Green Blog: E.P.A. Cracks Down on Rat Poisons

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is moving to ban the sale of a line of mouse and rat poisons made by Reckitt Benckiser, saying that the manufacturer has refused to adopt the agency?s safety standards for rodenticides.

After the agency?s ?notice of intent? is published in the Federal Register, the company will have 30 days to appeal to an E.P.A. administrative law judge. If no hearing is requested, a national ban on sales of 12 d-Con bait products to consumers will become final, the agency said.

The E.P.A.?s regulatory effort is intended mainly to prevent children from suffering from accidental exposure to the bait. Some 10,000 children a year are accidentally exposed to mouse and rat baits, and 1 percent of those need medical attention, an agency spokesman said, citing data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

The agency said Reckitt Benckiser had not complied with safety regulations issued by the E.P.A. in 2011 that require rodenticide products for consumer use to be contained in protective tamper-resistant bait stations. The agency prohibits pellets and other forms of bait that cannot be secured in bait stations.

The company did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

The E.P.A. said it had received no reports of children being exposed to bait made by companies that have moved to comply with the standards. Examples of products meeting the standards include Tomcat, made by Bell Laboratories, and the Assault brand, made by PM Resources.

The agency said that because millions of households use d-Con, the number of children who are exposed to mouse and rat bait in the future will be vastly reduced once the products are withdrawn from the market.

?Moving forward to ban these products will prevent completely avoidable risks to children,? said James Jones, acting assistant administrator for the E.P.A.?s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

Despite its move to ban the products? sale to consumers, the poisons themselves will still be available for nonresidential use in places like farms, the agency spokesman said.

The Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation organization, called on the E.P.A. to extend the ban to cover agricultural and other purposes to prevent poisonings of animals and birds that prey on rodents that have consumed the poisons. Among the victims are endangered species like the northern spotted owl, the group said.

It also urged the E.P.A. to ban second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides that kill rodents by causing uncontrollable bleeding. Those substances, including brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, and difenacoum, are banned for sale to residential consumers because of their toxicity to wildlife.

But the so-called super-toxics will still be available if they are purchased in bulk at agricultural supply stores, used by professionally licensed applicators or placed outdoors in tamper-resistant packaging.

?I?m very relieved that the E.P.A. has taken this significant step to protect our families from accidental poisonings,? Jonathan Evans of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. ?But other steps are needed. ?Wildlife, too, needs protection from these cruel, indiscriminate and deadly toxins.?

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/e-p-a-cracks-down-on-rat-poisons/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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