Word: malathion
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...Northern California the biological clock was ticking away. As helicopters began spraying the insecticide Malathion on infested areas just south of San Francisco, they were racing against the marvelous reproductive capacities of the tiny Mediterranean fruit fly: a mature female can produce 1,000 eggs over its two-month life span. Last week alone, the targeted area expanded from 120 to 140 to 180 sq. mi. and fears mounted that the fly was about to break out of the Bay Area and move into the lush farm lands of the San Joaquin Valley. The long-range worry: a federal quarantine...
...bombarded with information on the safety of the chemical, which according to state lexicologists is only one twenty-fifth as toxic as the pesticide used in flea collars. Brown's fears notwithstanding, state officials said it was safer to spray from the air than the ground. Reason: the Malathion is mixed with molasses, sugar and yeast and falls in coffee-graint-size droplets that cannot be easily inhaled. B.T. Collins, 40, director of the California Conservation Corps, gave the most dramatic demonstration of its safety: he drank a glassful of Malathion diluted with water to the concentration used...
...spraying was all but imperceptible, a fact that frustrated would-be demonstrators. Two protesters keeping a vigil in Palo Alto heard a helicopter overhead but could find no trace of Malathion. "I don't see how it will work," admitted Patrick Long, 29, who held a black umbrella over his head for symbolic effect. "I don't see how the flies can find...
California's farmers argue that there is only one way the state can end the Medfly explosion: by bombarding infested areas from the air with a pesticide, Malathion. President Reagan's Agriculture Secretary, John Block, agrees, and his department threatened to quarantine all California produce susceptible to infestation unless aerial spraying was immediately approved. But residents of fly-plagued Santa Clara County, which includes the high-income communities of Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco, have vehemently opposed that approach. Noting that Malathion is suspected by some scientists of causing cancer and birth defects, they raised protest placards...
Keohan said B&G has used malathion for more than ten years. The pesticide has been used more extensively since the government banned DDI eight years ago, he added