It’s Getting Hot In Here

It looked for a moment there like the EPA was going to do the right thing after 54 scientists wrote to oppose the approval of methyl iodide for use as a pesticide on crops. The chemists noted that methyl iodide (also: iodomethane) is a well-known cancer hazard among people who work in chemistry labs, that it warps DNA, causes miscarriages in lab animals, damages the thyroid and nervous system, and readily turns into a gas or dissolves in water.

But no, they approved it after “a thorough evaluation process,” at rates as high as 175 pounds per acre. Ahem.

I wonder if that evaluation process involved looking at the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for methyl iodide:

May be fatal if inhaled, swallowed or absorbed through skin. Highly toxic. May cause cancer. Possible teratogen. Vesicant. May cause harm to the unborn child. Readily absorbed through the skin. May cause sensitization. Severe irritant. Narcotic. Typical [Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL)] ca. 5 ppm.

In a lab, heavy-duty, puncture-resistant, nitrile gloves are recommended for handling this substance. In a lab, methyl iodide would only be used inside a fume hood, even when dealing with very small amounts. If you’ve never been in a chemistry lab, a fume hood is a glass-fronted cabinet with permanent suction that pulls air in from the room and vents it outside so that when you open bottles and pour things back and forth, you won’t breathe any of the vapor coming off the chemicals.

Methyl iodide is the planned replacement for methyl bromide, which has been phased out as a fumigant because it was harmful to the ozone layer.

Methyl bromide was used to turn soil into a sterile, lifeless medium. The top layers of soil get pumped full of it, and all microorganisms, insects, plants and fungi die. Then the dead dirt can be put to work for useful things, like growing strawberries. It’s the exact opposite of greening the desert, which you can see an example of in my favorite YouTube clip.

Aside from the potential direct harm to humans of using methyl iodide, these highly destructive fumigants are powerful weapons in industrial agribusiness’ war against healthy soil. Every year, a certain amount of the carbon that’s turned from gas into solid sugars by photosynthesis will become part of the pool of soil organic matter, which is the largest pool of carbon on land. The more living things you have in soil, the more carbon it tends to store, reducing the balance of carbon held in the atmosphere. But healthy communities of living things pose complications when you decide that you want to grow only one thing, very predictably, out in the soil. Instead of investing in learning how to work with an abundance of life, modern agriculture wipes it all out with chemicals that are also immediately hazardous to human life.

I find it so interesting that our ‘pro-life’ administration has not only approved a chemical that will indiscriminately wipe out the climate-protective web of life beneath the ground, but that is known to cause cancer in humans and probably birth defects, as well.