"I've felt guilty for as many years as paraquat has been sold," Li Dejun, a well-known mainland agriculturist, said in front of the media.
When paraquat is mentioned, many people immediately think of the horrific events that have killed countless people by ingestion and are staggeringly dead.
Paraquat was originally intended to provide farmers with a cost-effective herbicide, but it turned from a tool to a deadly poison.
So, what's going on here? Let's talk about it today.
Background to paraquat research
As we all know, the mainland is a big agricultural country, and looking back at the sixties and seventies, the peasants had to rely on their hands to wage a hard struggle against the weeds in the fields, which was a period of hard and heavy history.
In the seventies and eighties, with the influx of foreign pesticides, I thought it could bring convenience, but because foreign businessmen forgot to make profits and raised the price, most farmers still could not afford this expensive cost, and still could only choose the most primitive weeding method.
In this context, the research and development of weedicide products is particularly important, of course, it is not easy to develop a qualified herbicide, in 1996 33-year-old Li Dejun shouldered the responsibility of deputy director of Shandong Pesticide Research Institute.
Shandong was and still is a major agricultural province on the mainland, and Li Dejun has vowed to develop an economical and efficient paraquat for these hard-working people.
However, this scientific research road is far more rugged than expected, and the challenges and difficulties are like mountains and rivers one after another, and every time in the dead of night they recall the figures of the peasants' labor, Li Dejun and his team are firmly determined to continue to move forward.
After countless days and nights of continuous struggle, they tirelessly overcome one scientific research difficulty after another, and the technology continued to innovate in research, and finally ushered in the dawn of hope.
In 1999, after trial and error, Li Dejun's team successfully developed an advanced paraquat production process. This technology is more environmentally friendly and significantly reduces waste generation, making it both efficient and environmentally friendly.
The newly developed herbicide can quickly wilt weeds with a single spray, and it is toxic to only needle weeds, so it will not damage the soil and protect crops.
The new type of volatilization is also relatively rapid, leaving no too much pollution and ensuring the purity of the farmland.
Even in rainy weather, the herbicide's effectiveness is not washed away by rain, so the herbicide not only quickly removes weeds in the field, but also protects the soil and keeps crops safe.
In 2000, Li Dejun handed over the proven technology to manufacturers, and paraquat was quickly put on the shelves of pesticide stores across the country and into the eyes of hundreds of millions of farmers.
The new paraquat was an instant hit and was quickly rolled out across the country, quickly gaining traction with farmers as a cost-effective herbicide.
Seeing the farmers smiling at the good weeding effect of paraquat, Li Dejun's heart was filled with joy and he felt that he had done a great thing for the people of the mainland.
The birth of domestic paraquat has led to the innovation of the mainland's agricultural industry, which has greatly improved agricultural production efficiency since its inception and ushered in a new era of agricultural development.
What's more, farmers are free from weed competition, and the mainland is also free from dependence on foreign pesticides. The yield of crops has been rising, and agriculture has jumped from the level of mere subsistence to the stage of wealth creation for many people.
In order to commend Li Dejun's outstanding contributions, in 2010, the National Federation of Chemistry and Chemical Industry awarded the first prize of scientific and technological progress to Shandong Pesticide Research Institute.
Li Dejun achieved paraquat's brilliance, and paraquat made him the "father of paraquat", and the two can be said to be mutually successful.
Becoming a "poison" harms people's lives
However, the good times did not last long, and as time went on, paraquat ceased to be a rave of positive reviews, and instead there was news that many people had died from paraquat ingestion.
The damage caused by its chemical components to the human body is catastrophic, irreversible and incurable, and its fatality rate is as high as 90%.
Often, the poisoner may experience only nausea and vomiting initially, and simple gastric lavage and infusion therapy can provide temporary relief, but the real danger lurks in the following period.
The poison of paraquat silently penetrates deep into the bloodstream and internal organs, and is lethal because it targets the lungs, triggering an irreversible fibrotic process.
Most poisoned people experience two to three weeks of painful struggle, and the lamp of life gradually goes out, and they die in great pain.
In these last moments, they not only have to endure the torment of loss of appetite and breathing difficulties, but also have to face an even deeper and more terrible experience, waking up to feel the passage of life from their bodies bit by bit.
In the early days, paraquat was a clear, odourless liquid that looked indistinguishable from ordinary water, leading to many misingesses.
