Leftwood said:As of 10-15 years ago, there was a "better" form of 2,4-D that was/is no longer available to homeowners, only professionals. I don't know, perhaps even now it is not available at all(?).
2,4-D was last reviewed by the EPA in 2005 and has been in common use since under a variety of brand names. In 2014 Dow introduced a 2,4-D salt of choline (commonly called 2,4-D choline) under the Enlist brand specifically to allow it to be mixed with glyphosate and to reduce drift. To the best of my my knowledge this weed killer is only available to professional growers, not so much because the EPA restricts its use but because Corteva (the spun off agricultural unit of DowDuPont, talk about stupid ideas) doesn't want to deal with the fuss of selling to private customers.
2,4-D was mixed with 2,4,5-T to produce the infamous Agent Orange "rainbow herbicide", often with the addition of jet fuel to improve flow through the nozzles of the equipment used in Ranch Hand. 2,4,5-T is really nasty stuff due to trace presence of TDCC (a very potent carcinogenic) and has been completely banned in the US since 1985.
The "problem" with straight 2,4,5-T (Agent Pink) is it won't properly work on rice: rice is one of the toughest crops since it's almost impossible to completely destroy, like the British Army found out in Malaysia. This led to a quest for a more powerful herbicide that could quickly kill rice. The original solution was Agent Blue (Cacodylic acid, sold in the days under the Phytar brand name), but this was found to be expensive, problematic to deliver by air and always in short supply since Ansul had limited manufacturing capacity.
The solution was Agent Orange.
