Organophosphates: A Common But Deadly Pesticide
Organophosphates attack the nervous system in the same way as nerve agents like sarin.
The pesticides blamed for killing at least 25 children in India are widely used around the world, including in the United States, and health experts have raised safety concerns about this class of chemicals in the past.
Known as organophosphates, the pesticides were developed in Germany in the 1940s and soon became an important defense against agricultural pests. "They are very effective and pose minimal environmental problems," said Lucio Costa, a toxicologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
A serious downside, however, is that they also happen to be extremely toxic. "They're considered junior-strength nerve agents because they have the same mechanism of action as nerve gases like sarin," explained Dana Boyd Barr, an exposure scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has studied organophosphate poisoning.
The Indian children, aged four to 12, fell ill on Tuesday after eating a lunch consisting of rice, soybeans, and lentils in the village of Mashrakh in the eastern state of Bihar.
The school that the children attended provided free meals under a nationwide program known as the Mid-Day Scheme. Early reports suggest the food—perhaps the rice or the cooking oil used to prepare the food—contained unsafe levels of the pesticide.
The swiftness of the deaths—in some cases, hours after exposure—suggests the dose could have been quite high.
