"why use a substance with known serious multiple
 systemic and neurological effects? "

Please remember it is the dose that makes a poison.  Everything is poison if you consume too much.  On an acute basis lithium chloride is about four times as toxic as table salt.  We do not worry much (or in my case at all) about eating table salt.  On a chronic basis we have thousands and thousands of man years exposure data that shows a plasma concentration of lower than 1 millimole is safe.  So, if all the lithium in the 25 millimole solutions fed to kill mites ended up in honey and 100% of the honey made was from this source a person would need to eat two or three pounds of honey each day to get into a toxic range due to lithium.  But the assumption that all the lithium would end up in honey is nonsense and the assumption that all honey produced would be from such a source is also nonsense.  Not to mention only a fool would eat two or three pounds of honey a day.  This makes more sense to me from a human consumer stand point than the nonsensical feeding of much more poisonous essential oils practiced by some bee keepers.

Dick

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