Pesticide Spill in Sacramento River
Your article on the pesticide spill in the Sacramento River (Part A, July 16) correctly informed the reader that metam-sodium (the commercial name of the pesticide) decomposes in water to form two highly poisonous gases, hydrogen sulfide and methyl isocyanate. The article goes on to say that “exposure to MITC (methyl isocyanate) can cause extreme skin, eye and respiratory irritation, but no long-term health effects.” That statement is only half-true: Methyl isocyanate is indeed irritating, and it does indeed have rather serious long-term effects. Such as death.
Your writers seem to have forgotten the 1984 Bhopal disaster. That methyl isocyanate leak from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killed more than 2,100 people. Moreover, a 1986 medical study of survivors found that at least 86,000 of them had been permanently injured.
RALPH CHERNOFF, Santa Cruz
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