Word: paraquat
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...Paraquat spraying in Georgia puts the DEA under fire
...over the horizon of Georgia's Chattahoochee National Forest, technicians on board directed the aerial spraying of selected plots of illicit greenery. Camera crews dutifully recorded the 20-min. operation. It was, said the Drug Enforcement Administration proudly, the first-ever aerial use of the potent weed killer paraquat on domestic marijuana fields. A White House spokesman hinted that similar airborne anti-pot hits might be staged this year in as many as 39 other states...
...Mikuriya was especially critical of the involvement of the federal government in poisoning marijuana--and American citizens--with the herbicide paraquat. Instead he recommended limiting the government to regulating "the purity and freedom from contaminants, which is an appropriate function of government...
Scott Wilson of Boca Raton, Fla. , was "as close to being dead as he could be without being dead," according to Surgeon Frank Veith of Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. Wilson, 25, a landscaper and father of four, was spraying weeds with the herbicide paraquat on Aug. 30, when the equipment apparently malfunctioned and he accidentally inhaled the toxic chemical. Paraquat lodges in the muscle tissue and travels in the blood to the lungs, where it does continual damage as long as it remains in the body. After steadily declining in a Florida hospital, Wilson was transferred...
...such operations implants of which were performed by Veith at Montefiore), but only in the past few years, with the introduction of cyclosporine, a drug that helps prevent the rejection of foreign tissue, have patients survived more than a year. At present the only survivor besides Wilson is another paraquat victim, who had two lungs transplanted in separate operations several weeks ago in Toronto. One limiting factor for lung transplants is the lack of suitable donors. Wilson, however, was lucky. The lungs of Thomas Riso, 19, an auto-accident victim who matched Wilson in size and blood type, became available...