WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Michigan Farm Bureau (MFB) and others are still urging growers to write to the U.S. EPA about their use of pyrethroids, even as the agency continues its review of this class of insecticides.

 

The MFB’s Agriculture Ecology manager, Laura Campbell, said that EPA is conducting a preliminary environmental and human health risk assessment. The EPA’s website says the comment period for that review is already over, but Campbell says the comment period remains open and the agency website is not updated to reflect that.

 

She also says MFB is still urging its members to write the EPA and submit a

public comment, given the new administration in Washington.

 

In the meantime, MFB and others are providing forms people can use to submit comment to the EPA about their use of pyrethroids, a class of insecticidal chemistries used in a number of different products. Campbell says 27 different chemistries are being reviewed in this class.

 

According to EPA, pyrethrins and pyrethroids are insecticides that are included in more than 3,500 registered products, many of which are used widely in and around households, including on pets and in treated clothing, in mosquito control and in agriculture. The use of pyrethrins and pyrethroids has increased during the past decade with the declining

use of organophosphate pesticides, which are more acutely toxic to birds

and mammals than pyrethroids. EPA is concerned about the potential

for urban runoff of pyrethroids, which could expose aquatic life to harmful levels

in water and sediment, the agency says.

 

In one public comment, the California Stormwater Quality Assoc. states that it’s concerned about urban runoff of pyrethroids via storm drains. When too much pesticide-related pollution occurs, the group says, the municipal government could be the subject of enforcement actions under the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and that the municipality could also become a defendant in a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act.

 

In another comment, Franklin Collier, owner of Pleasant Cove Nursery in Rock Island, Tenn., said he uses pyrethroids on his 500 acres of field-grown and containerized nursery stock.

 

“My business utilizes many of these products extensively in both pest management and quarantine programs, and their loss could seriously affect our ability to produce marketable plants and to ship our plants products,” he says.

 

He uses pyrethroids to control both Japanese beetle and imported fire ant. Bifenthrin is also the “only product that can effectively manage maple tip moth in the spring. Permethrin is presently the only insecticide product that can manage ambrosia beetles. All of these products and others like lambda-cyhalothrin and cyfluthrin are also important to nurseries for general control of pests like adult Japanese beetle, dogwood borer and other caterpillars.”

 

Collier also writes that he uses buffers and other techniques to prevent runoff of pesticides into water systems.

 

Beth Nelson, president of the National Alfalfa & Forage Alliance, also commented, saying that bifenthrin, one of the pyrethroids being reviewed, is “a critically important pest management tool for U.S. alfalfa.”

 

To view all of the comments submitted to the EPA so far, go to the agency’s website at www.epa.gov and use the search tool using the term pyrethroids.

 

To submit a comment through the MFB’s website, go to www.michfb.com/MI/ACT

 

To submit a comment directly to the EPA, go to the agency’s website and click on the docket number for the specific chemistry and then call the contact person listed on the top of the page.