Chris, for an employee to use pesticide ( including herbicides ) they require PA1, which is foundation and PA6 ( if using knapsack or granular material ). Theres no getting around this and just because you buy the stuff from a retail outlet the employee is still an employee. I am a City & Guilds ( NPTC ) Assessor in Pesticide Application.

Kenny

I looked into this matter some years ago and was advised, I think by DERFA at that time, that any person using pesticides must be trained. This applied both in our greenhouses which had restricted entry and in public areas.

We decided at that time to train our greenhouse technicians but to sub contract the spraying of public areas to a company that could demonstrate that all operatives had been trained

Hi,

thanks for the link Teh_Boy, but that seems more for producers of pesticides and those who use them on a large scale - for a small company, using small quantities of a product that one could buy at any garden centre to control weeds on our own car park etc - surely a COSHH assessment with adequate controls would be sufficient without this training to PA1?

This seems a little bit like the FLT training when people say you have to have a 'license' when in fact you just have to be competent - some companies may specify that PA1 = competence but isn't that for us to decide ourselves?

Thanks
Steve

Thanks all for the replies and links. I admit I'm still confused having skimmed through the links. Seems hard to differentiate between commercial and working on your own premises. So I want to kill a few weeds in a private car park that will take 15 - 20 minutes. I have to warn the local bee keepers - really! How exactly do I do that, follow the bees home? (I know, there is probably some society or institute somewhere).

I can just imagine it now, hello is that Mr & Mrs Jones I understand you have a bee hive, just to let you know I'm going to spray the weeds in the car park in about an hour, should take about 15 minutes. Me - I'm in a unit factory about 2 miles away on an industrial estate.. No I’m not going to use a plane, just a small hand pumped sprayer. So if you could just round them all up, that would be grand

This is an activity a lot of small business do I'm sure, wouldn't it be nice if the HSE or EA websites provided clear concise information on things they know will affect lots of companies. Any numpty is allowed to follow the instructions on the box at home, but in work you have to go on a prohibitively expensive course.

I had better have another read of the links later on, seemed OTT though. The HSE seemed to refer to Approved Code of Practice L9 – which is no longer listed. The MD is not going to believe me unless I can wave something legal looking in front of him. Should be fun.

PS I like bee's, but if they land on a sprayed dandelion it will not matter if it was a trained person or not that did the spraying.

Chris

According to internet sources the sale of sodium chlorate was banned by the EU in 2009 and remaining stocks of it had to be used by May 2010. However, some websites advise that a solution of sodium chloride (salt) is effective as a weedkiller and cheaper than using the proprietary weedkillers which remain permissible nowadays. As my knowledge of horticulture is limited, can anyone with better knowledge comment on the probability that salt solution is either not harmful to bees or less harmful than proprietary weedkillers?

Mention of sodium chlorate reminds me of an incident during my (sporadically) wild youth when I 'borrowed' some from the stocks in my parents' garden shed, mixed it with sugar, and set light to the mixture in an old toilet roll tube set in soil alongside my Dad's potato patch. The mixture ratio used was intended to produce smoke rather than an explosion. In this regard the ignited mixture was wholly effective and produced a sizeable cloud of white smoke. Unfortunately, a light breeze blew the dense smoke across a nearby B-road. Thankfully, nobody was using the road at the time and the cloud dissipated within a minute or so to allow reasonable visibility again for drivers and pedestrians. However, the thought that my smoke might have caused a significant traffic incident or at least prompted complaints by neighbours to my parents was sufficient to deter me from making any more smoke bombs! A sort of post-activity risk assessment if you wish :-)

Oh, and are we not all forgetting the hierarchy of control? Buy a couple of hoes.

Canopener suggests that commercial means “would be those who deliver a service to others for financial gain”. But Safetrain notes “Anyone applying pesticides for Hire or reward ( an employee for example ) needs a certificate of competence.” Therefore by the mere fact that an employee get paid, is reward.

Then from Schedule 3 of The control of pesticides regulations 1986

7. In this Schedule—
commercial service means the application of a pesticide by a person to land, buildings or the contents of buildings not in his or his employer's ownership or occupation, and includes the treatment of seed with the use of mobile or static equipment;

8. For the purposes of this Schedule, it shall be the duty of every employer to ensure that any person in his employment who may be required to use a pesticide during the course of that employment, is provided with such instruction and guidance as is necessary to enable that person to achieve the standard of competence recognised by the Ministers, and otherwise to comply with the requirements in and under these regulations.

So it does not specifically say certificate of competence or indeed specific qualifications if the work is to be carried out on your own premises. That is unless it is the DEFRA web page that is the document that specifies what Ministers recognise, and those pages do not specifically say only commercial activities need theses qualifications. So where does that DEFRA web page stand in law. It also continuously talks about spraying, are the rules the same for the stuff you can apply with a watering can?

