Home Dried Timber

[seventhdevil]

pete, les,

i know all parts of the tree are toxic. i never said they weren't.

poorly worded i suppose saying the seeds are the dangerous bit, i guess it should say the most dangerous bit.....   my mistake.


at the risk of lots of nasty comments coming my way i'll ask this, my query is with how toxic/dangerous they are and how easy or difficult it is to poison yourself with something that has very little contact with the wood in question.

this came up long ago on another forum and plenty of link were put up and only one had any sort of bad medical problem for an adult. a schizophrenic had tried to commit suicide by eating loads of laburnum seeds and from memory he got round to eating most on the tree. needless to say he failed and only gave himself a really bad stomach ache. i think also on the forum no one could find any reference to an adult death in the last few centuries.

i believe there was reference to a child's death in the 70's but they had eaten plenty of seed to do so. apparently a child will be much more susceptible to the toxin in question.

[bodrighywood]

As someone who is selinghis work I take the view that if there is the remotest chance of someone becoming ill I won't take it. I have a friend who is ill for weeks, on his back, if he as much as sniffs iroko dust,another who is highly allergic to walnut. Read through one of the wood toxicity charts and you could scare yourself out of using wood at all. There is a need to apply that rarity common sense as with all things. Using known toxicwoods for anything to do with food constuitutes common sense for me personally.

Pete

[Les Symonds]

Who would have thought, 30 years ago, that we'd give health warnings about peanuts? The lesson learnt from eating peanuts is that some people are perfectly tolerant, whilst others might die. It's not just a question of 'how' toxic a substance is, it's more to do with considering the worst possible case and ensuring that we never encounter it through the use of a known toxic material. The unknown quantity here is not the degree of toxicity of laburnum, it is the degree of susceptibility of the consumer.
Les

[fuzzyturns]

Hold on a little here, Les. I think we need to make a distinction here between what is toxic and what is allergenic. Toxic materials affect all people, even though some may be more tolerant than others, but ultimately you will die if there's too much exposure. Allergenic materials only affect people with an allergy (peanuts fall into this category, as do gluten, fish and various others), whilst everybody else can stuff themselves to upper edge of lower lip and nothing bad (other than maybe indigestion) will happen to them.

I would always advocate careful use of toxic materials (i.e. yew for a salad bowl is not a good idea), but if you start avoiding to use allergenic materials, then you end up with pretty much nothing usable at all (maybe with the exception of tap water).

[seventhdevil]

there are lots of things that people can't eat as it could kill them, my brother can't go anywhere anything that has any sort of nut in it. stephen fry can't go near champagne and lots of people have reactions to chocolate, cotton, wool, rubber and a huge list of other thing i'm sure.
do we stop using them?

yes it's common sense i 100% agree.

can anyone find a single reference anywhere to people dying because they used something from laburnum?

does eric's list include ingestion of those timbers or is it just contact with dust???

[bodrighywood]

Dying Steve? Is that the criteria? There are on average 3,000 hospital admissions a year through people ingesting laburtnum in one form or another and as someone who is selling to Joe Public I need to be sure that peple aren't going to be ill, not just dying if they use my products. If someone is allergic to hazel, bubinga etc then how the heck am I suppsed to know but when it comes to materials (not just wood) I need to make sure that I am not putting myself in a postion where I could end up being charged with careless or negligent ise of materials. OK I agree that common sense should prevail but sadly it isn't as common as it used to be.

Pete

[John D Smith]

 You only have to read the number of people who have been prosecuted where nut allergies have killed and made people ill it is not worth the risk.
                      John

[seventhdevil]

that's the very website i was referring to in an earlier post.

according to the article nicotine is more poisonous...




after all this discussion i think there is more chance of one choking on the food being consumed rather than the poison killing you.

[bodrighywood]

that's the very website i was referring to in an earlier post.

according to the article nicotine is more poisonous...




after all this discussion i think there is more chance of one choking on the food being consumed rather than the poison killing you.

I wouldn't sell nicotine either LOL. Seriously it is mainly down to being snsible and using woods that are appropriate. When you are dealing with the public there is always a need to be aware of any potential hazard be it in the wood, the finish or any other possible source of danger.

pete

[seventhdevil]

i wholeheartedly agree with you on the safe selling policy and we should definitely be carefull as to what we sell our customers, i think my only beef with the toxicity of laburnum is that everyone makes out it will kill you as soon as you touch it.

going back to the op i think it would be perfectly safe to use in a pair of salt and pepper mills.

[Paul Hannaby]

Regarding laburnum, I know someone who gave some laburnum shavings to their grandchildren to be used as bedding for their rabbits. The morning after the shavings were used, the rabbits were found dead. I think it's too much of a coincidence to rule out the laburnum shavings as the cause.

Perhaps the toxin isn't potent enough to kill an adult human but when there are so many other much safer woods out there to use, I don't know why anyone would even consider one that is known to be toxic.

[bodrighywood]

I give a lot of my shavings to someone who has chickens and always make sure that there is no 'toxic' wood in them for the same reasons Paul. Better safe than sorry as far as I am concerned. Beautiful though laburnum and yew are I agree that there are other lovely woods out there so why take the risk.

pete

[seventhdevil]

all my shavings go to a chicken farmer and he's never told me his birds have died?

in go things like laburnum, elm, beech, sycamore, lignum vitae (genuine and argentine), mahogany, iroko, sapele, yew, angelim vermelho, garapa, walnut, whitebeam, hornbeam or anything that comes from inside a tree.