Hard to Kill

I became very familiar with methyl bromide over 20 years ago studying pesticide exposure as a state regulator. We were trying to phase it out because of the human health hazards, even in the 1980s. Chemicals generally don’t scare me that much, but working around methyl bromide, even the casual exposures I experienced, were a bit worrisome – odorless, colorless, delayed onset neurotoxicant with either acute or chronic exposures. One of the stories I heard about the early years (the 1940s) of methyl bromide use was that sheriffs deputies in Indio would pick up men wandering the streets at night, hallucinating, under the suspicion that they were stoned from smoking marijuana – later it would be discovered they were simply warehouse workers who had been busily fumigating dates all day.

So, you have a chemical that’s a gas at room temperature, with virtually no warning properties of exposure, produces delayed onset neurotoxicity including long-lasting cognitive and peripheral neurological effects and, is an ozone-depleting chemical.

And growers in the U.S. continue to fight like mad to continue using it.

The EPA is proposing to allow continued use of methyl bromide for agricultural pest control, deemed a critical use under the Montreal Protocol, at least through 2008.

That’s one hard to kill chemical.