There is a story in Henan Province where a 14-year-old boy felt thirsty in the middle of the night, and in a daze, he picked up a bottle of liquid that looked like a "drink" and drank it all.
Perhaps because the light was not good, he didn't tell it was paraquat, and that's how the tragedy happened. After drinking a small amount of this liquid, the body will immediately feel unwell, but this discomfort is no different from ordinary people.
No one knows whether he was afraid of his parents' scolding, or because he didn't want his parents to worry, so he endured it for two days without saying it, and this decision also pushed him to the brink of life and death.
Two days later, paraquat began to erode from his mouth to his stomach, causing acute kidney failure and irreversible damage by the time he was taken to hospital.
Despite the best efforts of the doctors, who performed 11 hemoperfusions and 13 days of hemodialysis, they could not save him, and the teenager passed away.
In the aftermath of this tragedy, Li Dejun added a dark green dye to paraquat to prevent similar ingestions, as well as a pungent odor and emetic.
This strong ammonia smell is prohibitive, and even if accidentally ingested, emetics can quickly trigger vomiting to reduce damage. To his surprise, paraquat is a tragedy for accidental ingestion and a desperate choice for many people.
A 23-year-old man who chose paraquat to end his life in a moment of confusion was rushed to the nearest hospital by his family.
The pesticide that churned violently in the abdomen along the way had begun to wreak havoc in the body and trigger a strong rejection reaction, and every vomit was accompanied by black blood.
Not only has the inside of his body been battered, but the skin of his palms has also turned black, and pesticides will be ruthlessly encroaching on his life.
The young man on the hospital bed listened silently to the doctor's diagnosis, and his silence seemed to say that life seemed to be irrelevant. After careful examination, the doctor confirmed that the pesticide consumed was paraquat and was pessimistic about his condition.
The reason for this is very simple: even today paraquat treatment is a huge challenge for hospitals, with doses of 5 to 15 mL usually fatal, as in the case of the youths mentioned above, as high as 150 mL.
The result was sad, after eighteen days of hard work to rescue him, his abdomen began to harden, his breathing gradually failed, and finally his life fell silently.
Production and sale are prohibited
In December 2021, in a quiet village in Xingtaiwei County, the fate of an 18-year-old girl named Meng Meng was rewritten by two seemingly ordinary cups of "cold medicine".
The two glasses of liquid came from her brother-in-law's hands, and after a police investigation, it was revealed that they were diluted with the deadly pesticide paraquat. Mengmeng, who struggled on the line of life and death, finally had to undergo an expensive lung transplant that cost up to one million yuan.
Fortunately, she was reborn under the scalpel, but no one knows what the future holds, although she finally woke up, but I don't know what kind of sequelae she will endure, and her former health is gone.
In December of the same year, the police listed Mengmeng's brother-in-law as a suspect and brought him to justice after admitting the facts. This tragedy is not an isolated case, but the tip of the iceberg, and behind paraquat lies countless untold stories.
Every time Li Dejun saw such news, he felt more guilty, because the original intention of inventing paraquat was to improve the development of agriculture and reduce the pressure on farmers, but he did not expect to contribute to the tragedy.
He also made paraquat into a solid gel that could only be used in water, and set up a special foundation for paraquat with paraquat manufacturers to raise money to help patients and their families who took paraquat.
Unfortunately, despite his efforts, many people die each year from paraquat, so the state has issued orders to stop paraquat incidents.
In 2014, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs abolished the registration and production license of paraquat, thereby terminating the manufacture and market circulation of the product, and in 2016, the sale and use of paraquat was completely banned in China.
In 2018, the registration of paraquat solubilizers was revoked, but products that have already been produced are still allowed to be sold and used within the shelf life.
Finally, in 2020, a complete ban was imposed on the sale and use of paraquat gum in China, and paraquat has disappeared from history.
Of course, there are still a number of shady vendors who are secretly selling paraquat in another form, and everyone should be cautious. However, it is not paraquat that we need to eradicate, but the hearts of each individual who do not value life.
Paraquat exists for the benefit of the people, but because some people drink "poison" on the spur of the moment or because they can't think of it, they end up hurting themselves and their families.
There is another way of saying paraquat that it will give you time to regret it, but it will not give you the opportunity to regret it, and drinking paraquat will definitely give you death, but it will make you experience the feeling of life passing a little bit before you die......
Many netizens also complained about this incident, paraquat was "drunk to stop production", such an ending is really embarrassing.