Pest Control Chemicals 1985

Merritt Clifton was an environmental journalist and lived in Brigham, Quebec.

For the price, a hefty $35.00, one would expect Pest Control Chemicals to offer information approximately equivalent in weight and volume to that found in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (1,032 pages, list price U.S. $29.00).

Certainly, one should expect lists, descriptions, toxicology data, and current registration status for all pest control chemicals presently sold in Canada. That’s minimal. And that’s what the PACS advertising for Pest Control Chemicals seems to promise — though not in precisely so many words.

It pays to read advertisements very closely. Pest Control Chemicals actually runs a mere 86 pages, including numerous pages of apparent paid advertising. It is obviously designed to resemble official Agriculture Canada publications, with a bright red maple leaf on the cover for emphasis. Virtually everything inside is reprinted from official Agriculture Canada publications, all of them either free to the public or available at nominal cost.

The volume contains no specific information on any type of chemicals. “Herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, rodenticides, growth regulants, surfactants” are specifically mentioned only on the front cover.

For one’s $35, one gets a sketchy, ill-written history of agriculture in Canada; crop acreage stats lifted directly from government publications; a description of the pesticide regulatory process and summary of current pesticide regulatory laws, also lifted directly from government publications; a partial list of major pesticide dealers and applicators; and a two-page list of laboratories that test pesticides.

More useful information could be found in the Yellow Pages.