Share The Seeds
General and Off Topic => General Discussion => Topic started by: gnosis on January 28, 2014, 10:28:33 PM
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Hey everyone I was just reading a post by Happyconcafe and I noticed he wrote
"!!!!!!Caution: As with perilite, care should be taken to avoid breathing in the dust particles of zeolite."
Well I started wondering what else I should know and be concerned about, it's not just me but I have my
wife, children, and my dogs. I do not know if there is anything else but if there is maybe a topic on safety can be made
for dummy gardeners like myself. :)
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If you dive into mycology you'll want to be very careful of contaminates & spores...
...and gardening is highly addictive.. be warned! =)
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Moist particles from misters and irrigation can spread legionnaires' disease (Legionellosis), and dusty soil or manure can put fungi on your lungs.
Both really hard to treat and not something you want from what I've heard.
Stuff like DE, zeolite, gypsum, rock dust, is just generally abrasive and doesn't break down readily, so its not good stuff to put in your lungs.
Minor ongoing damage for years and years. Lime is corrosive and isn't good to breath in either.
Anything that's small enough to breath in, its probably a good idea not to.
Not really a safety issue, but a word of warning.
I used to get big bags of "water crystals" from the forestry up north and use it on the garden in the sandy soil we had up there.
The dog ate about half a bag of it dry one day when I was at work.
Every time it rained for the whole time we were there great big jelly turds would spring up everywhere in the back yard.
When it stopped raining I would shovel up what I could, but it was like the bastards were breeding.
Like huge weird gross fungi, or huge jellied ants nests and the more rain we had the weirder and grosser they got.
Keep everything out of reach, as even though it was a pretty harmless jelly powder, it could have swelled in the gut and killed a kid or other dog.
Our fella was crook and sulky for ages afterwards.
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Hi gnosis,
With zeolite, its the small dust particles that you want to avoid.
For any fertilizer, soil mixture, or other gardening chemical do a search for the MSDS (material safety data sheet).
For example, "perilite MSDS"
Here's a MSDS for perilite:
www.lafgroup.com/docs/Perlite%20msds.pdf
From the MSDS, it appears that only prolonged exposure to the dust poses a risk.
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It's only a worry when you're mixing/pouring these and dust gets stirred up from it. Not when it's just soil sitting in a pot. You don't want to be mixing soil indoors anyways unless you don't mind cleaning up a big mess.