Pesticide lead arsenate

During the 1960s, Americans lived in a lead-drenched society. They fueled their cars with leaded, antiknock gasoline. They ate food and their babies drank milk from lead-soldered cans. They stored drinking water in lead-lined tanks and transported it through lead or lead-soldered pipes. They squeezed toothpaste from lead-lined tubes and poured wine from bottles sealed with lead-covered corks. They picked fruit sprayed with lead arsenate pesticide and served it on lead-glazed dishes in houses painted and puttied with lead-based compounds. 

James Whorton. Before Silent Spring Pesticides and Public Health in Pre-DDT America. Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 1974. Source for lead arsenate insecticide and Terres article. 

Aquatic life in proximity to mining activities, lead arsenate pesticides, metal finishing industries, lead alkyl production, and lead aerosol fallout... 

A second factor concerns the purity of the diet and water received by the animals. Careful chemical analysis is needed to ensure the absence of significant amounts of highly toxic chemicals, such as aflatoxin, metals such as lead, arsenic, or cadmium, or certain pesticides, that may be present in water and various feed ingredients. 

Arsenic trioxide finds major use in the preparation of other compounds, notably those used in agricultural applications, The compounds monosodium methylarsonate. disodium methylarsonate, methane arsenic acid (cacodylic acid) are used for weed control, while arsenic acid, H3ASO4, is used as a desiccant for the defoliation of cotton crops, Other compounds once widely used in agriculture are calcium arsenate for control of boll weevils, lead arsenate as a pesticide for fruit crops, and sodium arsenite as a herbicide and for cattle and sheep dip. In some areas, arsenilic acid has been used as a feed additive for swine and poultry. Restrictions on these compounds vary from one country and region to the next. 

Inorganic arsenicals find limited use as pesticides. Examples include arsenious oxide in cattle dips, zinc arsenite as a wood preservative, and calcium and lead arsenates and Paris green (double salt of copper arsenite and copper acetate) as insecticides30. ... 

As discussed in Chapters 5 and 7, the use of lime to precipitate calcium arsenates is a common method for removing inorganic As(V) from water or flue gases. Calcium arsenates were also once extensively used in pesticides (Chapter 5). The compositions of some calcium arsenates, such as johnbaumite (Ca5(As04)3(0H) Table 2.5), resemble the very common phosphate mineral, apatite (Ca5(P04)3(F,Cl,0H)), where arsenate replaces phosphate. Some lead arsenates, such as mimetite (Pb5(As04)3Cl Table 2.5), also have crystalline structures that are related to apatite. Mimetite may occur in oxidized lead-rich hydrothermal deposits. 

Peryea, F.J. and Creger, T.L. (1994) Vertical distribution of lead and arsenic in soils contaminated with lead arsenate pesticide residues. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution, 78(3-4), 297-306. 

Home is the most important setting for infants and young children. They often eat, play, and sleep in the same area. Examples of sources of exposure to pollutants include building materials (e.g. wood treated with arsenic-based pesticides), lead-based paints, insecticides that are sprayed indoors, fuel (e.g. coal and wood) for indoor cooking, disposal practices for domestic waste (e.g. incineration), household chemicals (e.g. solvents), and small-scale enterprises at the family residence (e.g. brick producers who operate low-technology combustion kilns and makers of pottery using lead-based paints). 

Although the predominant source of arsenic and metals to most soils and sediments in New England is sulfide-rich rock, the extensive application of arsenical pesticides and herbicides (lead arsenate, calcium arsenate, and sodium arsenate, and others) on apple, blueberry, and potato fields may have been a possible anthropogenic source of arsenic and lead. The main objective of this study was to determine the lead isotopic compositions of commonly used pesticides, such as lead arsenate, sodium metarsenite, and calcium arsenate, in order to assist in future isotopic comparisons and to better characterize this anthropogenic source of Pb. The pesticides plot along a linear trend in isotope diagrams, for example, in values of... 

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