Just to add further detail to Aaron's post about the possibilit
Hi All

Just to add further detail to Aaron's post about the possibility of gamma irradiation destroying pesticides:

According to (1) gamma irradiation can cause the loss of chloride ions from biphenyls such as dioxins (also see the refereed paper 2), essentially detoxifying them.

The abstract which Aaron gave discussed the detoxification of chlorpyrifos by gamma irradiation.  This molecule (3), like the world's number one insecticide (4) imidacloprid (5), has a chlorine-substituted nitrogen-containing ring.  It would seem to be a reasonable working hypothesis that dechlorination was involved in the detoxification of chloropyrifos that Aaron reported, and that this could also operate in the chloronicotinyl insecticides such as imidacloprid.

Surely someone is measuring residues in stores and on dry empty comb (irradiated and unirradiated) of CCD hives?

all the best

Gavin 

(1) http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Radiation_chemistry
(2) http://tinyurl.com/2ytbua
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpyrifos
(4) http://www.chemiplant.com/es/chemiplant/noticias/imidacloprid_agreement_02.htm
(5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid

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