Abstract:
The present report is a tribute to thousands of
workers in the Agricultural, sector, who constantly expbse
themselves to the danger of unintentional and accidental
exposure to insecticides and,- other pesticides. They
undergo this unnoticed process just to increase the
agricultural produce by saving the crops, vegetables,
fruits etc., from the pest attack. The present research
project was aimed at assessing the visible and or
invisible damage done to non target organisms by chlorinated insecticides. Rats were used as experimental
(model) animals and the results obtained and reported in
this document can be extrapolated to human system,
despite all the arguments for and against such extrapolations. The research project. MORPHOLOGICAL AND..
METABOLIC HAZARDS OF CHLORINATED INSECTICIDES ON. SMALL
MALMAIS IN PAKISTAN was initiated in August, 1980 and
vot' the experiMental work was completed in September, 1985.
Maintenance of a large rat colony for long term experiments in which animals were fed with insecticides
continuously for two years for 4 different insecticides
was the major problem. This had to be done in the face
of acute heat during summer in Lahore, tremendous
financial constraints and quite a few unforeseen mishaps.
The results being reported in this document are completed
according to the approved plan of work of the projedt.
The report has been divided into five Chapters. The
first four Chapters deals with one insecticide each viz.
Dieldrin, aldrin, rBHC and DDT, while the fifth Chapter
interrelates the major findings reported in the first
four Chapters. The main conclusions, various
recommendation and future line of action with regard toresearch activities in this field have also been
included in the 5th Chapter. In each Chapter the
effects of insecticides have been described with
reference to effect on body weight and liver weight,
haematology, biochemical analysis of blood, and biochemical and histological analysis of liver. Thee data
has adequately been tabulated and illustiated. This
work has solely been done in the. Cell Biology. Labs. of.
the Department of Zoology, which is fully equipped. to
do this type of biochemical work. For a part of this
work during initial stages laboratory facilities at
Nuclear InStitute of Agriculture & Biology;. Faisalabad
and Quaid-i-AzamUniversityslamabad were also used,.
which is gratefully acknowledged.
Syed Shahid Ali, M.Sc. has been working as
.
a
Research Officer in the project and has therefore been
the main technical help. The data presented in this
report will form a major part of the thesis which
Mr. Ali is preparing for his Ph. D.' degree:
Thanks are due to Pakistan Science Foundation
for financial support, without which this work would
not have been possible.
