Treatment for specific herbicide poisonings

Always seek advice from a clinical toxicologist or poisons information centre (13 11 26) for the management of herbicide poisoning because of the wide variety of herbicides available.

For herbicides that cause uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation, the mainstay of treatment is resuscitation and supportive care. An example is bromoxynil, which is coformulated with chlorophenoxy herbicides. Ingestion of this product causes severe toxicity, characterised by tachypnoea, tachycardia, metabolic acidosis, increased carbon dioxide production and hyperthermia. Treatment includes:

• cooling for hyperthermia—use of both external and internal cooling measures (eg cold intravenous fluid therapy, extracorporeal methods)
• hyperventilation for hypercapnia.

Propanil poisoning can induce methaemoglobinaemia; for management, see here.