EPA Restricts Pesticides to Protect Salmon
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is gearing up to enforce new label restrictions on three chemicals to prevent their use near salmon habitats in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, after chemical manufactures refused to voluntarily comply with the EPA’s initial label request.
A 2008 assessment by the National Marine Fisheries
Service (NMFS), found that the chemicals interfere with the abilities
of 26 species of endangered salmonoids to smell, migrate, reproduce,
and avoid predators.
This represents a significant step in a
10-year campaign led by chemical watchdog organizations, Northwest
Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP), Earthjustice,
Washington Toxics Coalition, and the Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA) to protect the Pacific Coast salmon
and steelhead trout.
Executive director of NCAP Kim Leval
told The Epoch Times that they see the EPA “taking a strong stand right
now” to force chemical industries to make protective changes. She said
this is not only an issue of protecting salmon but also of protecting
public health.
Glen Spain spokesperson for PCFFA said that
this campaign is part of a broader fight to regulate pesticides in the
United States. He said that registered chemicals are often combined
with "inert” chemicals, which can be highly toxic, but are not required
to be labeled. The way these chemicals interact when mixed in a natural
environment is synergistic—often more toxic than any one individual
chemical.
Impasse
A spokesperson for chemical
manufacturer Dow AgroSciences, Dow AgroSciences, one of the companies
refusing the new label instructions, said that “things have sort of
reached an impasse right now, I guess we’ll have to see how this all
works its way through.”
On its website the company says that
three chemicals under discussion—diazinon, malathion, and
chlorpyrifos—are “not adversely affecting any critical habitat,” and
that the scientific basis for the EPA’s decision to regulate is flawed
because it initially did agree with the NMFS assessment.
The EPA has announced that it is also planning to impose restrictions
on three other chemicals carbaryl, carbofuan, and methomyl.
