We’ve heard this nonsense before: “One of the most toxic chemicals on earth.”
The New York Times reports:
A manufacturer has pulled a controversial pesticide from the American market, surprising both growers and environmentalists who have warned that it poses serious hazards.
The soil fumigant, known as methyl iodide and sold under the label Midas, will be withdrawn immediately as a result of a review of the product’s “economic viability in the U.S. marketplace,” the Tokyo-based company, the Arysta LifeScience Corporation said in a statement late Tuesday.
In the five years methyl iodide has been on the market, it has seen relatively little use. Farmers have injected the pesticide into only 17,000 acres — mostly planted with tomatoes, peppers and nuts — mainly in the southeastern United States.
Although federal environmental regulators approved the pesticide in 2007, methyl iodide became a focus of fierce debate in California before it gained final approval from state regulators there in December 2010.
In hearings on the chemical, intended for use on the state’s lucrative strawberry crop, scientists and environmental activists raised concerns about its neurotoxicity and its potential to cause cancer and neurodevelopmental disorders. One member of the department’s own scientific review committee called it “one of the most toxic chemicals on earth”…
Actually, we can’t even use water. After all, how many people have died by being submerged in water too long. Clearly, water is also a deadly poison. Don’t get me started on oxygen. Oxygen is one of the primary factors in every fire. Fire is hot, can kill you, and has killed far too many children. So we must also stop using oxygen.
See how easy it is to ban life itself when you take simple fact totally out of context.
Yet more proof that the greenies are against everything, including its alternatives. Greenies drove methyl bromide from the market. It was replaced with methyl iodide. Now they’re against methyl iodide. Gotta wonder how bad the replacement for methyl iodide will be.