How one chemist is saving lives with house paint

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/how-one-chemist-is-saving-lives-with-house-paint


How one chemist is saving lives with house paint
Spanish visionary Pilar Mateo is snuffing out bug-borne diseases and the poverty behind them.
By: Sidney Stevens
Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 08:43 AM

When Pilar Mateo earned her Ph.D. in chemistry years ago, she planned to join her father?s paint company in her native Valencia, Spain. Her goals were admirable but not necessarily world-changing: develop better, more durable paints and live a charitable life helping others in her local community. It never dawned on her that house paint might be the key to something so life-altering as curbing diseases around the world, or that helping others might mean tackling something really big, like ending poverty.

A newspaper article about the closing of a local cockroach-infested hospital changed everything. A tinkerer by nature, Mateo set about devising a microencapsulation technology that would let her lace paint with slow-release insecticides that were safe for people but deadly to bugs. The process was eventually patented and is now approved for use in 15 countries. That was the beginning of Inesfly Corporation...

 

[Emily]

Re: How one chemist is saving lives with house paint

http://www.parasitesandvectors.com/content/2/1/30

The insecticidal paints were Inesfly 5A IGR (OP formulation) containing diazinon (1.5%), chlorpyrifos (1.5%) and pyriproxyfen (0,063%) (insect growth regulator, IGR) as active ingredients (OP formulation), and Inesfly 5A IGR NG containing α-cypermethrin (0.7%), d-alethrin (1%) and pyriproxifen (0,063%) as active ingredients (P formulation). Both formulations are vinyl paints with an aqueous base, with the active ingredients residing within Ca CO3 + resin microcapsules. The formulation allows the gradual release of the active ingredients, increasing persistence and reducing the hazard to other organisms.

I would think that acute toxicity might be reduced, but I wonder about the persistence of low level exposures to pregnant women and young children.

Mortality rates observed in distance experiments were most striking. Females placed overnight at distances of one metre from treated walls died even twelve months after treatment.

The toxicological issue of the OP formulation is an important factor to be considered, but it is outside the scope of this study. However, it is worth noting that a similar slow release emulsifiable suspension (SRES), using 5% formulation of malathion as an active ingredient used for the control of kala-azar vector in India, showed that cholinesterase levels of spray men and local dwellers remained at normal levels one week, one month and one year after the SRES application.

'Normal' levels.

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=7420

 

[curiosity]

Re: How one chemist is saving lives with house paint

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/jun/autism-and-pesticides

"By Lindsey Konkel
Staff Writer
Environmental Health News

June 23, 2014

Babies whose moms lived within a mile of crops treated with widely used pesticides were more likely to develop autism, according to new research published today..."