A Word About Spray Suits

Lots of folks wear the basic disposable Tyvek coveralls when applying pesticides. These state that they are not water proof, yet lots of folks use them when applying not just dry pesticide formulations, but wet formulations and even high pressure sprayers.

On Friday, Jerry Moody and I applied some materials for fall control of algae. We don't think they will work, but we wanted to be sure. One thing that some growers are doing is spraying bleach on trees to clean them up. We tried that last year, but with a backpack mistblower. This year we tried it with a high pressure sprayer to see if that will work any better since it didn't work at all last year. I sprayed a 3% solution of bleach on about 30 large trees with a high pressure sprayer, doing a thorough job of coverage. I wore a white tyvek suit.

Well, look at my shirt at the end of the job. My purple shirt was bleached where the zipper on the Tyvek suit was. If it had been a pesticide, I would not have been protected from it.

Take home message? When spraying with a high pressure sprayer, you need something water proof.

We'll let you know in a couple of weeks what kind of algae control we got.

(And I liked that shirt too!)