Word: parathion
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...greatest threat to farmworkers, however, is the use of harmful pesticides on grapes. Table grapes use such cosmetic pesticides such as Captan, Methyl Bromide, and Parathion because of the grapes thin and fragile skin. According to a report by the U.S. General Accounting office, many of these pesticides cannot be washed off and one-third of them are considered carcinogenic. The EPA reports that 300,000 farmworkers every year receive pesticide poisoning...
That, alas, is precisely the problem. Now roughly a century after that flight of poetic fancy, clover and, indeed, a host of other crops have been laced with a chemical pesticide that may threaten the blissful honeybee with extinction. The culprit is methyl parathion, which has been used to combat pests like the boll weevil, scourge of the cotton fields. But methyl parathion is highly dangerous stuff. Only a dab will penetrate the skin, attack the nervous system and kill humans as well as insects...
...success prompted the introduction after World War II of a host of similar chlorine derivatives, including chlordane, heptachlor, aldrin, dieldrin, toxaphene and endrin. Wartime research on nerve gases also led to the development of a whole family of phosphorus-based insecticides, such as parathion, malathion and dimethoate, which, unlike DDT and other chlorine-based compounds, tended to break down more quickly into innocuous substances in the soil...
...where malaria is a problem; and use on onions, green peppers and sweet potatoes in certain areas that are particularly vulnerable to pests). The ban will not go into effect until the end of the year, allowing time to train farmers in using DOT'S chief substitute, methyl parathion, which is highly toxic but breaks down soon after being used...
...brief period after DDT was first put to use In 1945, the pasture mosquito seemed under control in California. But within seven years, the insects had become so resistant to the new chemical that researchers had to develop another organic compound, ethyl parathion. That failed in 1961-as did methyl parathion in 1963, and fenthion in 1968. Today, California has no chemical able to kill the pasture mosquito in safe dosages...