Doug Miller wrote:
In article , Richard Clements wrote:
anyone ever have a problem with Honey locus making them sick? haven't seen
it on any of the lists of toxic woods but yesterday I was pruning and
cutting some down and then I started feeling really sick wondering if it
was some reaction to the wood or something else.

I saved a bunch of the wood, but I'm not really all that interested in
milling it if it's toxic.

You could Google on it, I guess - but it's "locust", not "locus".

Dunno anything about the wood, but the *fruit* is edible - and darn tasty,
actually. Open up the ripe seed pods in the fall; there's a pulp in between
the seeds that's quite sweet (hence the "honey" part of the name). It seems to
me that, if the fruit is edible, it's unlikely for the wood to be toxic... but
I could be wrong. And you could be allergic to it, so maybe eating the fruit
isn't a good idea for you.

By the way... to a deer, honey locust pods are candy. To a deer hunter, a tree
stand, or a blind, overlooking a honey locust grove is a good place to be.

Cattle love the pods, too. Black locust dust is rough on the lungs, but
I've never heard of honey locust doiong a number on anyone. That said,
just about any saw dust is hard on lungs in some manner, and all woods
are listed as carcinogens these days, so precautions are best taken. As
an incidental point, black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is much more
readily found than honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos).

There's also always the possibility the OP has some kind of allergy to
the wood, as you stated.