Pyrethroids are insecticides widely used in agriculture and gardening. They form a group of chemically different compounds with a high degree of efficacy and low human toxicity. Pyrethroids are often regarded as a modern of safe insecticides, because they are rapidly metabolised in mammals and ecosystems, which explains their low toxicity.
The natural pyrethroid compounds, pyrethrins, were already known in China in the first century AD. In the 1940s the producing of synthetic pyrethroids began, and pyrethroid compounds are now routinely synthetised by the agrochemical industry.
The...