The State - News from March 31, 1989

The state is banning the use of a herbicide used on 60% of California’s rice crop. Department of Food and Agriculture officials said the suspension for bantazon, marketed as Basagran, will take effect Monday, pending formal procedures to ban the chemical. Concentrations of Basagran are not in high enough quantities to pose an immediate health hazard, but eventually it could become a serious problem, department spokeswoman Veda Federighi said. Tests have found that the herbicide leaches through a variety of soil types, is very stable and breaks down so slowly that health-threatening concentrations eventually could accumulate in ground water, Federighi said.