obliged homeowners with handy cylindrical containers of specialized poi-
son. One spies an anthill, grabs the can, gives the top a quarter-turn, and
sprinkles white crystals directly onto the hill. Other ants will appear, but
the diligent may respond again and control them. The undiligent—the lazy,
perhaps—may be susceptible to the blandishments and broadcast sprays
of lawn-service companies.
Thealso remained committed to big spraying programs. During
the early and mid-s there were massive fish kills in the lower Missis-
sippi system from runoffs of the pesticide endrin. Some dead and dying
catfish were nonetheless sold for human consumption, according to the
historian Pete Daniel, and drinking water sources were compromised. Not-
withstanding, in theagain declared war on the fire ant—this
time not with the failed heptachlor but with mirex, a newish pesticide. The
war was to last twelve years and cost an estimated million, despite
research that reported that mirex could be deadly to fin- and shellfish. All
this occurred, too, five years after the appearance of Rachel Carson’sSilent
Springand three years after a presidential report on pesticides and hear-
ings in the U.S. Senate hostile to the chemical industry. In , however,
thewas born, and the next year its head canceled registration of mirex.
Allied Chemical, mirex’s maker, appealed, and in mirex’s federal reg-
istration was restored, but its use near water was prohibited. Three years
later thefinally abandoned the war.
The sorriest story in Pete Daniel’s study of pesticides in the South, I
think, has the smallest scope, namely, one man and his family. In there
was a welder in Sunflower County, Mississippi, named Charles Lawler. One
summer day as he labored on a farmer’s building surrounded by crop fields,
his head concealed under his welder’s helmet-mask, a pilot sprayed mala-
thion, endrin, and other pesticides suspended in a solvent called Xylene.
Lawler thought no spraying would occur on the field next to his work, but
the pilot came in low and close and loosed a cloud of poison over the work
site and the gin house next door. Lawler’s headgear and blazing torch pre-
vented his hearing a warning from his helper, and the headgear doubtlessly
trapped droplets of pesticide and Xylene around his breathing passages. He
was never the same again: ill, weak, unable to work, and almost constantly
under care of doctors and his family. Lawler’s lawsuit was immediately and
broadly understood as an elemental threat not merely to his employer but
to Delta agriculture, the pesticide industry, and the. All of these, di-
rectly and indirectly, fought the suit. Lawler lost, won an appeal, but ulti-
mately lost in several ways. His health was ruined forever, the culture of big