Robert Mann wrote:

>          One of the few good contributions by Barry Commoner was his early
> essay pointing out that chlorine atoms  BONDED TO CARBON are very rare in
> nature (and when they do occur naturally, they strongly tend have unusually
> powerful properties, e.g. as bactericides), so it would appear to be a bad
> idea to spread around vast amounts of organochlorines as has been done
> since WW2.

You can have perfectly benign elements that when combined are killers
and vice versa. You can eat elemental carbon and breath air but would
not promote the drinking of kerosene.

As you noted, all chlorine associated with organic compounds do not need
to be bound to carbon. So the structure is important. Loads of them are
HCl, or chlorides. Some like FluoxetineHCl are ingested.

In addition, the harmful effects may be there when in quantity but may
be beneficial in lesser amounts, like fluorides and chlorides, as you
pointed out. Another example is drinking sea water to stay alive. Some
vitamins, essential to life, can be toxic in quantity.

The discussion was on Fluoxetine as an ingredient of Apistan, and I am
not sure that has been answered yet.

I do share your concern with all organo-halogen pesticides and wish we
had SMR/varroa resistant bees today.

Getting way off topic here.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME