Poisonous Little Balls

Almost every home in Indonesia love to use these little white balls: mothballs. They get rid of moths and give your clothes a nice smell. Little that many people know that these supposedly anti-moth household items are quite dangerous. I love the smell of mothballs like some people like the smell of glue of markers. For some reason it gives me the sensation of brand new clothes. But now I am very wary of them. A couple of days ago, house lizards decided to make my room their hang out place. I like them because they eat mosquitoes, but I don’t like¬ them because they love to use the entire corner of my room as their private lavatory. So I tried to find home remedies to get rid of them. Some involved garlic, onion, and other smelly stuff. I even find weird stuff to use such as Peacock feathers. (Right?) Then I find out that we can use mothballs to get rid of them. Perfect. I can get rid of the pests and enjoy the smell of mothballs in my room. So I spread some under my bed and a ton inside my clothes cabinet. Apparently that’s a concoction for disaster. For the first a couple of hours, I was fine and can only smell a hint of the mothballs odor. I was happy that I don’t see the lizards anymore. Soon enough, the smell became unbearable. I got a headache, and when I took a breath my nose felt really hurt. So I decided to put some of them back inside a plastic bag. Day 2, it didn’t get any better because I didn’t take the ones I put in the cabinet. I thought the cabinet would contain the smell. I was wrong. Same symptoms happened, so I opened my bedroom window and let the air out. The next morning I took them all out from my cabinet. The smell was still there, but at least my headache was gone. When I do a research, I found out that these balls are very poisonous. They contain naphthalene and paradichlorobenzene, which are basically insecticide. Mothballs slowly turn from solids to toxic vapor. So when we inhale, we inhale the insecticide. The only reason why the house lizards don’t come by anymore is that basically they are afraid of the insecticide. Now I know why I have headache and nose pain. I know that our community likes to use this item, especially the old school Indonesian community. Be aware of the danger, because naphthalene doesn’t just evaporate. It transfers to clothes and stay there. Wearing mothballs infused clothes is as dangerous as inhaling them. When I did a deeper research, these chemicals are very dangerous especially for babies and pets. So I would suggest that you start getting rid of them. Even when we throw them out, these chemical compounds are seeping into the ground to our water reservoir system. Here’s a disturbing thought: You are drinking those poisonous urinal cakes you see in the public restrooms. There is no good solution yet of how we can get rid of them properly. I am surprised that so many companies in Indonesia are still mass producing this poison. If you don’t believe me, you are welcome to do a research on your own or do the mothballs experiment like I did. So my final question now, where can I buy peacock feathers around here?