ragwort I have had it with the myths

It's a crusade for world domination, to force everyone to love ragwort :D
"You MUST LOVE RAGWORT or You vill DIE ! " :D:D:D:D:D

On here - http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/forums/environment-forum/42571-ragwort-hysteria.html
They are even comparing ragwort poisoning to Equine Grass Sickness !
One person states - "The do not remove the grass which is statistically more of a risk to horses though Equine Grass Sickness which is commoner than ragwort poisoning!". WELL, I'm sorry but if these people are Entomologists as some claim to be, they would KNOW that "grass sickness" isn't caused by the grass :rolleyes:, but then, THEY are right and the rest of the world is wrong :rolleyes::D.

As for hysteria, WHO is it that is spreading childish little stories all over the internet ? NOT us :p. It is THEY who are HYSTERICAL, just look at their manner of posting their opinions. :D
 
Did I get it right. Do they really beleive that the cinnabar Moth is declining because there has been so much habitat loss that sometimes there are metres between plants? I have to say that if the poor little moths can't survive on the vast amount of ragwort that is on the field margins & verges around here they deserve to die.
Funnily enough out hacking yesterday we went through a huge area (about 200 acres) that a local farmer keeps as a nature area. It's unmanaged apart from planting new trees, putting up nest boxes etc - no grazing at all. We rode the length of the area & didn't see one ragwort depite the grass being quite thin & poor. How unfair is that. I would be quite happy to see ragwort thriving there as it's well away from any grazing at all. My lawn - thick & lush - has sprouted 3 ragworts. I've been here 11 years & have no idea where they have come from if the seeds really never spread more than a few yards. As my next door neighbours paddocks are just yards away I will be bringing home my ragfork tonight to erradicate it.
 
rhino said:
Lord knows why, I suppose it's an alternative to self flagellation, but I'm still trying to make some sense of what is going on here.

Where is your research then? Why is it not included in your references? :confused: Surely if there had been any studies which back up your opinion, you would be happy to list them on your site? Haven't there been any further studies?

This is such a non event, scientifically :confused: One study, carried out in 1982 on a few rats...
Click to expand...

Rhino,

I looked at the list of references on the site a little while ago and came to the conclusion, like you, that although Esther and Co keep going on about 'their research', what they actually mean is their 'review of the literature', because as far as I can see there are no original research papers from any Dutch authors later than 2000 (correct me if I am wrong). So 'they' don't have any 'research', at least in the scientific sense.

I also came to the same conclusion about the skin absorption aspect - work done on rats in 1982 and no other papers cited on the subject. To say, categorically, that there is no risk if pulling with bare hands, isn't perhaps best practice based solely on this paper (that there is only one paper on the subject also shows how much interest there is in this field!). Certainly the rat study indicates there is no great risk, but if they are going to be so vehement about this safety aspect, perhaps they should ask their real scientist friends to do a controlled human study and see what they find. I'm sure all of their friends would volunteer to be guinea pigs......

Actually, I'm not madly worried about the skin absortion aspect, but then I'm not pulling loads of ragwort. If I was, I would wear gloves anyway.
 
On a practical note:

*whispers, in case Esther hears*

Natural England is the only authority licensed to deal with ragwort control under the Weeds Act (not the council).

At this time of year the number of calls NE receive about ragwort increase massively as the plants start to come into flower and become more visible and therefore identifiable.

Calls include those from complainants concerned about the spread of ragwort from neighbouring properties.

NE will only get involved if the person lodging the complaint has made every reasonable effort to resolve the problem themselves. So the complainant has to have contacted the ragwort offender personally to explain the problem, and how it is adversely affecting their land/grazing/hay crop or whatever.

The above may seem an obvious point, but, of the many calls NE get about ragwort in a year, they can only act on a small percentage of complaints. This is in part because it turns out that callers haven't, won't or can't (for whatever reason) try to resolve the issue themselves with direct communication. There are also other criteria to meet before NE will act on complaints.

NE are as financially stretched at the moment as any other agency or organisation and, to send out a field adviser to every call and complaint about ragwort control would obviously be expensive.

So if anyone is having control problems, talk to the other party first about it before taking it any further (although this is obviously not always easy).
 
Last edited:
pootleperkin said:
I also came to the same conclusion about the skin absorption aspect - work done on rats in 1982 and no other papers cited on the subject. To say, categorically, that there is no risk if pulling with bare hands, isn't perhaps best practice based solely on this paper (that there is only one paper on the subject also shows how much interest there is in this field!). Certainly the rat study indicates there is no great risk, but if they are going to be so vehement about this safety aspect, perhaps they should ask their real scientist friends to do a controlled human study and see what they find. I'm sure all of their friends would volunteer to be guinea pigs......
Click to expand...

