Chloro+hydroxy+methyl+chromen+one-ol

toc __//Cassy Townson//__ =Abstract= If you are repeatedly or for long periods of time, are exposed to that chemical, have the same, if not worse, symptoms than acute poisoning. It can impair your memory & concentration, it can make you disoriented, have severe depression, irritability, confusion, speech problems, headaches, delayed reactions, sleepwalking, or insomnia. The nervous system is the basically the only system that is affected by this chemical. Coumaphos is a toxic chemical for humans. It can cause many different kinds of damage, depending on the severity of the poisoning.. In soil, its immobile and it binds to the soil. It doesn’t contaminate ground water either, but it affects birds greatly and it also affects sea animals. And if we didn’t have this chemical, or if it was banned, there wouldn’t be effective pesticide removers and the meat wouldn’t be that good. My position on the chemical is that it shouldn’t be banned. They should just find different ways to dispose of it and make it safer for humans to handle. They should also do some more research on the chemical so people can understand it more.

=Background=

The chemical chloro hydroxy methyl chromen one/ol is an coumaphos. A coumaphos is a type of insecticide. The type of insecticide that the chemical chloro hydroxy methyl chromen one/ol is an organophosphate pesticide It is used for controlling the insects on beef cattle, dairy cows, swine, and other certain farm animals. This chemical is basically used by farmers to keep insects of their animals so they can have good meat. This chemical can also be used against ectoparasotes, which are insects that live on host animals such as sheep and goats. Its added to cattle and poultry feed to help control fly larvae. This kind of chemical is a selective chemical because it kills specific insect species while sparring the organisms. This chemical is registered in the U.S, just not for residential use. That means, it can be used in the U.S, just not in homes because of its toxic level.

=Human Health Implications= Chloro hydroxy methyl chromen one/ol , or in easier words, coumaphos, is a toxic chemical. It can cause many different kinds of dangers and it can affect the body and its processes. One of the basics is that if it touches your skin/clothes, take off any affected clothes and wash skin immediately. There are three levels of the severity of how the chemical can affect your body, acute, moderately, and severe. Acutely, it begins RIGHT AWAY-12 hours. Signs are headaches, dizziness, and your coordination can get messed up. Moderate poisoning is shown by muscle twitching and vomiting. If you are Severely poisoned, diarrhea, fever, toxic, psychosis, holding back of fluids in the lungs, and also high blood pressure. If you are repeatedly or for long periods of time, are exposed to that chemical, have the same, if not worse, symptoms than acute poisoning. It can impair your memory & concentration, it can make you disoriented, have severe depression, irritability, confusion, speech problems, headaches, delayed reactions, sleepwalking, or insomnia. The nervous system is the basically the only system that is affected by this chemical.

=Environmental Implications=

chloro hydroxy methyl chromen one/ol, or coumaphos, is somewhat highly, to highly toxic for the environment. It affects birds a lot in the environment. When birds come in contact with this chemical, straddle-legged walking, wing twitching, wing drop, tearing of eyes, and wing spread. In hens, when they come in contact with it, they get delayed nervous poisoning or neurotoxicity. In mallards, pheasants, and chickens, they developed leg weakness. In fishes and other animals in the sea, they are highly toxic to them. In the soil, it has a high tendency to bind to the soil. It is also immobile in a sandy-loam kind of soil. It isn’t likely to contaminate groundwater, but there isn’t a lot of data to prove that. So the EPA is collecting additional data to see if its correct or not. This chemical is disposed by being dumped into a hole. It isn’t lined so it gets into the soil.

=Synthesis/Production=

Coumaphos is either a white or brown color. It’s a sugar like material and it has a sulfur-like smell. It’s formulated with wettable powders, emulsifiables liquids, flowable, ready-to-use dust. Its put into aerosol cans, dust bags, hand-held dusters, dip vats, high and low pressure hand-held sprayers, backrubber oiler, mechanical dusters, shaker can, and squeeze applicator. It can hydrolyze slowly in alkaline conditions and you shouldn’t mix it with pyrethroids and piperonyl butoxide because it can omit strong odors. Coumaphos is also unstable at a basic pH level. There isn’t much that I could find about the procedure and exactly how it is made so I want to figure that out one day.



=Economic/Political Impact= If this chemical were to be banned, farmers would be affected greatly by this. This is because they were the one’s that use coumaphos a lot. They use it to get rid of pesticides off cattle and other farm animals. And in the long run, the people who eat meat will be affected too because the meat wont be good quality. Countries that use this product are the United States, but mainly in areas where there are farms. And if this product were to be banned, there wouldn’t be any efficient enough pesticide removers for the farmers, such as the different kinds of agri-dust and agway 1% dairy duster. Our food that we buy would be infested with pesticides that we don’t want. I never found an exact number, but it could cost a lot to find something else to use instead of coumaphos to de-pesticide farm animals, especially cattle. Some ramifications of banning this chemical are that even though its dangerous to a certain extent, it helps to keep farm animals from having pesticides on them.

=Summary= The cost/benefits of this chemical are that it keeps pesticides such as: cattle grubs, screw-worms, lice, scabies, flies and tick off farm animals, the meat will be good, its only allowed to be used on farms and not residential use, and it doesn’t contaminate groundwater. What I think is necessary though is that they need to find a way to make it less toxic when humans handle it and do some more research about it because there isn’t a lot of understandable information about it and because it’s VERY dangerous to humans.

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