Newest Chinese Export: Smuggled Rat Poison w. Brodiafacoum @ 61X Legal Limits Leads To 12 Arrests

The investigation began with a vial of blue-green liquid. Roughly two inches tall, it came in a yellow and blue box covered with Chinese characters and, in English, the words “The cat be unemployed.” It was rat poison, illegal and highly toxic.

The pesticide, which was apparently smuggled into the United States from China, contained one deadly ingredient in a concentration almost 61 times as great as what federal regulations allow, according to court papers. The chemical, brodifacoum, is so dangerous, officials said, that its use is illegal in urban areas unless it is applied by licensed professionals wearing protective gear and using special equipment. Federal regulators have recently moved to further restrict its use, in part because its ingestion could kill a small child.

Several of the vials were among about 6,000 packages of rat and cockroach poison seized from shops and street vendors in and around Chinatown during a five-month undercover investigation into the sale of illegal pesticides, state and local officials announced at a news conference Monday.

The vials, they said, first came to the attention of the authorities because a woman who had bought one in the East Broadway Mall in Chinatown last year later mistook the pesticide for medicine, consumed it and became seriously ill, losing two-thirds of her blood volume, according to the court papers. Brodifacoum is an anticoagulant that kills rodents by causing them to bleed to death internally. Another chemical in one of the pesticides, sodium fluoroacetate, is a metabolic poison used to kill coyotes.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/nyregion/12-arrested-in-sales-of-illegal-pesticides-in-chinatown.html?_r=1

Gov. Rick Perry.

The freedom to mistake pesticide for medicine.*




*That's that the Ron Paul libertarians would have us believe.