Ugh / pseudoscience / local organophosphates for local people

[hirez]

When I mentioned that 'The vitamin murders' was the wrong sort of book, I didn't actually mean 'Starts off well enough but then wanders into total bollocks and doesn't come back'. However, that is where we find ourselves. It's a shame, because yer man does take care to point out that the alleged mass poisoning of the countryside (and the sudden mechanisation of agriculture in general) had its roots (haw!) in efforts to keep the populace from starving to death in the forties.

There's a throwaway line in the book in re. the effect of Schradan, which was an early insecticide, and the amount of wildlife it killed in fields near Charlton Abbots.

Charlton Abbots is the village, and by extension the estate (in the agricultural rather than housing sense), where I grew up.

I poked at the internet for a bit, because that was self-evidently a bit close to home, and discovered that it had been hauled from one of the Zuckerman reports to (what was) MAFF.

Unfortunately I can't go and ask the chap who was there and had some experience with agrochemicals. And who I suspect suffered from OP-related nerve damage as a result.

Further internet poking reveals this fine website which is filled with quality Goldacreing.

In short, 'Shut up, Rik. No-one's on fire.'

Comments

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