Using herbicide containers for feeding

[Wil]

A neighbor of mine gave me some 55 gallon plastic containers that contained herbicide to use for feeders for hay for my sheep. I am concerned about some residual chemicals causing problems for the sheep, or my family when we eat the meat.
Any one have any knowledge about this?
Appreciate your input.
Thanks.

 

[techman]

Most herbicide use labels that I have seen specifically state not to reuse the container, and to keep the product clear of feedstocks. Those warnings to me would keep me from putting anything but garbage in that barrel.

"Clean" 55 gal plastic barrels are fairly easy to find. To me "clean" would be ones that had soap or other fairly harmless materials. Check with some local businesses. They will usually give you one for the price of the deposit on the barrel.

paul

 

[Wil]

Thanks.
I thought I had read not to reuse the containers on the gallon containers of roundup I have purchased in the past but couldn't remember.

 

[BlueRidge]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( "Clean" 55 gal plastic barrels are fairly easy to find. )</font>

Yep. Why take even a small chance when the cost of avoiding that risk is so low?

We got some that had peach syrup in them. Hard to find any harm in that!

They worked just peachy!

 

[penokee]

Wil - As mentioned peviously, DON"T use them for the purpose you mention. I've worked occassionaly with herbicdes for the past 43 years, Two stories:
- We used 1,000,s of gallons of 2,4,D and 2,4,5,T for controlling brush on forest roadsides and young pine plantations. The concentrate came in nice heavy duty 5 gallon containers, too good to throw away /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif - supposed to be destroyed by punching a hole in the bottom - all of us took a half-dozen or so. I flushed mine numerous times with 100.s of gallons of water, but the water was still so potent it wiped out part of my lawn. Now, I use them for collecting old motor oil.

- That dreaded Agent Orange from the Vietnam era was simply a mixture of D & T as mentioned above . We used it to kill stubborn "Black Aspen -?". The dangerous/killer ingredient was a dioxin that was accidently/randomly made during the manufacture. A drop of dioxin can literally kill thousands - and was the cause of the Race Horses killed in Kentucky, etc, (dioxin was also occassionaly found in pentachlorophenol).

Sorry for the long story, but my intent is say "Don't Take a Chance" with any type animal, bird or fish". Maybe use for collecting used motor oil /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

penokee /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Disclaimer: I'm not a chemist (Had Chem 101 - 47 years ago, but that's pretty foggy now). above comments are my personal opinion, based on personal use.

 

[LBrown59]

Wish I knew where to get free plastic drums.
I need a bunch of 30 and 55 gallon ones to make ditch liners out of.

 

[bdog]

Depends on the herbicides that were in them and how you cleaned them. If the drums only had something mild like roundup nd they were cleaned well then I would use them. On the other hand if they had something like Paraquat (Tordon) then I waould stay away.

There are three different levels of pesticides identified by a signalword of caution, warning, and danger. Stuff that has caution on it is only mildly hazardous, warning is worse, and danger could easily kill you. So what I am saying is sure it would be best to use a drum that never had anything bad in it, but I would feel safe using a well cleaned drum that only contained a "caution" chemical.


A good way to clean would be soap and water and then a good rinsing with bleach/ammonia mixture. Do this in a well vented area and wear rubber gloves. The mixture casues a chemical a reaction and makes some nasty stuff but it is what the commercial applicators here use to clean all traces of chemicals from their tanks. I would then follow up with several soap/water cleansings.