Because of the limited nature of the outbreak and failure to find evidence of contamination in the plant inspections, the California Department of Health Services suspects deliberate tampering as the cause of the outbreak. Food Safety and Inspection Svc, US Dept of Agriculture. Endrin is an extremely toxic chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide in the family of pesticides that includes DDT, heptachlor, aldrin, and dieldrin. The Orange County episode is the first reported outbreak of endrin poisoning in humans in the United States. Nevertheless, supplies of endrin remain in this country, and other countries continue to use and manufacture the chemical.
Pesticides can cause serious illness even among nonoccupationally exposed persons.
Pesticide-related illness from a commercial product should prompt a rapid and aggressive investigation to identify cases, sources, and appropriate control measures including, if necessary, a product recall. 1.Hayes WJ Jr. Pesticides studied in man. 2.Davies GM, Lewis I. Outbreak of food-poisoning from bread made of chemically contaminated flour. 5.Environmental Protection Agency. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version.