Personally I'd repackage the copper sulfate in a bottle with a label that says "Root killer, contains copper sulfate", so it wouldn't have the
original, dreadful warning label on it. If you feel really guilty about that, you could add a printout of the MSDS from somewhere. The worst that
could happen is that they would confiscate it at the airport. Or else I'd mail everything.
Warning labels are usually exaggerated, in my experience. I have a bottle of sodium chloride from Sargent-Welch, which says, in case of contact with
skin flush with water for 15 minutes and contact poison control immediately. Obviously they looked over the chemicals they were selling, wrote out a
warning label for the worst of them, and then decided to put the same label on all the chemicals. Don't have to worry about getting sued that way,
you know.
One of the ways the warnings are exaggerated is that they apply to industrial situations, where one might have skin contact or breathe the dust of
some chemical over a long period of time, or they give the consequences of consuming huge amounts of the chemical, things that are unlikely to happen
to occasional users (including home chemists). The typical MSDS has the same problem. For example, I believe it will kill you if you eat a kilogram
of sodium chloride, so should we put dreadful warnings on every salt shaker? |