PS just for clarification I would not ask an employee to do something I would not, as I would be happy to use the stuff from the garden centre on my own property, I would have no problems in personally using it in work, with regard my own health.

In an odd way my memory that there is an issue here proved to be correct.

Chris

Safetrain at #12 mentions hierarchy of control. If there's sufficient money available, forget the hoes and arrange for the car park and any adjacent surfaces to be covered with concrete or tarmac. This should eliminate the problem by depriving the weeds of having anywhere to take root. Simples as the TV meerkats are wont to say!

Also, with regard to sutherlandb's comment at #15, perhaps there's sufficient demand in the UK for gardening service companies or individuals to start offering covert/undercover/nocturnal weedkilling services. :-)

Local News .....

Man arrested last night for suspicious activities on industrial estate. Individual thought to be on drugs as he claimed he was just doing a bit of weeding and trying to save the bees. Suspicious substance in spray equipment sent to police laboratory for drugs analysis.

News end

How much is a goat ?

Chris

Are pesticides the same as weed killers then?
I thought pesticides killed critters & weed killers killed plants?

If the pesticide being used is approved for use in agriculture, horticulture (including amenity horticulture), forestry, in or near water, or as an industrial herbicide, then a Certificate of Competence is required.

If the product being used is approved for hobby gardeners, and Joe Public, then no Certificate of Competence is required. (Though instruction, COSHH & PPE would be applicable for work situations).

http://www.pesticides.go...Products_-_Section_2.pdf

chris42

If the weeds involved simply grow on land adjacent to the car park rather than in the actual car park surface, why not adopt another approach namely that of regarding them as acceptable plants and not as weeds which need to be eradicated? In the hierarchy of control this would eliminate both the task of killing the weeds and the H&S aspects of whatever methods are used. If the present 'weeds' are considered unattractive, perhaps they could be replaced in due course with more aesthetic ones, preferably ones which are beneficial to bees and butterflies, etc., e.g. Veronica and Buddleia.

The above approach has parallels with the policies of increasing numbers of local authorities and other organisations to make better use of scarce resources and benefit insects and the environment with regard to some of their grassed areas. This consists of abandoning the regular mowing of such areas and encouraging a mixture of grasses and wild flowers to grow on them instead.

p.s. As many BBC journalists and presenters seem to grasp any opportunity to use puns nowadays, I was slightly surprised that the first web article quoted by jfw at #23 didn't have "Pot planted in plant pots!" or similar as its heading. :-)

Graham - You miss understand, I was going to train the goat to spray the weeds :o)

Farmsafety - Thanks for the link to the Gov document, which as you say from the first part of the chart states if it is the stuff you use for hobby gardening then you do not need a licence. Though it was a little unclear if the first chart negated the requirements of the second, or if the rules of the second chart are stand alone regardless of any exemption given by the first.

Yes hand weeding would be more environmentally friendly, but also time consuming, people like everywhere else have many thing to do and sadly chemical is quicker. The weeds are at the base / under the fence so awkward, but not impossible.

If the adverts on the TV are to be believed then it kills the roots and shrivels the plant to nothing ( that's what the weed and feed on my lawn did anyway.


Thanks to everyone for their input, I now only have to decide what I intend to do / recommend.

I have a very vague recollection, but have no evidence to support it, that pesticides approved for home use cannot be used commercially and vice versa unless they have been approved for both uses.

I trust someone can correct me if I am mistaken

Chris

There might be no need to train a goat to spray the weeds. Caprine Clearance Services apparently have a small number of elite goats which are already trained to do such work and don't cost a great deal more to hire than goats which simply eat weeds. The reason for this is that OS&H legislation is only about protecting the health and safety of humans. Therefore, the elite goats don't need to bother with protective clothing and suchlike when using proprietary weedkillers. Just don't tell any animal welfare organisations about their services or ask what happens to them if they become unwell or expire!

Also, for another means of tackling weeds. nobody has yet mentioned LPG-fuelled flame gun devices which seem to be widely available from garden stores, etc. Compared with alternative weedkilling methods such devices might be regarded as entailing a somewhat squanderous use of butane or propane. Also, for an alternative version of a heat/flame device, does anyone know if military flame-throwers ever get sold by Army Surplus Stores? If they are obtainable, I imagine that they would be great fun to use and score top marks for getting the job done far more quickly than other methods. This latter aspect might just outweigh the drawbacks of flamethrowers as regards fuel consumption, environmentally unfriendliness and their capacity to destroy anything else which is combustible and in the vicinity of the weeds, e.g. plastic coating on chain link fencing!

:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

(Multi-smileys added to highlight the fact that the above comments, especially about elite goats and flamethrowers, should be regarded as whimsical. Some forum users think that humour is only allowed on Fridays, even though there's nothing to this effect in the forum rules!)