October 1, 1983

The Environmental Protection Agency, after a 10-year fight over the issue, today banned most agricultural uses of ethylene dibromide, a chemical known to cause cancer. It is used both as a pesticide and a gasoline additive. Meanwhile, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration withdrew a standard that it announced only Thursday for protecting workers from the dangerous substance. The environmental agency's action is intended to halt the increasing contamination of food and underground water supplies in Florida, California and other agricultural states where the pesticide is most commonly used. The safety and health agency standard would have set maximum levels of the substance to which workers could be legally exposed.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz failed yesterday to persuade Syria's Foreign Minister to drop his Government's refusal to agree to United Nations observers to police the cease-fire in Lebanon, a senior State Department official said. Expressing some frustration over Syria's position, not only on the United Nations truce observers but also on its rejection of Lebanon's request that it agree to terms for withdrawing its troops from that country, the official told reporters at a briefing that the Syrians ''have been very difficult for us to get along with.'' ''We have had lots of contact with them, we've had many points of difference,'' he said. ''There's no question of the fact that their views differ from ours on many important respects.''

Investors did not have to look much past takeover targets to find the stock market stars of the third quarter. Market strength or industry fundamentals played second fiddle to the bidding wars. That contrasted with the first two quarters of the year, when the surging market carried any number of issues to new heights. This third-quarter phenomenon was particularly visible on the New York Stock Exchange. Its two largest percentage gainers were the Northwest Energy Company and Harris Bankcorp Inc., both sought by other companies.

In another step toward the total deregulation of the banking industry, Federal regulators decided today to make two high-interest types of accounts more accessible to depositors. The ruling covers money for Keogh plans and Individual Retirement Accounts, on which taxes are deferred until the funds are withdrawn, usually at retirement. At that point, the taxes payable will be lower. The regulators removed, as of Dec. 1, the $2,500 minimum investment in so-called Super NOW accounts and money market accounts. These accounts, on which there are no interest rate ceilings, had not been available to those investing in I.R.A.'s because most salaried employees may not put more than $2,000 a year in those accounts.

New York City was awarded nearly $25 million by the Federal Government today for 10 urban development projects in the five boroughs. The projects range from $15 million for the construction of a shopping and office plaza on East Fordham Road in the Bronx to $428,000 for the renovation of Town Hall on West 43d Street. It was the largest amount the city ever received at one time for such redevelopment, city officials said. New Jersey Gets $19 Million In Trenton, Governor Kean announced that seven New Jersey cities and one county had beeen awarded $19 million for urban development projects. The grants range from $5.5 million for the construction of an apartment complex in New Brunswick to $142,000 for a citywide commercial revitalization project in Vineland. ''These grants will provide badly needed jobs and a great infusion of economic strength to some of our most important urban areas,'' Governor Kean said.