General use pesticides

D itself As a result, 2,4-D is designated as a General Use Pesticide by the EPA, requires no specific training or licensing to use on the home lawn, and is available in a number of formulations. ... 

Depending on the toxicity, formulation concentration, and use patterns, pesticides can be classified as general or restricted use. A general use pesticide will cause no unreasonable, adverse effects when used according to the label and can be purchased and applied by anyone. A restricted use pesticide, defined as generally causing undesirable effects on the environment, applicator, or workers can only be purchased and applied by an individual who is licensed by the state. 

The pure form of methoxychlor is a gray to pale yellow powder with a fruity or musty odor, or a crystalline solid. Technical methoxychlor (88% to 90% pure) is a gray powder. Methoxychlor is a practically nontoxic compound, and the USEPA has grouped it under general use pesticide (GUP).14... 

OPs are chemicals used in agriculture as acaricides, herbicides, and insecticides (Appendix 5-A-l). Because of their toxicity, several of these chemicals are being phased out from use parathion (ethyl) is an example. Many have been now classified by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) as a restricted use pesticide (RUP) or a general use pesticide (GUP). Pesticide chemistry has taken a turn for the synthesis, manufacture, and use of still safer compounds. A list of OPs considered for banning has been identified by the USEPA (Table 5-3). The following pages will briefly discuss the uses and toxicity of different OPs. 

Uses Bendiocarb is an odorless, white crystalline solid. It is stable under normal temperatures and pressures, but should not be mixed with alkaline preparations. Thermal decomposition products may include toxic oxides of nitrogen. It is noncorrosive. Formulations of bendiocarb are classified as general use pesticides (GUP), with the exception of Turcam and Turcam 2.5 G, which are classified as restricted use pesticides (RUP). In view of this, the chemical should be purchased and used only by certified and trained applicators. 

Growth hormone (GH) The protein produced by the pituitary gland that promotes the growth of the whole body GSH Glutathione-SH GUP General-use pesticide... 

Pesticides are classified under the terms of FIFRA as either general-use or restricted-use pesticides. General-use pesticides can be used by the general public with low risk of harm... 

Captafol is a general use pesticide with a toxicity classification of IV (relatively nontoxic). It is classified a as restricted use pesticide in the United States. It is no longer sold in the United States. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration threshold limit value for captafol is reported to be 0.1 mgm . ... 

Mixtures of pesticides and UV are also phototoxic. Hairless dogs treated with maneb (a fungicide) and UVA showed epidermal degradation, vasodilation, and intradermal infiltration of inflammatory cells. Animals treated with zineb (a general use pesticide) and UVA produced comedones with well-developed pilosebaceous glands, f181... 

There are many examples of equipment being sold in areas for which it is not suited. The unsuitability may be a lack of trained operators, a lack of basic knowledge of the equipment s possibilities, equipment inappropriate to the terrain, or, occasionally, equipment so highly specialized that it cannot be adapted to the general use for which it is needed. In general, simple equipment can best be used to demonstrate the value of the use of pesticides. 

FIFRA23 imposes a system of pesticide product registrations. Such requirements include premarket review of potential health and environmental effects before a pesticide can be introduced in the United States, reregistration of products introduced prior to the enactment of FIFRA to assess their safety in light of current standards, and classification of pesticides for restricted or general use. Restricted products can be used only by those whose competence has been certified by a state program. 

Pesticides were massively used, especially in the first decades after WWII, thus becoming one of the largest risk factors to human life and health, as well as to the entire natural environment. In 1962, Rachel Carson [2] described the terrible consequences of using pesticides in a way that the general public could understand for the first time. She also showed the most important difference between pesticides and other pollutants pesticides are not production waste, but are introduced into the environment deliberately. For the first time, the well-founded hypothesis was stated that, with time, poisonous and foreign chemical substances could make the Earth uninhabitable. 

In general, a pesticide was banned because of an accumulation of data on negative effects, effects that were not observed or were considered acceptable at the time the permit was issued. Table 1.7 contains a list of popular pesticides, and gives an idea of how our government changed its thinking towards them. Here, as in other tables, the names of those pesticides banned after many years of use are shaded. 

Endrin is a solid, white, almost odorless substance that was used as a pesticide to control insects, rodents, and birds. Endrin has not been produced or sold for general use in the United States since 1986. Little is known about the properties of endrin aldehyde, an impurity and breakdown product of endrin, or endrin ketone, which is a product of endrin when it is exposed to light. 

Parathion, a heavily-used pesticide with strongly adverse environmental effects, is a member of the phosphoric acid esters group with a general formula of the type... 

In this section, two types of data are briefly summarized 1) environmental transport and persistence, and (2) monitoring. The discussion Is chemical specific. Some Interesting concepts relevant to some of the chemical characteristics are developed later In the Discussion section. Results from this section are also used In the Conclusion section to derive some generalizations about pesticides leaching to ground water. 

For housekeeping purposes, most formulators clean buildings that house formulation units on a routine basis. Prior to washdown, as much dust, dirt, and so on as possible is swept and vacuumed. The washdown wastewater, which generally contains pesticide ingredients, is normally contained within the building and is disposed of in whatever manner is used for other contaminated wastewater. 

The term acceptable is used widely to describe safe levels of intake and is apphed for chemicals to be used in food production such as, e.g., food additives, pesticides, and veterinary dmgs. The term tolerable is applied for chemicals unavoidably present in a media such as contaminants in, e.g., drinking water and food. The term PTWI (Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake) is generally used for contaminants that may accumulate in the body, and the weekly designation is used to stress the importance of limiting intake over a period of time for such substances. The tolerable intake is similar in definition and intent to terms such as Reference Dose and Reference Concentration (RfD/RfC), which are widely used by, e.g., the US-EPA. For some substances, notably pesticides, the ARID (Acute Reference Dose), is also established, often from shorter-term studies than those that would support the ADI. The ARfD is defined as the amount of a substance in food that can be consumed in the course of a day or at a single meal with no adverse effects. 

There seems to be a desire among the workshop participants to develop a series of standard distributions, or distribution parameters, for exposure and effects variables that are generally used in risk assessments. In the case of toxicity data, for example, investigations leading to the quantification of a generic variance for between-species variation from pooled data for many pesticides may be useful (Luttik and Aldenberg 1997). 

This response is absolute nonsense. Sweden had banned the herbicide amitrole and several bis-dithiocarbamate fungicides because of flawed scientific evaluations that misinterpreted thyroid tumors in rodents, known to lack relevance for humans, as indicators of a human risk associated with normal usage. In contrast to Sweden s action, IARC and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cleared all of them of suspicions of causing cancer at current exposure levels,45 and the EU has approved amitrole for general use. Sweden s Minister of the Environment, Kj ell Lars-son, has declared that Sweden will fight all the way to the European Court of Justice to stop reintroduction of these horribly dangerous pesticides. 

---