Last November, 43 students at a school in Jharkhand, India, were hospitalized after drinking milk laced with endosulfan, a highly toxic insecticide. Five of them died. A week later, a 4,000-gallon spill of endosulfan sent a “toxic wave” down Brazil’s Pariaba do Sul river. Five tons of dead fish washed up on the river banks.
Global opinion has begun to turn against this persistent, bioaccumlative neurotoxin. Last year, endosulfan jumped the first of several hurdles for inclusion in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Listing there would mean an international ban.
The pesticide is now outlawed in more than 50 countries including the European Union, several African countries and Sri Lanka. Canada and the Philippines are considering total bans and, in Australia, momentum is growing for action after endosulfan and carbendazim were implicated in the appearance of hundreds of thousands of two-headed fish larva at a fish farm on the Noosa River.