Small doses

PSD efficiency?
Regulators, the pesticides industry and environmentalists all agree on one thing – that pesticide issues are difficult to put across succinctly. What then was the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) thinking of when they came up with the following headline in their publication Pesticides Monitor? 
    “PSD efficiency: revised application form and ‘application form and ‘application overview’/referral back to applicants during evaluation of technical secretariat applications”
Answers on a postcard please…
Pesticides Monitor, Pesticides Safety Directorate, an executive agency of MAFF, Issue 9, Sept/Oct 1999.

Terrestrial organisms beware
A World Health Organisation report on the biocidal wood preservative tributyltin oxide is difficult to interpret. The report warns: “Tributyltin-treated wood could pose a hazard to terrestrial organisms living in close contact with it.” What should we do with this information? Does ‘terrestrial organism’ include humans, are we, our companion animals not supposed to live in homes treated with TBTO?
Tributyltin oxide, No. 14, WHO, IPCS, 1999.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 46, December 1999, page 22]