Smoking a strimmer can damage your health
Grandad August 15th, 2010
I decided to do some strimming yesterday.
The old estate is getting a little out of hand and the only way to tame it is a show of brute force. I do my gardening with slash-hooks, chain saws and strimmers.
My strimmer isn’t one of those pansy ones that plugs in. No. It is an honest-to-God power yoke with a two-stroke engine. I think I may have overdone the oil to petrol mix a tad as it can be quite smoky. It was a calm day, so when I fired up the strimmer, I disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke which enveloped me for the hour or so I was out there.
For hours after I finished, I could taste the burnt oil. I realised at that point that not only had I been breathing burning oil for an hour or so, but I must have indulged in a massive dose of carbon monoxide, not to mention a lethal dose of other toxins, poisons and carcinogens. I would hazard a guess that an hour of that cocktail would be equivalent to smoking around a thousand cigarettes?
So where is the health warning? Where is ASH when you need ‘em? Why isn’t the State looking after my health?
“Strimming can cause a painful death”
“Strimming can lower your sperm count”
“Want to quit strimming? Contact your doctor or pharmacist”
The Nanny State are missing out on a nice little niche market here. I don’t know how they missed it.
Strimming may not be addictive [unless you are a very strange person], but it is highly contagious. I have noticed in the past that whenever I start, I am the one to shatter the peace and quiet of the countryside. By the time I have finished though, there are usually three or four strimmers, chainsaws or other two-strokes running in the neighbourhood.
The thing that concerns me most is that strimming may lead to harder drugs.
Like four-strokes?
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