Just in case you have ants:
contributed by Jan Jensen of WELLthy
Choices
From the June 2006 Idaho Observer:
Aspartame - The Worlds Best Ant Poison
We live in the woods and carpenter ants are a huge problem. We have
spent
thousands of dollars with Orkin and on ant poisons trying to keep
them
under control but nothing has helped.
So when I read somewhere that aspartame (Nutrasweet) was actually
developed as an ant poison and only changed to being considered
non-poisonous after it was realized that a lot more money could be
made on
it as a sweetener than as an ant poison, I decided to give it a
try.
I opened two packets of aspartame sweetener, and dumped one in a
corner of
each of our bathrooms. That was about 2 years ago and I have not
seen any
carpenter ants for about 9 to 12 months. It works better than the
most deadly
poisons I have tried. Any time they show up again, simply dump
another
package of Nutrasweet in a corner, and they will be gone for a year
or so again.
Since posting this information I have had many people tell me of
their
success solving ant problems with this substance, when nothing else
worked.
We found later that small black ants would not eat the aspartame.
It was
determined that if you mixed it with apple juice, they would
quickly take
it back to the nest, and all would be dead within 24 hours,
usually. I have found
that sometimes it will kill them, and sometimes it does not. Not
sure why,
may be slightly different species of ants or something.
Fire Ants: We got our first fire ant hill about 2 weeks ago. Poison
did
not work. We tried aspartame and the ants ignored it until we got a
light
rain. It was just a sprinkle, enough to moisten the Nutrasweet and
ground, but
not enough to wash it away. They went crazy, hundreds of them
grabbing it
and taking it back into the mound. When I kicked the mound 2 days
later, there
was no sign of the fire ants. I even dug the mound up some, and
still saw
none of them.
How does it Work: Aspartame is a neuro-poison. It most likely kills
the
ants by interfering with their nervous system. It could be direct,
like
stopping their heart, or something more subtle like killing their
sense of taste so
they can't figure out what is eatable, or smell, so they can't
follow their trails, or
mis-identify their colonies members,
so they start fighting each other. Not sure
what causes them to end up dying,
just know that for many species of ants it
will kill them quickly and
effectively.
As with any poison I recommend wearing gloves and washing any skin
areas
that come in contact with this poison, and avoid getting it in your
mouth,
despite anything the labeling may indicate.
I suspect it will work for other insects such as yellow jackets as
well, but have
not tested that yet.
More information on this fantastic poison can be found at:
www.dorway.com
Health-Report Comment
Well I for one can certainly say that
aspartame was proved toxic as far as I am concerned when in my
ignorance I used it for several months. However, one must take many
of the things we read on the Internet with grain of salt. There is a
lot of junk science out there, just like there are quacks who will
write anything about health with little or no knowledge of what they
are writing about. Much of the information on the net is factual and
good, whether it comes from proper science based studies or is
reported by people who have their own stories to tell. Anecdotal
evidence can often be colored by the writers own emotionalism but
that's not to say what they are reporting is incorrect, not by a
long shot. But somewhere in between lies the truth.
Here at the
www.health-report.co.uk
website we try to report on things as we see them. The above article
is probably fictitious and should be taken with a grain of salt
perhaps. Then again who's to say that aspartame doesn't kill ants?
Just maybe if you try it for yourself you will be able to prove or
disprove what has been written above.
Geoff Goldie
www.health-report.co.uk
Stem Cell Research Breakthrough