EA Warns Farmers About Pollution

Does anyone know if this disinfectant against Foot and Mouth is bio-degradeable? Will it seep into our water tables and stay there for years to come? Surely if farmers are spraying vehicles, boots etc then some will enevitably seep into the ground.

Any bio-chemists out there?

Not a bio-chemist but Brian Morland was on local TV towards the outbreak of F&M stating that his beloved R Ure(?)was only recently recovering from the effects of disinfectant from the '67 epidemic.

His view was obviously that the effects do last for years but also he was concerned about any progress that had been on disinfectant formulations that may make the environmental consequences even worse than last time.

(ps in response to a question elsewhere regarding cookers you mentioned EPI gas stoves etc. - can you recommend a shop to go and look! Cheers.)

Sam...Epi gas cookers are available in nearly any camping shop...or The Tackle Box at Sutton at hone has them instock. I use the Alpine, which folds up super small and I think is the bees knees.

As for the chemicals used to kill the f & M virus, well..it scares me witless to think what is going into our rivers, let alone our drinking water supply!!!

They reckon the equivalent of 40 years' worth of disinfectant etc has gone into groundwater during the FMD crisis.

It kills the tiny stuff at the bottom of the food chain, which nobbles fry recruitment.

The disinfectant used is NOT bio-degradable. It's the most toxic stuff you can imagine and I expect there will be MAJOR fish kills especially when the floods of autumn come.

Sorry to sound so negative but facts are facts

Sod the fish...what about US!!!!...Fish can be restocked...I dont want to have this crap in my body!

There was some concern that F&M virus could remain in cave water for in excess of 6 months. Because of this concern a discussion document was written, see:-
http://www.caving.org.uk/news/fmdv_in_cavewater.html
In this document it states that the virus is very intolerant to changes in temperature and pH.
A critical factor for the virus is the pH, as either side of the pH7 'indefinite lifetime' region, the virus quickly dies when exposed to acid or alkali conditions. This is actually the basis of the agricultural disinfectants approved by MAFF.
So what is likely to be entering our water courses are very weak alkaline or acidic solutions. If this is the only component of the disinfectant, then there should be no concern re our rivers. However, we don’t know what other components are present as MAFF are only concerned with the pH of the disinfectant. There is a hyper link on the MAFF website "disposing of disinfectants" which throws up an “error occurred message” on the Environment Agencies website. I have asked their web master to email me the correct internet address which deals with the disposal of disinfectant relating to Foot & Mouth. If I get a reply I’ll post it on this thread.

John