Abstract/Contents: | "The herbicide clopyralid is commonly sold under the brand names Transline, Stinger, and Confront. It is used to kill unwanted plants in lawn and turf, range, pasture, rights-of-way, sugarbeets, mint, and wheat. Clopyralid and the products containing it are irritating to eyes, some severely. The eye hazards of four clopyralid products include permanent impairment of vision or irreversible damage. In laboratory tests, clopyralid caused what a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviewer called 'substantial' reproductive problems. These include a reduction in the weight of fetuses carried by rabbits who ingested clopyralid, an increase in skeletal abnormalities in these fetuses at all doses tested, and an increase in the number of fetuses with hydrocephaly, accumulation of excess fluid around the brain. 'Inert' ingredients in clopyralid products include cyclohexanone (produces tearing and burning of the eyes, vomiting, diarrhea, and dizziness), tritheylamine (a severe eye irritant and cause of chemical pneumonia), and polyethoxylated tallow amines (cause eye burns, nausea, and are acutely toxic to fish). Clopyralid is 'persistent' in soil, according to an EPA review, and field studies have measured persistenece as long as 14 months. It has the chemical characteristics that make it a likely water contaminant; despite its relatively low level of use it has been found in 2 of the 20 river basins studied by the U.S. Geological Survey. Potatoes are extremely sensitive to clopyralid with damage occurring when plants are exposed to 0.07 percent of typical agricultural rates. When tubers from these damaged plants were grown in unsprayed fields, the new generation of plants also showed damage symptoms." |