ammonia and termites

Today I learned that when you put ammonia in the washing machine, holding your breath isn't the hard part. After all, holding your breath becomes a reflex when you've been trying to avoid breathing chemicals for several years. The hard part is getting the cap back on the bottle and the clothes in the tub while trying to keep your eyes shut because ammonia burns. It was definitely worse than cutting up onions, so I don't know how people ever scrubbed floors with it.

In other news, the safer termite guys have a foam they can blow into a wall that contains the same dilute nicotine solution they used underground near our front door. I didn't have a problem with the nicotine last time at all (not that I went out and took a whiff), so I didn't worry when the nice man said he'd have to put some in a foam inside this one wall inside my house that has two short termite tubes growing out of it.

Right after he left, I thought, "Foam?" I guess I'm not that worried because he's worked with chemically sensitive people before, but I'll still have to call and ask about the foam. Mostly what I learned was that I did ok while he was here, but it's distracting to have a cheerful guy who smells of laundry products standing in your bathroom checking your termite tubes.

Everything I know about foam and what I'm calling dilute nicotine, which is actually a nicotine derivative, is here and here (pdf), and apparently the nicotine stuff has a very low vapor pressure, so it doesn't evaporate much.