Weblog: Herbicide Training
<< Previous Entry | Next Entry >>
Today we took a herbicide course in order to get "forestry non-broadcast pesticide applicator certification." The instructor basically read from the book and told us which parts would be on the test (which is open book). He did get excited whenever he got into talking about pine beetles, which actually was quite interesting. Unfortunately, we aren't supposed to write in or mark up the books because Apex re-uses them, so finding all the info during the test will be harder than it would be otherwise.
As usual, there was one student who was constantly asking contrarian questions that weren't questions, just him spouting off his opinion about how bad pesticides are and how everything in the course took a simplistic view of the system and how pesticide affects it. While I agree with his position, this wasn't the time and place for it. Nobody I talked to is thrilled about the fact that we're spraying poison into the environment, but it is a fact of forestry. At least the herbicide we're using (Vision) is pretty tame. It's actually sprayed on a lot of crops in agriculture, so you've probably injested it. The brush saws we're using have an attachment that puts the herbicide on the blade as it is spinning, so it is automatically applied when we cut, which also means minimal exposure to the chemical for us.
I woke up with a headache and not feeling so good. It got worse throughout the day, and by the end I felt like I had a cold. I was so tired that I was nodding off in class. Once we were done I collapsed into bed and slept for about 4 hours. I'm feeling much better now.
Tomorrow is a study day, but I'll be spending a fair bit of it in town getting supplies.
Posted on Tue, 27 May 2020 at Prince George, BC, CA (altitude 805m) (map/google earth)
Copyright 1995-2006 Emanuel Borsboom.
All content on this site is licensed under a
Creative Commons License,
unless otherwise specified.