What is known about the fungicide - which is not approved for use in the United States - offers little comfort to those who applied it to Florida farmland as an undisclosed ingredient in some lots of Benlate 50 DF.

According to a study conducted in Bulgaria, oral doses of flusilazole given to pregnant rats produced congenital defects such as protruding eyes, twins of unequal size joined at the jaw and grossy enlarged tongues.

In 1988, DuPont instructed the company it had contracted to make a flusilazole-based product that women must not be allowed to work "in the operating area or the laboratory" where they would come in contact with the chemical.

Laboratory results DuPont submitted to the EPA in order to register the product in the U.S. indicate oral doses produce liver and bladder tumors in mice and rats.

EPA documents reflect the agency's concerns about a number of flusilazole products, including one sold in Europe under the brand name Punch. "DuPont insists on pursuing registration. [Registration Division] also indicates that the [experimental use permit] for Punch will be suspended due to multiple adverse effects reports," said one EPA summary.

DuPont says it voluntarily chose not to renew Punch's U.S. experimental use permit in 1992.

The EPA conducted a risk analysis earlier this year that concluded "the dietary and occupational risks from exposure to Benlate contaminated with [another fungicide] and flusilazole are negligible.

The assessment did not take into account the interaction of the chemicals with each other, an issue now being addressed by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the request of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.

The EPA analysis centered on oral doses of the chemical, not skin exposure or inhalation, which are listed on the product's Material Safety Data Sheet as flusilazole's "principle health hazards."

DuPont toxicologist Bob Gibson has told health investigators that flusilazole's vapor activity is insignificant. But company literature promoting the fungicide touts its vapor activity as a selling point, saying it contributes to "enhanced field efficacy.

"Flusilazole's vapor phase action is enhanced by warmer temperatures," according to a DuPont technical bulletin.

One state agriculture scientist noted in 1994 that of 250 active ingredients in pesticides only 19 would vaporize more easily than flusilazole.

Scientist Ted McDowell went on to say, 'I would recommend extremely careful analysis of flusilazole's effects on humans and other non-target organisms."

Experiments conducted by Cornell University in the mid-1980s demonstrated that flusilazole's vapors could extend the chemical's fungus killing ability for an entire growing season.

Roger Pearson, the Cornell researcher who conducted the vapor study, died in 1991 at the age of 46 of unexplained respiratory failure.

Pearson s work had taken him around the world, where he was exposed to numerous chemicals and fungi, said his widow, Karen.

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