out what they were, but I couldn't, so I decided to call them up and see if they could explain it. They said that rotenone was kind of an oddball because it was grandfathered in back in the fifties and not tested. This, they said, raises a red flag. Things that are registered with the EPA have to be submitted with some kind of testing data for toxicity. They said though that because it is an organic substance, that it is allowed, but they restrict its use to last resort after the organic farmer follows "NOP 205.206." What's that? It's described here:

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2006/janqtr/pdf/7cfr205.236.pdf

Basically, it's a very detailed description of a range of practices that have to be shown to have been used before rotenone can be used. They in fact do not list ANY product with rotenone in it as usable on their list of pesticides. One reason for this is because typically a synergist was added to it to make it more toxic, and that disqualified it automatically. They allow it only as a single, generic product, precisely because that single generic product has not been registered with the EPA but grandfathered in. But I got more info about why it's not in combo pesticides from the EPA website.

According to the EPA, companies that had registered rotenone as an ingredient along with others in combination pesticide applications had voluntarily withdrawn it for use by commercial crop farmers or residential users against pests in the house or garden due to concerns about its toxicity. They were putting it forward for use only for killing fish and not for use by regular folks. The EPA has a long and highly technical document describing the companies' reregistering it as a component of piscicides (fish killers) in the url below. They give a lot of general info about rotenone in it.

Notice that the EPA specifically mentions the possibility of a Parkinson's risk. Something that was more disturbing to me, though, was their notation that it appears to be much more toxic when its dust particles are inhaled than when it is eaten. They noted the smallness of some of the dust particles and how they can get stuck in one's lungs.

The fatal dose for a child was found to be 134mg/kg (a kg is 2.2 lbs). Pretty darn small. They note, though, that usually people don't die of it because it causes severe vomiting.

So it looks the science is actually against the use of rotenone in the garden.

Here is a link that might be useful: EPA on reregistration of rotenone

Since a few of the "purists" are freaking out over Rotenone, I was wondering how they feel about Pyrethrin and Pyrethrin based products.

Just as a point of interest,Arbico, which is well know for there strictly organic gardening and farming products, and advertises on the Organic Gardening Magazine website, sells Pyrethrin, Rotenone and a Rotenone/Pyrethrin based organic insect control.

Perhaps someone ought to enlighten Organic Gardening Magazine that these products are no-no's. Maybe they didn't do their homework or aren't up to snuff on what's a acceptible gardening product. Shame on them!

Ron
The Garden Guy
http://www.TheGardenGuy.org

Interesting conversation - I was just researching rotenone myself and it is restricted by OMRI. In fact this article explains it well:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/rotenone-organic-zb0z1405zsto.aspx

Now I really hope that those concerned with this pesticide don't overlook the real problem: things like glyphosate, 2,4-D, atrazine, neonics, etc...