Word: malathion
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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During California's war against the citrus-destroying Mediterranean fruit fly, community groups have beseeched state officials to stop spraying the insecticide Malathion in populated areas. But the bureaucrats at the California department of food and agriculture refused, insisting that the . spraying poses no threat to human beings. Now at last the state's anti-medfly force has been induced to yield a bit -- to avoid possible harm to an endangered species named the Stephens' kangaroo...
Warned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that Malathion-base spray could put the 3-in.-long nocturnal rodent at risk (and the state in violation of the Federal Endangered Species Act), officials agreed to avoid aerial spraying of the area where the kangaroo rat is found, a 5-sq.-mi. region of Riverside County 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles. While they bear no malice toward the rats, anti-sprayers are astounded by the decision. The government, said Adelaide Nimitz, president of Families Opposed to Chemical Urban Spraying, would rather "protect the rats and spray people...
Despite assurances that the insecticide poses no threat to humans, many people object to the state's program of spraying malathion from helicopters over a 400-sq.-mi. area that includes Los Angeles and Orange counties. Last week Pasadena passed an ordinance that effectively outlaws spraying within city limits by prohibiting aircraft from flying at altitudes of less than 700 ft. Despite the objections, Governor George Deukmejian plans to continue the spraying. Pasadena is considering filing misdemeanor charges against the pilots involved in the anti-medfly mission...
...Malathion spraying, the agency argues, is a necessary supplement to "biotechnical control," which consists of releasing 140 million sterile male medflies weekly into infested areas to disrupt the insects' prodigious reproduction. Malathion, state officials insist, is the mildest available pesticide. Though the chemical is toxic to the skin and respiratory system in concentrated doses, officials say, it is quite harmless in the diluted (2.8 ounces per acre) form used in spraying...
Opponents, organized into a Coalition Against Urban Spraying, argue that some academic and foreign research shows that Malathion is a potential carcinogen -- a claim the state adamantly rejects. "The opposition so far is just a small dose of what's coming," warns David Bunn, a local leader of the environmental group Pesticide Watch. The most bizarre protest of all has been a letter to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and local newspapers, sent by an ecoterrorist organization calling itself the Breeders, which claimed to be breeding and releasing its own medflies. The organization's alleged purpose: to render the medfly...