While searching for an article in my pile of reprints, I recently stumbled
upon the original 1967 article by HH Thornberry advocating TSP as a viricide.
It is apparent that his background as a Plant Pathologist did not serve him
well as a Chemical or Biochemical expert. He shows no awareness that the
short term effect of exposure to the alkalinity [pH 12] of TSP is to DENATURE
protein rather than to hydrolyze it. He does compare the alkalinity of TSP to
its equivalent in sodium hydroxide [common lye] but doesn't calculate out
that saturated TSP [ca. 1 M, 165g/L] is therefore the equivalent of 0.01M lye,
or 0.4 g/L When he characterizes TSP as "cheap," he doesn't compare it to the
cost of 0.4g/L of lye, which is two orders of magnitude cheaper. He
conjectures that the sap on the cutting instrument could dilute a lye solution
significantly enough to lower its pH, but how many dippings would it take to
transfer, say 1/10 of a quart of plant sap, to a liter of .01M lye solution?
Thornberry does acknowledge the viricidal effectiveness of chlorine but makes no
attempt to determine the viricidal effectiveness of TSP experimentally, nor
compare it quantitatively to chlorine. He also advocates the effectiveness of
milk [!] as a disinfectant, but few of us would place our hopes on milk
where it really mattered, as in protecting a prize plant against virus.
The alarming aspect of this cautionary tale is the willingness of many
old timers to place their blind trust in poorly documented sources, even
advocating it to beginners as gospel, when the literature abounds with studies
of simpler and more effective alternatives.
With regard to Spellcheck and typos, it can be treacherous. When a
document contains proper names or abbreviations not in its lexicon, it often
suggests a close entry that is. If a number of corrections are made in a given
email it will not be transmitted without a recheck. I often regard this
rechecking as perfunctory, having just completed the checking procedure, and I
simply keep clicking the "ignore" option. Spellcheck is relentless and again
attempts to reinsert its own preferences during the recheck, e.g., Scully could
become Sully. That is how, on occasions, I have been embarrassed in
misspelling the names of correspondents, who could suspect simple carelessness as
the culprit. Bert Pressman
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