Brian H. writes

The point I was attempting to make(obviously not very well)
was agricultural workers ingress unknown quantities of
chemicals.

They shouldn't, unless they are both stupid and careless.

Possibly these chemicals remain dormant,
causing no symptoms until they are triggered by temperature or reaction to
powerful anti-biotic.

See the half-live, safety and breakdown data.

Remember, in the 50s and 60s farm workers were handling powerful chemicals
with little regard to health and safety. I don't remember using any
protective clothes, even gloves.

Assuming you were sensible enough to prevent contamination and/or wash
it off quickly I'm not sure protective clothing is such an advantage.


Rodine 25% arsenic,strychnine, dieldrene, sulphuric acid(to
burn off potato haulm), phosdrin, mevinphos, there are plenty of others that
were used into the 70s,

Indeed so.
Don't worry about strychnine or sulphuric acid though.
Arsenic was (to say the least) unusual.
Dieldrin is accumulative,
The last two are OP's (not very nice ones) but are from memory pretty
quicklu biodegraded.

DDT was still being used in 73 on brassicers

I started farming in '72 and spring '73 we couldn't use DDT due to
banning. IIRC even then this was only to dip transplanted seedlings.

and
organophosphates into
the 80s.

Organophosphates are still used today. I wouldn't use them until an
argument with torsten made me look up the toxicity data on the recent
ones, where I found they were relatively low toxicity and their
biodegradeability was attractive.

As an example,2cc of phosdrin injected into pheasant egg,
eaten by fox, fox will be dead within 5yds of where egg
was placed.

Very probably. I've never heard of it's use in the UK.

In my own case,samples were taken from toenails to lumber-puncture,blood
,hair skin etc. These samples were sent to a Sheffield lab.After several
days I was quizzed
extensively about my contact with organophosphate, the
specialist from the lab raised the question not myself, why?

Ask him. One of the many OP exposure trials?

Note that for sheep dipping, exposure is likely to have been rather high
in the past. It's pretty well inevitable (in my experience) unless the
whole dipping system has been properly designed. That's quite different
from a sensible person filling a spray tank.

The following week I was asked to list all chemicals/poisons I had had
contact with in the workplace, this I found impossible....40+yrs...could
you?

Had contact with, or used?

Are you sure you have no trace of agri chemical in your
body waiting for a "trigger".......are you sure....really sure??

As sure as I can be.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
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