Acute poisoning, atrazine

The triazines make up the final general class of herbicides. This class includes the most prevalent pesticide in use for over two decades, atrazine. It also includes prometon, propazine, and simazine. Acute poisoning with the triazines results in anorexia, depression, and muscular symptomology. The oral doses in rodents required for toxic effects are greater than 1.74 gAg, again making these compounds extremely safe. There is no evidence of toxicity from field usage reports. 

Very high doses of atrazine ingested in suicidal attempts had no acute clinical effect, suggesting that atrazine is virtually innocuous to humans. Sporadic reports on suspected acute poisoning leave too many questions open to be convincing they reflect coincidence rather than causality. 

Acute oral toxicity of atrazine in experimental animals was found to be moderate. In humans, the acute and chronic toxicity is low. There is no reported case of poisoning. The toxic symptoms in animals include ataxia, dyspnea, and convulsion. Other symptoms are abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting and irritation of mucous membranes. The oral LD50 values in rats and rabbits are 672 and 750 mg/kg, respectively (NIOSH 1986). 

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