I'd be interested to know how one can draw any conclusions from a comparison with rats. After all, rats eat all sorts of things that would make us throw up! And there is no WAY you can get rats to pull ragwort up with their feet - sweaty hands, perhaps some light abrasion from the stalky stems, would pre-dispose to absorption in humans.
 
I've been keeping track of this thread and wisdom says keep out of it but my alalytics brain says the following.
1. There is only one conclusive way to establish the level of skin absorption of ragworth and I can't see many human volunteers coming forward. Therefore erring on the side of caution seems wise. Wear gloves /wash hands.
The rat tests results I found involved comfrey.

2. Casual observation of any field with ragworth growing in and animals grazing shows that they do indeed not eat it while it is growing. BUT if it's left to seed it invades all adjacent land. So sensible precaution..pull it before it seeds because although larger plants can be avoided smaller seedlings would be harder for the animal to spot.


I've had a huge problem with ragworth in my garden because it's a new development on ex farmland. In the past few years the amount of it growing around here has exploded both in fields and roadsides. Each year I pull it and poison it but it's back again the next year. Im pretty sure that eradicating this plant is impossible so the moth can rest easy. Oddly I've also not seen any moths this year. I used to leave a ragworth plant growing for them at my old house and it used to be covered in caterpillars.
 
pootleperkin said:
I also came to the same conclusion about the skin absorption aspect - work done on rats in 1982 and no other papers cited on the subject. To say, categorically, that there is no risk if pulling with bare hands, isn't perhaps best practice based solely on this paper (that there is only one paper on the subject also shows how much interest there is in this field!). Certainly the rat study indicates there is no great risk, but if they are going to be so vehement about this safety aspect, perhaps they should ask their real scientist friends to do a controlled human study and see what they find. I'm sure all of their friends would volunteer to be guinea pigs......
Click to expand...

maybe you didn't see it... but the answer is quite simple if you know a little about this pyrrolizidine alkaloids

As long as the plant has not been eaten the pyrrolizidine alkaloids are in a N-oxide form and are not poisonous. When the plant is eaten they are transformed, mostly in the small intestine, into free alkaloids that are poisonous and that will damage the liver.

Now please... can at least ONE of you explain to me how it will be poisonous when comming trough your skin and thus NOT passing your intestine/stomic ?
 
Nick Altena said:
Now please... can at least ONE of you explain to me how it will be poisonous when comming trough your skin and thus NOT passing your intestine/stomic ?
Click to expand...

And where does it end up?? And what if you are allergic to sesquiterpine lactones?

Pulling small quantities of ragwort by hand is probably harmless to MOST people. Pulling large quantities could be a different matter. Until some substantive research is available, I'd prefer to be careful given I have had symptoms of poisoning as a result. Of course, I may have been ill for a totally unrelated reason at the 'right' time - but I'm not a strong believer in that sort of co-incidence!
 
Nick Altena said:
maybe you didn't see it... but the answer is quite simple .......

Now please... can at least ONE of you explain to me how it will be poisonous when comming trough your skin and thus NOT passing your intestine/stomic ?
Click to expand...

How right you are, the answer is indeed simple, and I'd suggest that as you're so convinced that you're right, why not offer yourself up as a guinea-pig, with correctly monitored and conducted tests, to have a daily skin application applied, and then when the adjudicating scientists (and NO, that doesn't include your lot), are satisfied that you've had sufficient exposure, then the relevant blood tests can be done. Sorted. ;)

Alec.

Edited to add; I'd also, with respect, suggest that you all wake up to the fact that we have a near perfect environment for your favourite moth, they are none-the-less in decline, and the truth of the matter is, that we couldn't give a stuff! a.
 
Last edited:
It seems our friends are busy in spreading ragwort 'facts' everywhere on the net. Not content with censoring adverts for ragwort control in the UK, they have contributed to the wilkipedia information on the noxious weed too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobaea_vulgaris

Anyone interested can rate the information as biased or untrustworthy at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, as scientific research is listed alongside less reputable sources, the article becomes very subjective.


Anyone wondering why they continually give out links instead of answering direct questions will discover that a click boosts their google ratings from obscurity and gets them on the first page for anything to do with the weed.

Incidentally the plant is also known as Stinking Willie and Mare's fart by country folk.
 
Nick Altena said:
maybe you didn't see it... but the answer is quite simple if you know a little about this pyrrolizidine alkaloids

As long as the plant has not been eaten the pyrrolizidine alkaloids are in a N-oxide form and are not poisonous. When the plant is eaten they are transformed, mostly in the small intestine, into free alkaloids that are poisonous and that will damage the liver.

