when a builder at a plot just down the road removed a tree & its roots, he discovered - too late - that the tree's roots had grown round the electricity feed for 5 houses. A big 'BANG' and we were supplied with a diesel genny for 5 days! Mind you it was installed at about 1am!
I'd be worried that it does ship, and the recipient gets arrested.
The issue with it in the UK is not herbicide usage. Nobody gives a damn whether you turn your garden into a wilderness. It's a very strong oxidising agent, and a well-known constituent of home-made bombs.
You can make a dilute solution merely by boiling bleach (sodium hypochlorite)
Does bleach work as a weedkiller?
I’ve still got a scar from teenage explosion experiments, they took a long time to fill with the NaClO3 and sugar mixture through the top but a bulb from a sparklets soda syphon made a reasonable torpedo at least till it got metal fatigue and exploded with an impressive waterspout in the pond at my mates parents. It was forty years before we explained to his Mum why her ducks had suddenly flow away. Bit of shrapnel hit me fortunately on the Patella and ricochetted off , could have been worse if it had hit something soft or an eye. Had to convince Mother the bloodied knee was caused by cycling into a barbed wire fence, At the same event where we confessed about the ducks Mother remarked I knew it was really one of your bombs, she had heard it from 2 miles away.
I suppose kids today with no access to such things may be safer,OTOH some have to turn to drugs to put some excitement into their lives.
GH
JOOI If you mix bleach with table salt (sodium chloride) does it make any sodium chlorate?
I think only by dint of it breaking down to chlorate.
Of course it will scorch plants to s*it juts like any strong chemical - acid alkali - or even plain salt, will.
I have never heard that it does, no.
It's 30% oxidizer, the 70% rest is probably something to keep it from oxidizing in any rapid ways, mixed with whatever reaction precursors aren't easy to remove.
There was a spate of farmers with self-combusting pants, though...
We used to put the sugar in then a neutral agent cant remember now what it was might have been salt, then the chlorate then shake it up on site. We did after a while use electric detonation and there is by the riverside a bloody great hole after what some 50 odd years?
My mate, bloody idiot, had the end of his plimsolls blown off, told him not to kick one that didn't work as it should.
Good old bad 'ole days they were;)..
I think the issue is that it kills absolutely everything and hence frowned upon.
But I suspect sodium chlorate has pretty much the same effect.
I'd expect that bleach "wears off" as it does when bleaching, while the chlorate lasts a lot longer.
Thomas Prufer
Yes I think so.
Chlorate is a destroyer of the soils ability to transport nutrients to the plants roots. It is supposed to bind to the soil and remain active for years
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