Word: insects
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Nearly 10% of the U.S. corn crop is treated with aldrin, a highly effective pesticide. Both the manufacturer, Shell 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...
...author does not confine his scientist's eye to a microscope. He takes a much wider view of the world, looking at insect behavior and the possibility of intelligent life in outer space or bird songs and the evolution of language. He also offers a modest proposal for saving ourselves from nuclear self-destruction. He suggests that we program into the computers that aim our intercontinental missiles the instruction not to fire until we have acquired complete information about one living thing. He even offers as a candidate for this honor a protozoan called Myxotricha paradoxa, which lives...
Vinyl chloride is a colorless gas that has been used as a propellant in such popular products as hair, disinfectant and insect sprays. It is also the principal ingredient of polyvinyl chlorides, the plastics that go into a host of familiar products including food wrappers and containers, suitcases, detergent bottles and garbage bags. No one questions vinyl chloride's utility, but a growing number of doctors now suspect its safety. Increasing evidence links vinyl chloride to a crippling bone disease and a rare but invariably fatal form of cancer...
...recovery from root disease. The indoor plant, belonging to a childless couple, had been wilting, yellowing and defoliating. Worse, when its owners-they prefer the term parents-talked to it, the philodendron would not listen. They gave it fertilizer treats, bathed it with the sun lamp and, fearing insect infestation, sponged its leaves with Baby-Wipes dipped in Scotch. Finally, in despair, the philodendrophiles called Karl Robinson's Mother Nature Hospital. At last report, the plant was out of intensive care and listening again...
...BROTHER LOUIE, Stories. Prune of the year: an exercise in torture. Number one for two weeks in August and September. "Makes no difference if you're black or white." Insect-like melody...