I live with SuperMouse.
December 5, 2009 3:32 PM Subscribe
i have a question about disposing of rat poison.
i have had some trouble with mice in my kitchen. after a few futile weeks with perpetually empty traps, i bought some warfarin yesterday and followed the package directions. i bought gloves; i sprinkled a little in some disposable plastic dishes and secreted them around. i then went to bed. this morning i woke up and it looks like the mice had a party in here with it. this is probably my fault for not using the right kind of containers, maybe?
anyway, my question is this: what do i with it at the end? i am planning to leave it out for at least a week, but after that i would like to be able to just clean it up quickly, dispose of the dishes, etc. can it be vacuumed? (my vacuum does not have a hepafilter). i don't want to get it all over the broom. trying to get it back into the original box/bag seems icky at best.
any advice would be appreciated. thanks!
i have had some trouble with mice in my kitchen. after a few futile weeks with perpetually empty traps, i bought some warfarin yesterday and followed the package directions. i bought gloves; i sprinkled a little in some disposable plastic dishes and secreted them around. i then went to bed. this morning i woke up and it looks like the mice had a party in here with it. this is probably my fault for not using the right kind of containers, maybe?
anyway, my question is this: what do i with it at the end? i am planning to leave it out for at least a week, but after that i would like to be able to just clean it up quickly, dispose of the dishes, etc. can it be vacuumed? (my vacuum does not have a hepafilter). i don't want to get it all over the broom. trying to get it back into the original box/bag seems icky at best.
any advice would be appreciated. thanks!
Best answer: When I had warfarin dust in the bottom of my closet after mice nibbled packets of poison, I wore latex gloves and used used wet paper towels to clean it up, then immediately took out the trash bag I placed them in. I don't know if that was entirely sufficient, but it got rid of most of the visible dust for the time being, without spreading it around or throwing it up into the air.
I would not suggest using a vacuum cleaner or broom on it, as that stuff will then be in both the vacuum cleaner and the air you're breathing.
posted by limeonaire at 5:42 PM on December 5, 2009
I would not suggest using a vacuum cleaner or broom on it, as that stuff will then be in both the vacuum cleaner and the air you're breathing.
posted by limeonaire at 5:42 PM on December 5, 2009
It looks like D-Con (the most common brand of rat/mouse poison around here) has brodifacoum as the active ingredient. It is a sort of "super-warfarin".
Bad news for you is it does absorb through the skin and also certainly if inhaled as dust or eaten.
Good news is, a woman ingested 1.5 kg (that's a lot!) of rat poison made with brodifacoum and recovered fully (with treatment).
So really, while precautions are always wise when dealing with any toxic substance, encountering a few milligrams--or even a few grams--of bait here and there isn't going to have any effect on you.
The LD50 calculation exogenous did above is about right for brodifacoum, as well--though to be safe you'd probably cut the amount in half (LD50 for brodifacoum seems to be about 0.25 mg/kg for various mammals).
But--keep in mind the LD50 is the amount of the active ingredient ingested. In mouse bait sold to consumers, the active ingredient is only a very, very small percentage of the bait. For consumer products using brodifacoum, it looks like they use something like 0.05% or 0.005% active ingredient, meaning you would have to ingest quite a lot of the bait (like 100 ounces or more) to get 0.05 ounces of active ingredient.
posted by flug at 12:08 AM on December 6, 2009
Bad news for you is it does absorb through the skin and also certainly if inhaled as dust or eaten.
Good news is, a woman ingested 1.5 kg (that's a lot!) of rat poison made with brodifacoum and recovered fully (with treatment).
So really, while precautions are always wise when dealing with any toxic substance, encountering a few milligrams--or even a few grams--of bait here and there isn't going to have any effect on you.
The LD50 calculation exogenous did above is about right for brodifacoum, as well--though to be safe you'd probably cut the amount in half (LD50 for brodifacoum seems to be about 0.25 mg/kg for various mammals).
But--keep in mind the LD50 is the amount of the active ingredient ingested. In mouse bait sold to consumers, the active ingredient is only a very, very small percentage of the bait. For consumer products using brodifacoum, it looks like they use something like 0.05% or 0.005% active ingredient, meaning you would have to ingest quite a lot of the bait (like 100 ounces or more) to get 0.05 ounces of active ingredient.
posted by flug at 12:08 AM on December 6, 2009
Response by poster: well, i'm not really a math person. wet paper towels sounds sensible. thanks, all!
posted by janepanic at 5:20 AM on December 6, 2009
posted by janepanic at 5:20 AM on December 6, 2009
next time use bars. they're warfarin mixed with I guess wax and look like big nasty blue candy bars. work just as well, no mess.
posted by toodleydoodley at 8:17 AM on December 6, 2009
posted by toodleydoodley at 8:17 AM on December 6, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
Without seeing the mess in person, I think I could probably clean up while avoiding inhaling or otherwise taking in that amount, though I would use a dust mask to be safer. FWIW, warfin is a blood thinner.
posted by exogenous at 5:32 PM on December 5, 2009