I’m trying to decide if I’m watching someone poison themselves. I am very much new to the world of hydroponics. I’ve watch my neighbor play with a large vegetable system so I started putting together some parts to make a small system to help me split hosta over the winter (hopefully)

The gent who got me into hydroponics grows all sorts of greens for his family.

He he is also using something called RX Clear to control PH and “kill algae”. As he put it “chlorine is chlorine right?”. I made the analogy that there are MANY types of salts in the world - most of which you don’t want on your plate at dinner.

Being 18 years older than I he dismissed me with a smirk.

So I’ve been up all night digging into this. That product is something called Sodium Trichlor. I’m certainly NOT a chemist so I looked it up. It would appear that most countries take the following stance-

Environmental - don’t even think of dumping it outside - lives forever in groundwater and is totally lethal to aquatic life.

Plants - stops the proper production use and messaging of amino acids - specifically glycine.

Ingestion - unknown in humans and (to summarize) - who knows because there’s no good reason to ever ingest it. But it has destroyed the GI systems and kidneys of rats. And lethal at 50mg/kg.

Given that Sodium Trichlor appears to be an herbicide of the triazine family - (again correct me please if I am not interpreting this correctly) - isn’t that the last thing you want in there?

NOW FOR THE KICKER-

Human exposure seems to manifest itself in the kidneys first. Farmer Stan will have time to read this when I pass him the phone - he’s recovering from kidney stone surgery....

Thanks in advance for ANY info you have. I’m off to get lost in the other threads!