Insecticide

What sweet revenge it is on insect pests that well over a thousand plants have insecticidal properties. So-called "botanical insecticides," made from ground-up roots, stems, flowers or leaves of such plants, have a long history. Ancient Greeks and Romans used pulverized roots of white hellebore ( Veratrum album ) to kill insects. Sabadilla, extracted from the seeds of a South American shrub, was used in the 16th Century.

At least 28 children collapsed and died in a remote Andean village in Peru, apparently after being served insecticide-tainted milk at school. The children, ranging in age from 5 to 15, received the powdered milk Friday at the school in their rural village, said Dr. Holguer Lovon, director of the regional hospital in Cuzco, 350 miles southeast of Lima. The milk apparently had been prepared in a pot that had earlier been used to mix insecticide for fumigating crops, he said.

A phalanx of environmental, farming and consumer groups plans to file suit today against the Environmental Protection Agency, contending that the agency has risked environmental calamity by approving plants genetically altered to produce a bug killer. Of chief concern, the groups say, is the potential for bugs to develop resistance to the insecticide, a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis.

Q. Is there any health risk for small dogs from the organic phosphates found in commercially applied house flea sprays? The instructions given by the companies doing the work are to vacate the house for at least 4 hours after application and to air the house thoroughly on re-entering. They do not instruct that the pet's bedding should be removed, and we have returned to find our dog's bed thoroughly dampened by the spray and still damp to the feel after 4 hours.

The website that hawks the "concentrated bath salts" warns in red letters: "Not for human consumption. " It cautions against using alcohol and prescription medications while "bathing," and adds, "PLEASE do not use this as SNUFF. " But the little packets of powder, with names like "Ivory Wave" and "Vanilla Sky," were never intended for the tub, and they're not among the fragrant samples in the bath and body shop at the local mall. The "bath salts," are powerful synthetic stimulants, designed to be comparable to cocaine or methamphetamine, and with similar risks, law enforcement and health officials say. But unlike cocaine or meth, the stimulants are legal in most of the United States, at least for now, selling for about $25 to $40 a packet online and in convenience stores and head shops.

Mediterranean fruit flies have been found in five additional Los Angeles County neighborhoods, officials reported Wednesday, prompting serious doubts about current eradication efforts and raising the prospect among top scientists of widespread aerial pesticide spraying in the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday adopted a new pest control policy that will phase out the use of dangerous pesticides and herbicides over the next three years. The plan, described as one of the most stringent in the nation, calls for patching cracked walls in kitchens and classrooms and steam cleaning behind ovens and refrigerators where pests breed, banning food in most areas, improving sanitation procedures and hiring more gardeners to pull weeds rather than spray them.

Head lice are itchy, nasty nuisances that can be hard to get rid of. Can a pill provide relief? A new study has found that in tough cases, an oral medication kills the parasites more effectively than a prescription lotion applied to the scalp. The study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, compared ivermectin -- an antiparasitic drug used for human river-blindness cases and animal parasites -- with a lotion containing the insecticide malathion. Ivermectin is not approved for use in the U.S. for head lice.

In its continuing fight against smog formed by common consumer products, the state Air Resources Board on Thursday enacted pollution limits for 10 more categories, ranging from insecticides to perfume to aerosol non-stick cooking spray. Over the last two years, the ARB has enacted similar measures for 17 other products, including deodorant, hair spray, room fresheners and glass cleaners. None have taken effect yet. The first compliance deadlines are in 1993.

Two years ago, a bass-baritone covered in gook stalked the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. That was the medieval monster in Elliot Goldenthal's "Grendel," commissioned by Los Angeles Opera. Sunday afternoon, a baritone covered in gook again stalked the Chandler stage. This time it was Brundle, the scientist hero transmogrified into a Musca domestica in Howard Shore's "The Fly," inspired by the 1986 David Cronenberg horror film -- the latest opera commissioned by the company.