Now please... can at least ONE of you explain to me how it will be poisonous when comming trough your skin and thus NOT passing your intestine/stomic ?
Click to expand...


Nick, skin is the body's largest organ and rather well supplied with blood. Lots of drugs are dangerous/fatal if absorbed through the skin. How do think nicotine patches, suppositories, antiinflammatory gels work? None of them go via the gut. I have to handle potassium bromide on a daily basis and am supposed to wear gloves. I don't and for the first few months suffered from an unusual number of muscle twitches. A side effect of bromide is, oh yes, muscular twitching.

There is no danger of the cinnebar moth declining. There is more than enough ragwort on old rubbish tips, mine waste dumps, abandoned industrial sites, to feed the caterpillars. There is plenty of such space. We just don't want ragwort growing in our pasture, that's all. I'm willing to bet your fellow Netherlanders don't let weeds grow amongst their tulips, and clear them out.
 
The primary poisons in ragwort are jacobine and seneciphylline.
This link - http://www.chemicaldictionary.org/dic/S/Seneciphylline_293.html
gives you the chemical composition of seneciphylline.
The information in the link is based on seneciphylline in powder form, as it would be used in a laboratory environment.
Please read this information and decide for yourself as to whether or not you choose to handle ragwort without using any form of protection.
Bear in mind that the powdered form of seneciphylline will have been extracted from plants of the genus Senecio.
I certainly WILL NOT be handling ragwort without wearing protective gloves.

Here is a link to the Merck Veterinary Manual, giving information on Pyrrolizidine Alkaloidosis (Seneciosis, Senecio Poisoning, Ragwort Toxicity)
http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/212800.htm.
 
Nick Altena said:
maybe you didn't see it... but the answer is quite simple if you know a little about this pyrrolizidine alkaloids
Click to expand...

I think that's the problem Nick. You know a little about pyrrolizidine alkaloids and think that you know a lot.


Nick Altena said:
As long as the plant has not been eaten the pyrrolizidine alkaloids are in a N-oxide form and are not poisonous. When the plant is eaten they are transformed, mostly in the small intestine, into free alkaloids that are poisonous and that will damage the liver.
Click to expand...

"mostly in the small intestine"? Where else?

Nick Altena said:
Now please... can at least ONE of you explain to me how it will be poisonous when comming trough your skin and thus NOT passing your intestine/stomic ?
Click to expand...

Can you please point me to the research you have done which shows that pyrrolizidine alkaloids cannot be absorbed via the skin into the blood and then converted in the blood or in a receiving cell into poisonous free alkaloids?

Until you have such research you have no idea whether ragwort poisoning via the skin is possible or not, and until such time it would be wise for anyone handling ragwort in volume to wear gloves.
 
Last edited:
Nick Altena said:
maybe you didn't see it... but the answer is quite simple if you know a little about this pyrrolizidine alkaloids

As long as the plant has not been eaten the pyrrolizidine alkaloids are in a N-oxide form and are not poisonous. When the plant is eaten they are transformed, mostly in the small intestine, into free alkaloids that are poisonous and that will damage the liver.

Now please... can at least ONE of you explain to me how it will be poisonous when comming trough your skin and thus NOT passing your intestine/stomic ?
Click to expand...

Nick, I didn't say that it can be absorbed through the skin, nor did I talk about the poisoning pathway. I freely admit I know little about these alkaloids. I know a little about scientific practice and critique and that is what I was concerned with. I was criticising the fact that evidence you are basing your argument upon is perhaps not definitive enough for you to provide such definitive advice.

What I said was that the only work that you guys cite on the subject was carried out solely on rats and that it wouldn't be best practice to categorically state that you could transpose or extrapolate these results directly to humans. If we could do that, then commercial drug trials for example, would never have to go through tertiary stage testing before appearing on the market. This is where things get sticky, as if you say categorically that something can't happen, then it does, then you get into trouble.

You are basing your hypothesis upon the belief that the rat and human metabolic systems are identical - certainly they are similar or else we wouldn't use them so regularly as a biological model. In this case, although the paper suggests that the risk is very low (and I accept that - no argument) they do find that a small amount was absorbed through the skin of the rat, so you cannot, definitively, say isn't absorbed from this study alone. This is the pubmed abstract of the rat paper: just to note, it doesn't say what the population sample size was either, so I have no idea how powerful or robust the study is.

