Word: paraquat
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Dates: during 1978-1978
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...chemical that most efficiently killed the poppies was an acid known as 2.4-D. The best marijuana spray was a more toxic salt, paraquat, developed by Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries; it is a poison that becomes tasteless, odorless and colorless after it is sprayed on crops. As little as one-tenth of an ounce of paraquat can kill humans who swallow it. Lesser amounts can cause scarring of the lungs, which can lead to an irreversible condition called pulmonary fibrosis. The herbicide can also cause lung hemorrhaging and vomiting...
...peasant growers of the Sierra Madre soon developed a new strategy to combat the herbicides. Paraquat kills in the sun. Its chemistry requires about three days of ultraviolet rays in order to destroy the plants on which it has been sprayed. To save the marijuana, peasants began to rush out and harvest the plants minutes after the helicopters were gone; they put their plants in bags to shield them from the sun. Even though they had been sprayed, the leaves of plants so shielded did not yellow. The plants appeared normal, so the peasants could sell them as if they...
...Illinois Senator Charles Percy, himself no lover of marijuana, began last year to press the Government to investigate just how much contaminated marijuana was circulating in the U.S. Sampling 63 batches confiscated near the U.S.-Mexican border, the National Institute of Drug Abuse detected traces of paraquat in 13. Those findings led Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano to issue a public warning to marijuana smokers a month ago. Said he: "If an individual smokes three to five heavily contaminated marijuana cigarettes each day for several months, irreversible lung damage will result." There was also, he added, a "risk...
That was enough to trigger a widespread panic. Worried marijuana smokers in Urbana, Ill., told a drug counselor that several of them had vomited and passed out after smoking pot. G.D. Searle Laboratories in Skokie, Ill., reported that 39 out of 40 marijuana samples tested had traces of paraquat. "People are running scared," says Dr. Vernon Patch, a Boston drug-abuse expert. "A situation exists which borders on hysteria," agrees the deputy director of the Illinois dangerous-drugs commission, Daniel Behnke...
...Paraquat may cause pulmonary disease, and the only laboratory now available to test for it is in California...