Erythritol, a Non-Nutritive Sweetener, Is a Palatable Ingested Insecticide

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

6 pointsjtc3312 comments

To clarify the headline, the abstract ends in: "Our results demonstrate, for the first time, that erythritol may be used as a novel, environmentally sustainable and human safe approach for insect pest control."

Some casual searching suggests that erythritol may be effective against fire ants as well, e.g. https://academic.oup.com/jee/article-abstract/110/2/593/3063...

That's genuinely incredible, given that the existing strategies involve neurotoxins that we just hope have a minimal impact on humans. My concern however is whether or not this stuff is potentially fatal to some pets or wild animals, for example dogs and xylitol are a BAD mix.

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