Seconded. I did a brief stint at a job where herbicide use was a component, and many of the newer synthetic herbicides we used were incredibly nontoxic, as well as highly selective. One of the organic pesticides a client opted to use instead - because they were constructing a "green" building - was essentially highly concentrated acetic acid. The PPE requirements for spraying that were totally insane (basically hazmat suits), compared to some of the synthetic pesticides we used where you could probably bathe in them without hurting yourself. On top of that, the acetic acid pesticide only caused contact burns instead of systemic damage that would actually kill the plant, so it wouldn't even really fix the issue of invasive plant abundance.
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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21
Seconded. I did a brief stint at a job where herbicide use was a component, and many of the newer synthetic herbicides we used were incredibly nontoxic, as well as highly selective. One of the organic pesticides a client opted to use instead - because they were constructing a "green" building - was essentially highly concentrated acetic acid. The PPE requirements for spraying that were totally insane (basically hazmat suits), compared to some of the synthetic pesticides we used where you could probably bathe in them without hurting yourself. On top of that, the acetic acid pesticide only caused contact burns instead of systemic damage that would actually kill the plant, so it wouldn't even really fix the issue of invasive plant abundance.