The guy I hired to stain my house cleaned his brushes behind my garage where, at some point, I plan to put in a small garden. I guess he chose that spot because my wife couldn't see him doing it. In any case, the question is, will paint thinner completely disipate over time? Will there be a hazardous residue which I should clean up some how?
Cliff
I realise this is an old post, but I am still sorry to hear what happened to you, Cliff. That is truly irresponsible behaviour, but in my experience, there are more workmen with this mindset than not. I hope everything worked out for you. I found this post after googling "paint thinner in grass."
You will not believe what my idiot neighbour did. We share an enclosed courtyard/yard. A couple of ant piles developed out there on the lawn a few days ago. Told him I had a bag of Andro somewhere in the garage and would look for it.
In the meantime, he covered the ant piles with 20 Mule Team Borax, or at least that is what he said it was. It smelt MUCH WORSE than a laundry additive, though, and I do not believe that it was borax he put on the ant piles. Whatever it was, it was much more toxic smelling.
Of course it did not work to kill the ants, and before I could say or do anything else, early yesterday morning he SATURATED the ant piles with Paint Thinner!!! The smell is HORRIBLE. Worse than that, it has killed the grass, and I am sure the soil is poisoned. We have few, if any, beneficial organisms in our soil, but I am sure whatever we may have had in those spots are dead now. If it killed the ants, you know it killed everything else down there, including earthworms.
Please tell me if I am over reacting, but I am VERY upset and have no idea what to do to help the grass and soil, especially this late in the season. I told him we could have lived with the ants for a few days until I either found the Andro or we bought another bag of Andro. I cannot believe he did this to our lawn!!!
Summer before last we had some workmen here who disposed of some sort of chemical on our lawn, and it ended up killing a long, wide swath of grass. It took us the entire spring and summer of 2014 to get the grass to grow back.
I am so upset. The smell is so bad, so headache inducing that I cannot stand to sit outside---the odour is THAT noxious and strong---it could probably kill a bird if came too close---, and I am worried that those chemicals could get onto my dog's paws and damage them. Worse, if she licked her paws it could make her VERY sick at the very least and possibly kill her at the worst.
Please, if you know anything that would help, please let me know! I am not even sure how serious this is. How could ANYONE be this stupid?!! The man is 74 years old, not a kid of 9 or 10. I am so disgusted right now.