Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1875 — The Effects of Parts Green. [ARTICLE]

The Effects of Parts Green.

In a recent paper read before the Michigan Stale Board of Health Dr. R. C. Kedzie gives a detailed account of careful experiments made by him during the past year upon the use of Paris green in connection with growing crops, and says lie has satisfied himself of the truth of the following propositions: 1. Pans green, being a deadly poison, should be handled with extreme care. By inhalation of the dust, by contact of the materia] with sores or raw surfaces, and even by contact with a moist or perspiring surface, it may produce dangerous effects. 2. While classed as an insoluble substance. Paris green becomes soluble to a sensible degree by the action of what we may term the natural nocturnal solvents, carbonic acid, and the solvent action of the minute roots of plants seem to lie the most active of these natural solvents. 3. Arscuious acid and arsenites in solution tend to pass into an insoluble condition in the soil in which arsenic is insoluble bv the natural agricultural solvents. 4. White other agents may assist in fixing arsenious acid in the soil the hydrated oxide of iron is probably the most potent factor in producing this insoluble condition ; that enough of this oxide is present in all fertile soils to render inert a much larger amount of arsenic than would accumulate from the use of Paris green as an insect poison. 5. Paris green mixed with soil does not remain in this form; or at least it cannot be dissolved out of such soil by many agents which readily dissolve the salt. 6. Paris green when applied in small quantities does not seem to affect the health of a potato or wheat plant. The arsenic which it contains does not reappear in the tuber or the grain, and that these substances are not injured as human food by the small quantity of “Paris green required to free our fields from a mosl destructive insect foe. 7. The i>ow er of the soil to remove from solution and hold in an insoluble form arsenious acid and arsenites will protect the water supply from deadly contamination by this agent unless the poison is used in excess of any requirements as an insect destroyer.