According to my 1989 Farm Chemicals Handbook, 2,4-Dinitrophenol is indeed
a pesticide sold under the trade name Chemox PE. It is listed as an
insecticide/acaricide and fungicide. As for toxicity it is relatively
toxic, judging from the oral LD50 value (the quantity of material needed
to kill 50% of the test animals) of 30mg/kg. By way of comparison,
the herbicide 2,4-D has an oral LD50 of 375 mg/kg, and chlorpyrifos ( a
very widely used insecticide) has an LD50 of about 100mg/kg. I don't know
if this material is still available or if it has been banned since 1989.
It is also important to keep in mind that when a material gets into the
environment its specific "toxicity" is often less important than other
properties that determine its bioavailability ... is it persistent, does
it readily degrade into less or more toxic materials, does it complex with
soil constituents and become unavailable to organisms or does it readily
leach, etc.
Scott Maxwell
Graduate Student in Environmental Science
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
University of Illinois, Urbana IL
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