I'm Just a Shill for Big Cooking Oil

Every once in a while I come across an article of such staggering ineptitude that I have to re-read it several times to really grasp the steaming pile of ignorance that must have written it. In many of those cases, I found that I simply misread it the first time through. Often, these are blog posts written by people of questionable cognitive abilities and even more questionable spelling and grammar knowledge.

Sadly, no matter how many times I read and re-read this article this morning, I couldn't find what I was desperately hoping for. This was an article written by a Mike Adams - AKA the Health Ranger; a man who has a large number of devotees who think he understands basic science. Actually, they think he knows better than the scientists. Apparently so does he.

Are You Eating Pesticides?

If you do read the above linked article, I apologize if you experienced any ill health effects from such IQ draining drivel. If you didn't, let me summarize his sudden insights that nobody in the entire scientific community was ever able to figure out since the dawn of industrial chemical production over a half century ago.

A) Pesticides are toxic
B) Pesticides often contain Canola oil.
therefore....
C) You're frying those oreos in toxic pesticides.

For many of you, I'm preaching to the choir. If you are among those who aren't immediately smacked in the face with the glaring errors this man makes, please allow me to point them out. Oh, and do NOT feel bad. "Toxicity" is not a topic covered in most schools. I happened to go through an Agricultural program at Penn State and pesticides were a main topic of study. I also work in a field that involves pesticide usage.

To get the obvious out of the way, pesticides are toxic. To get the not-so-obvious similarly out of the way, so is table salt, Windex, Vitamin C, and belly button lint.

Everything, EVERYTHING is toxic in sufficient quantities. Toxicity is not a measure of whether or not something is dangerous. It is a measure of HOW MUCH of any product is required to cause problems. If it takes very, very little to cause harm, the product is highly toxic. Examples of this would be arsenic, rattlesnake venom, and Lady Gaga. If it takes a lot of something to cause problems, it has a very low level of toxicity. Examples would be milk, white bread, and orange spray tan slop.

In pesticide production, first we need to establish how much of a product is needed to cause the harm intended. Let's not forget that the whole point of spraying an insecticide is to kill critters. We need to determine which products have the right level of toxicity for the target pest, and how much of the product is needed to actually kill them without killing the plants or the homeowners, or any other non-target living things. Let's take it a step further and imagine that the pesticide companies might enjoy repeat business. For this, they may wish to create products that WHEN USED PROPERLY do not cause sudden hair loss, blindness, spontaneous farts, gender reversal, and cancer.

Now, they have settled on a specific chemical that they have studied and understand. It takes 3 tablespoons of the concentrated active ingredient to kill all the bugs in a 5,000 sq ft lawn. If you think this through, you may come to the same inevitable conclusion that chemical manufacturers came to a few decades ago. How do you evenly spread 3 tablespoons over an area that large?

To adequately spray that over 5,000 square feet, you'd need about 5 - 10 gallons of mixed product. This means that you need to dilute (mix) the 3 tablespoons into 5-10 gallons, and THEN spray it evenly around the yard.

Hmm, what homeowner wants to go buy a 10 gallon drum of mixed pesticide? I'm guessing not many. What homeowner wants to handle 3 tablespoons of a toxic insecticide? Probably not many. So here's an idea.... How about we mix that 3 tablespoons into about a quart of oil, thereby reducing the toxicity of the mix to about 5% of what it was? People can take that home, further add 5-10 gallons of water from a hose and spray it out onto the yard to kill the bugs. You have now effectively gotten those 3 tablespoons from the lab onto the appropriate area of yard by using a solvent like oil as a carrier. It knocks down the toxicity significantly for safer and more effective handling and allows it to be sold at market in a practical way.

Pesticides are labelled as toxic and cautions are given because they are toxic and you should be careful. When used appropriately and carefully, they can be of great benefit. Just as you shouldn't eat an entire bottle of vitamin C for breakfast, nor should you handle pesticides in a manner not intended.

That all said, Mike Adams literally jumps to the ridiculous conclusion that it's the oil that's "toxic." There's seriously no explanation given other than that these products contain oil and they are toxic. Um, Mike? There's another little thing on the label called "Active Ingredient." That's the toxic stuff. The canola oil is just fine.

Where's my big check from Wesson?