kmartinusa wrote:
I've got a second question...I live in an area that has several cotton fields within about 1/2 mile of my house in two directions. Does anyone know if there is any research out there regarding airborne defoliant used on cotton?
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that arsenates no longer are/can be used for defoliating cotton. You can get an idea from the county extension service about what defoliants commonly are used in your area. If I find a good link to information, I'll add it to this post. You will get next to no idea of the long term health and environmental effect from most of them; they mostly haven't been studied much for that. You probably can expect that the fields will get a good dosing of malathion for boll weevils and probably of other pesticides. If the fields have been in cotton production for a long time, they probably still are gassing off DDT and the soil may still have a fair amount of arsenic residue from the days when arsenic was used extensively. Conventional cotton production is a fairly dirty business. Now, if you live in the high plains, they may not use any defoliants; frost works pretty well on its own.