>
> >Peter- the post talked about chewing the pencil, so the graphite was not
> the problem, the paint was.


Fascinating--I was wondering where lead entered the pencil picture.

For the younger readers of Bee-L, you may not be aware of how toxic our
environment was prior to the formation of the EPA.

In addition to my own brain poisoning with mercury and lead, while I worked
myself through college doing construction, during one stint I installed all
the wooden door jambs in a housing tract. I'd hold my carpenter's pencil in
my lips as we squared up the framing.  I noticed after some weeks that my
lips had started tingling, and finally figured out that the jambs had been
treated with pentachlorophenol wood preservative--widely used back then,
but now restricted due to its extreme toxicity. The penta got onto my
hands, and then to my pencil, and then right into my mouth.

Of course, when I got home, I'd wash up with Dial soap with
hexachlorophene--also now known to be acutely toxic.

The EPA wasn't founded 'til 1970, and has since been instrumental in
reducing the degree that we unintentionally poison ourselves.  Our current
Administration is trying to gut the EPA--please let your representatives
know how important it is for EPA to be well funded.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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