A review of the use and place of lindane in the protection of stored products from the ravages of insect pests.

Abstract

Raucourt (1945) and Slade (1945), more or less simultaneously, brought the insecticidal activity of benzene hexachloride to the attention of the world. The American Medical Association Committee on Pesticides (1951) ascribes the original manufacture of the molecule (by the photochlorination of benzene) to Michael Faraday in 1825. Papers by Rosenstiehl (1862), Heys (1871), and Bodewig (1879) present chemical information but the insecticidal effect does not appear to have been noticed until approximately 1939. A. E. Grant and Imperial Chemical Industries were granted a British patent for BHC as an insecticide in 1939, and Hardie a U. S. patent in 1940. Raucourt (1945) records that M. L. Grindaux held at that time a similar patent in France. Slade (1945) made it clear that considerable was known then about the molecular structure of BHC including recognition of the gamma isomer as the most highly insecticidal form. Later the gamma isomer became referred to as lindane. BHC was assessed for use in the control of stored product pests soon after its insecticidal nature was recognized. Slade (1945) referred to its use for cockroaches, the grain weevil (Sitophilis granarius L.), the hide beetle, and the clothes moth but reported the Mediterranean flour moth to be resistant.