I don't know...at that time (I read a mid-1950s "Popular Science" or "Popular Mechanics" article about this, many years later), *hydrazine* was considered an agricultural "wonder chemical." The article had photographs of onions for sale in the produce section of a grocery store; they hadn't sprouted because they'd been sprayed with hydrazine. It also showed a young man walking along a railroad right-of-way with a pump sprayer, spraying the weeds with hydrazine to kill them--and to *keep* them from growing back, and:

Today, we know--and it's possible that it was known back then, at least in part--that hydrazine is not only highly toxic and an eye and nose irritant, but is carcinogenic and mutagenic as well (and inhaling even a little of it can destroy the aveoli in the lungs, causing a horrible death (dinitrogen textroxide, hydrazine's frequent "oxidizer partner," is even worse).

In his 1957 book about Project Vanguard, "The Making of a Moon: The Story of the Earth Satellite Program," Arthur C. Clarke wrote that hydrazine (he was referring to the UDMH variety) "...is a liquid at ordinary temperatures, and though slightly toxic is stable and generally well behaved." It's only "slightly toxic" in comparison to, say, hydrogen cyanide or fluorine... :-) Just as Dow Chemical had Agent Orange and Agent Pink, hydrazine might as well have been called--for its defoliant application--"Agent Clear."

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