Word: dieldrin
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...Chemical, and the Department of Agriculture consider the substance essential to control insect damage in the Midwest corn belt. Recently, after a year of still-unfinished hearings, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it plans to order a halt in the production of aldrin and a related Shell pesticide, dieldrin. Reason: the chemicals present "extremely high cancer risk...
After it is applied, aldrin gradually breaks down into dieldrin, a durable chlorinated hydrocarbon; the pesticide is long-lasting and requires only one application per year. That makes it more popular with farmers than shorter-lived, less potent pesticides that must be used more often and only at specific stages of the corn plants' growth. Dieldrin's impressive durability, says the EPA, is the very quality that makes it an increasingly serious threat...
From cornstalks and from soybeans raised in fields previously treated with the chemical, dieldrin finds its way into animal feed. Then, because it is readily retained in fatty tissues, it accumulates and becomes concentrated in farm animals. Millions of chickens had to be destroyed last March in Mississippi because their feed had been contaminated with dieldrin. The chemical also washes into rivers and lakes and is ingested by fish. In fact, dieldrin is now found in nearly every edible product in the supermarket. A 1973 market-basket sampling by the Food and Drug Administration shows 96% of meat, fish...
...disputes the fact that by now most Americans have a significant amount of dieldrin in their bodies, but there is still debate about whether the levels are sufficient to cause cancer. Mice given food with levels of dieldrin similar to those in human foods have developed cancer, especially of the liver. Shell says that there is no evidence that those results apply to humans; the EPA insists that dieldrin has "unreasonable and adverse effects on man." In addition to the cancer risk, says EPA Administrator Russell Train, dieldrin has been found to hamper reproduction in birds and to cause birth...
...alone. This spring he found only 300. Why? Scharf partly blames dune-buggy drivers who careen through nesting grounds, plus harmful human discards like pop-top beer-can rings, which can injure hungry gulls. But the chief reason is heavy use of chlorinated hydrocarbons: DDT and its chemical cousins, dieldrin and chlordane...