Word: parathion
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Planting Fish. What could be done to clean up the mess? The mosquito abatement district switched from the persistent DDD to methyl parathion, a chemical that is effective against gnats but that deteriorates and becomes harmless in a short time. At the same time, the district hired a team of scientists from the University of California at Davis to find a way to control the gnats biologically. Led by Entomologist Sherburne F. Cook Jr., the team decided that a small fresh-water smelt, the Mississippi silverside, might find the gnats appetizing. In 1967 they "planted" 3,000 fingerlings...
Pesticides such as DDT, parathion, aldrin and dieldrin are both ally and enemy to man. The chemicals annihilate predators: the aphids that plague rose fanciers, disease-bearing mosquitoes, beetles that spread Dutch elm disease, in sects that devour crops. As a farmer's helper, pesticides increase crop yields, hence profits. But poison is blind. Loosed annually by the ton from planes, boats, trucks, tractors and handy spray cans, it cannot isolate its target. Since Rachel Carson exposed the pesticides' threat seven years ago, in Silent Spring, evidence of the chemicals' pernicious effects on birds, plants, fish, animals...
...grape pickers strike. Face swollen and complaining of dizziness and shortness of breath, a woman told the general counsel of the United Farm Workers, Jerome Cohen, that she had been drenched by wind-blown pesticides while working in a field. Other pickers have reported becoming sick after exposure to parathion and DDT. Cohen asked the Kern County agricultural commissioner for permission to see permits for pesticide spraying, which are required by California law. But before he could look at the records, three spraying companies obtained a court order prohibiting scrutiny of the papers...
...minor, episode seemed closed. It was not; Tijuana's children kept dying for no apparent cause. By week's end 17 youngsters were dead-and more than 300 others had been treated for poisoning at local hospitals. Lab tests turned up traces of a deadly pesticide called parathion in the tissues of victims, and the poison was soon traced to bread from their tables. Tijuana police closed all bakeries and other stores selling bread; sound trucks even warned against eating tortillas. The almost certain source of the poison was a government warehouse in Mexicali that distributed flour...
...downright errors only serve to highlight a question that has bothered many Americans: Just how dangerous are insecticides? Experts of the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Public Health Service readily admit that some of them are extremely poisonous to humans as well as to insects and other pests. Parathion. an organic phosphate used against mites and other highly resistant insects, is so deadly that men who spray it must wear respirators and protective clothing...