*********************************
Experientia. 1982 Sep 15;38(9):1085-7.
Pyrrolizidine alkaloids from Symphytum officinale L. and their percutaneous absorption in rats.
Brauchli J, Lüthy J, Zweifel U, Schlatter C.
Abstract

An analysis of a commercial sample of Symphyti radix originating from Poland with a total alkaloid content of 0.07% revealed the presence of 7 pyrrolizidine alkaloid-N-oxides: 7-acetyl intermedine, 7-acetyl lycopsamine as the main constituents and lycopsamine, intermedine, symphytine and traces of 2 further not yet identified alkaloids. The percutaneous absorption of these alkaloids was investigated in rats, using a crude alcoholic extract of the plant corresponding to a dose of 194 mg alkaloid-N-oxides/kg b.wt. The excretion of N-oxides in the urine during 2 days was in the range of 0.1-0.4% of the dose. The dermally absorbed N-oxides are not or only to a small extent converted to the free alkaloids in the organism. The oral application led to a 20-50 times higher excretion of N-oxides and free alkaloids in the urine.

********************************************
So in this study, in rats, 0.1 - 0.4% of the alkaloid dose was excreted in the urine. This is a very small amount, but the authors cannot say that none of the dose was converted to free alkaloids in the organism via the skin. It is very evident that the oral admin. produces a significantly higher level of excretion.

Look, I agree with you, on the evidence of this single study, the risk looks very low, but you have to understand that you cannot be so definitive in your findings, particularly when transposing from one species to another. Ideally in pharmo research, you would do the same study on at least one other, non-rodent species, if you are to effectively extrapolate to humans.

I should add that I have no idea how relevant the dose that was given in this study would be in comparison to exposure in the real world. Also, I'm not a biochemist, so I have no idea on other pathways that could led to the production of the free alkaloids in humans.
 
PS - Rhino, I know you already went through this abstract, but it looks as if some people didn't notice ;)

Oh, and like you, I couldn't find any other or more recent studies on alkaloid skin absorption either......
 
Last edited:
JanetGeorge said:
.......

....... We don't tell YOU how to stick your finger in a dyke!
Click to expand...

Mrs B said:
*quietly opens a book with self to take bets on whether Alec will be able to resist a comment when/if he reads the last line of JG's post... :D*
Click to expand...

Hardly a subject upon which I feel qualified to comment, having lived a sheltered life. ;) And anyway, I'd only offend some one. :D

Alec.
 
fatpiggy said:
.......

I'm willing to bet your fellow Netherlanders don't let weeds grow amongst their tulips, and clear them out.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a point, if your that bloody keen on the horrible weed, plant it amongst your tulips. With luck you'll have cornered the market in both Ragwort and Cinnabar moths. ;)

Alec.
 
So, we seem to have estblished that the 'myth' they've had enough of is it's absorbable through the skin? Yes?

Frankly honest: I don't care?!

I have not conclusively proved that it IS poisonous thorugh the skin absorbtion.
You have not conclusively proved it ISN'T poisionous skin absorbtion.

Therefore the responsible advice would be 'wear gloves just in case'........... I still fail to see how that's a 'hysterical over-reaction' piece of advice!? And therefore they whole point of this thread?!
 
It's the fact that they use the word 'hysterical' all the time that has kept me wasting my time on this thread! Highly annoying!

Just a ridiculous thing to say - if folk were less provocative, they might find that people take their thoughts more seriously.
 
Wow. That's a couple of hours of my life that I'll never get back and all I have learned is that the two Dutch ragwort enthusiasts seem to have a very flimsy grasp of what 'panic' and 'hysteria' actually mean. Possibly the most bizarre thread I've ever read on here. :confused::confused:
 
I just thought I'd mention that I dug a couple of bits of ragwort out of our field today <cue evil laughter> I was going to video it & send to to Holland but I simply couldn't be arsed. Instead I revelled in the delight of seeing the evil weed burn in petrol fuelled flames of delight at the end of the garden when I got home :D
 
I know personally of one horse who died due to ragwort poisoning. Horses will eat grass out of preference but in the UK ragwort is a major problem as it is spread by the motoway verges, set aside and morons who decide not to treat their fields.
 
??????????? - think every responsible horse owner knkows what they must do to ensure their horses safe welfare. This is not a report but information for BHS members who feel that there is a horse or horses not being properly cared for.

No matter how concientous you are aboout removing ragwort it is a stubborn determined weed to control.

To be honest Esther can you not go and bug a Dutch web site and leave UK horse owners to fight the battle of the ragwort themselves.
 
*sigh* It had been so nicely quiet for a while too...

Some people don't take responsibility for their health or even their children... Why should pasture management be any different...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top