There really is no better way to work around fixed core bugs than upgrade.

However, if memory serves, the main problems with threads in 5.8.5 was leaking closures. It is possible that my rearranging your code (physically within the source file) to avoid unnecessary closures you might be able to avoid the leaks you are seeing.

The first step is to move all your subroutines to the top of the source file after the use lines, but before you declare any package level variables. Eg: for your demo code, you might do something like this:

use threads;
use threads::shared qw(share);
use Thread::Queue;
use Thread::Semaphore;

sub load_queue {
    my $q       = shift;
    my $loading = shift;

    my $i = 1;
    my $ary = &share( [] );
    while ( my $v = ["this is a test" x 250] ) {

        #        print "$v->[0]\n";
        push @$ary, $v->[0];
        unless ( $i++ % 10000 ) {
            print "$i\n";
            $q->enqueue($ary);
            $ary = &share( [] );
            while ( $q->pending() > 20 ) {    # try not to eat tooo mu
+ch memory
                 select(undef,undef,undef,.1);
            }
        }
    }
    $q->enqueue($ary) if @$ary;
    $$loading = 0;
}

sub type_issues {
    my ( $q, $loading ) = @_;
    #my $DB = IDC::Data->new( bes => 'webdev' );
    print "Type issues\n";
    my $issues;
    while ( ( $issues = $q->dequeue() ) ) {
        print "Got ".@$issues." - ".$q->pending()."\n";
        select(undef,undef,undef,.1);
    }
}


my $q = Thread::Queue->new();
my $loading : shared = 1;
my $threads : shared = 0;

my $thr = threads->create( \&load_queue, $q, \$loading );
$thr->detach();
$|++;

my @threads;
for ( 1 .. 6 ) {
    my $thr = threads->create( \&{type_issues}, $q, \$loading, $thread
+s );
    push @threads, $thr;
}

$_->join() for @threads;
[download]

Note:That makes no attempt to address any of the other issues I mention in my update to my first reply above.