Word: heptachlor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Meanwhile, the insecticide barrage had been augmented by dieldrin, parathion, heptachlor, malathion and other fearful compounds many times stronger than DDT, all of which the government planned to distribute through the Department of Agriculture for public use and commercial manufacture. "The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became," Carson recalled. "I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important...
...Alabama, perhaps on shiploads of lumber imported from the insects' home territory in South America (the milder-mannered black fire ant had arrived, also from the Southern Hemisphere, in 1918). In the 1950s and early '60s concerned government officials tried to eradicate the insects with such powerful chemicals as heptachlor and mirex. The program was later dubbed "the Vietnam of entomology" for both its destructiveness and its futility. The poisons killed not only their targets but also most other wildlife in the treated areas. By the late '70s the pesticides were banned...