Paraquat

[David.]

You can donate your body to the nearest medical school but it needs to be fresh- they don't accept bodies more than 1 week old. If you want your body cremated and returned to your family after a 3 year 'holiday' you can do this and get a free cremation into the bargain.

What's not to like.?

 

[Fubar]

Ironic thing is its been banned here for 15 years but we still have a huge factory in Huddersfield manufacturing it and exporting if all around the World.

 

[ajcc]

Horrible stuff , used to find dead hares everywhere after harvest , glad its gone

Yep it was a major killer of hares back in the 1970’s it was ICI gramoxone routinely sprayed on chisel ploughed stubbles unless you burnt all the straw.

 

[Exfarmer]

Ted Moult died by gunshot.
gramoxone as a chemical was discovered during screening of new materials for dishwashing detergent.
there is little or no evidence of any commercial product causing Parkinsons disease, a genetic cause is far more likely, and sadly this is prominent in many families

 

[Red Fred]

Yep it was a major killer of hares back in the 1970’s it was ICI gramoxone routinely sprayed on chisel ploughed stubbles unless you burnt all the straw.

I remember this from my sandwich year on the Downs near Salisbury. The hares almost vanished over a few years and one of the girls at college did her thesis on the link between gramoxone and hare deaths. We wouldn't use it after that.

 

[Exfarmer]

The lethal dose of paraquat is very high compared to many products. The attraction for suicides was that it was irreversible once taken but it took up to ten days to kill. Plenty of time for the suicide to tell all and sundry, “ I told you I would do it”.

 

[steveR]

Gramoxon, relgrone etc use to turn it all bright yellow and burn off to a crisp.

Superb product for a quick take down.

I cannot comment on the issues from the BBc article, but thought teh ban was more to do with the numbers doing themselve in by drinking it?

 

[puppet]

30ml would kill you, so maybe 2 mouthfuls. Mortality rates after reasonable ingestion are very high due to lack of antidote and the early damage to lungs. You then have 2 to 4 weeks to wonder if it was a good idea to drink it

 

[ajcc]

Ten little Indians.......the farm safety film at agric.college in 1970s.
Gramoxone in a lemonade bottle did for one of them.

 

[serf]

Ironic thing is its been banned here for 15 years but we still have a huge factory in Huddersfield manufacturing it and exporting if all around the World.

Think that is the definition of irony ....

It's on par with planting trees here and cutting down the rainforest and carting the meat back over here

 

[Kidds]

As I recall it was supposedly withdrawn due to it being detected in water courses. At one time it was deemed to bond so tightly to clay particles in the soil that it was inactivated almost immediately it touched soil, this theory was challenged at a later date.
Most likely, as with simazine, it was used so extensively by utility companies that it did indeed wash out into water courses. It would have gone by now anyway as the prospects of it being used as a terrorist weapon are too great. I remember a film where it was used in such a way in a reservoir (may have been a tv series)
Back then cyanide and dynamite were fairly easy to acquire. The good old days hey?

 

[DeeGee]

I'm not quite done with mine yet, but am quite willing to give my knackered corpse to medical science when the day comes.

Don’t rush into things David.
Tomorrow looks okay, and Monday, although maybe changeable might not be too bad after all.
As old Winston always said, KBO!

With my apologies to any medical scientists who might hitherto have been rubbing their hands with glee.

 

[DeeGee]

As I recall it was supposedly withdrawn due to it being detected in water courses. At one time it was deemed to bond so tightly to clay particles in the soil that it was inactivated almost immediately it touched soil, this theory was challenged at a later date.
Most likely, as with simazine, it was used so extensively by utility companies that it did indeed wash out into water courses. It would have gone by now anyway as the prospects of it being used as a terrorist weapon are too great. I remember a film where it was used in such a way in a reservoir (may have been a tv series)
Back then cyanide and dynamite were fairly easy to acquire. The good old days hey?

Yep, those good old days in the fifties and sixties when children could play out in the street without any fear of abduction or interference from child molesters!

Unless they happened to meet Ian Brady or Myra Hindley.........

 

[Kidds]

I was talking more about the 80's really but was at school in the 70's and the teachers were more of a concern than the Moors murderers tbh.

 

[Lowland1]

I remember this from my sandwich year on the Downs near Salisbury. The hares almost vanished over a few years and one of the girls at college did her thesis on the link between gramoxone and hare deaths. We wouldn't use it after that.

We used to have a dog that would run under the sprayer nozzles when it was hot. It followed my Dad up the field one day when he was spraying gramoxone with its head under the last nozzle. It lived another ten or so years after that.

 

[Chris F]

Ironic thing is its been banned here for 15 years but we still have a huge factory in Huddersfield manufacturing it and exporting if all around the World.

It does say that in the article a long way down. It’s the point of the article, that’s is production and export should be banned. Not sure why they didn’t lead with that. Not sensational enough probably.

 

[Bald Rick]

I was talking more about the 80's really but was at school in the 70's and the teachers were more of a concern than the Moors murderers tbh.

70s was more the Black Panther and Lesley Whittle

 

[Exfarmer]

We used to have a dog that would run under the sprayer nozzles when it was hot. It followed my Dad up the field one day when he was spraying gramoxone with its head under the last nozzle. It lived another ten or so years after that.

My neighbour lost his dog a minutes after he was spraying Avadex liquid with the dog as usual chasing along behind. Sadly we had lost our fear of chermicals with the introduction of the hormone herbicides, which were relativeely harmless compared to products like Dinoseb or DNBP. This was known to have killed seversal operators 2 in one incident .
Much is made of poisonsonous agro chems , but in fact the accidental poisonings by such materials are exrtemely rare And when they occur are often the case of materials getting in the hands of often illiterate people in third world countries or young children. Nearly all poisonings are as a result of deliberate ingestion for suicide.
the country with by far the highest rate of poisonings is India where agrochems are a favourite for suicide and Murder. Suicide rates among the farming community are very high due to the peasant farming system there where many farmers are trying to raise families on extremely small areas, in a cyclical climate. Sadly huge numbers get into a debt cycle they cannot get out of. Under Indian law a debt dies with the borrower, and sadly huge numbers take this option. It is though rumoured that in fact the numbers are artificially high with it is believed many disappearing and a fake death certificate produced. The borrower then swell the vast uncounted number of poor living in thre city slums, or has been found several times just living in a neighbouring town under a new name

 

[2wheels]

Gramoxone was a useful chemical on fenland potatoes wait until about 10 per cent up then blitz them. Best for burning off potatoes was DNBP get that on your skin and you went yellow.Safer than sulphuric acid we went to after it was banned.

dnbp (dinoseb) was a poison. i got double the bonus for spraying that as i got for acid. extremely nasty stuff (dinoseb) as was the acid.

 

[2wheels]

Teb Moult. There used to be lots of cases of gardeners keeping it in pop bottles and kids drinking it though i was under the impression they put something in it to make it undrinkable. It’s still for sale in Kenya.

ted moult died by gunshot.