Wolfy wrote:
>You know what started this?  The thought with many people that it is
>safe?  The actual pest control companies around.
>
>I know that one after another told me it was absolutely safe for small
>animals when they'd come around and use it in our apartments.  The guys
>would go on to tell me that is really a more "natural sort of thing"
>and what it was, and how its the best thing to use if you have to use
>anything around crawling children and small animals.
 
Well, they were right.  Boric acid is a helluva lot safer than typical
pesticides.  It is used as an eye wash for people, in cosmetics, and even
as a food preservative.  Snorting it would probably cause burns, but at
least it wouldn't cause cancer!
 
I used it to eradicate cockroaches from several NYC apartments that I
lived in over the years.  You just need to use common sense: you put
powdered boric acid (it has to be powdered to adhere to the insects'
bodies) in cracks and crevices, not liberally all over the place.
Ingesting a tiny bit is not dangerous.  You can safely use it in your
kitchen cabinets, where you certainly wouldn't use "roach spray."  Works
like a charm on roaches (should work for ants too), and it never bothered
me or the cats I had at the time.
 
BTW, borax (Na2B4O7 . 10H2O) is a sodium salt of boric acid (H3BO3) and
has different properties; they're not interchangeable.
 
Nancy and critters
[Posted in FML issue 4087]