Insecticide To Be Banned, Decades After Poisoning Thousands

By Marla Cone, Environmental Health News
Posted on September 1, 2010, Printed on September 3, 2010


http://www.alternet.org/story/148000/

Twenty-five years after the worst known outbreak of pesticide poisoning in U.S. history, an agreement is announced that phases out all uses of aldicarb. Manufacturer Bayer CropScience agreed to stop producing the highly toxic insecticide, used to kill pests on cotton and several food crops, by 2015 in all world markets. Use on citrus and potatoes will be prohibited after next year. New EPA documents show that babies and children under 5 can ingest levels of the insecticide through food and drinking water that exceed limits that the agency considers safe. “Aldicarb no longer meets our rigorous food safety standards and may pose unacceptable dietary risks, especially to infants and young children,” the EPA said. At least 2,000 people fell ill from eating California watermelons illegally contaminated with aldicarb on the Fourth of July in 1985. “It is good the revocation is happening; it is a shame it took 20 years,” said Richard Jackson, chair of environmental health sciences at UCLA, who was a top state health official during the outbreak.

A farm chemical with an infamous history -- causing the worst known outbreak of pesticide poisoning in North America -- is being phased out under an agreement announced Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Manufacturer Bayer CropScience agreed to stop producing aldicarb, a highly toxic insecticide used to kill pests on cotton and several food crops, by 2015 in all world markets. Use on citrus and potatoes will be prohibited after next year.

Tuesday’s announcement comes 25 years after a highly publicized outbreak of aldicarb poisoning sickened more than 2,000 people who had eaten California watermelons.

New EPA documents show that babies and children under five can ingest levels of the insecticide through food and water that exceed levels the agency considers safe.

“Aldicarb no longer meets our rigorous food safety standards and may pose unacceptable dietary risks, especially to infants and young children,” the EPA said in announcing the agreement.

the state and government used to set up bug killer's loaded with DDT. We had one on our property about five feet from the hedge that separated our yard from the garden. We planted food etc there and the DDT was to keep bugs away. Of course there were warning signs all over the place around and on the containers on a stilt, but you know 7 to 10 year old kids we constantly checked how many "Japanese beetles" it killed. I have often wondered lately if those bug catchers did anything to the people who lived around them.

traps were in about every yard.

my brother and I would take glass mason jars and capture whole clumps of them at once.

at the time I didn't give a thought to just what it was that attracted the beetles to the traps.

I wonder if any J.B.s made it out of the war.