Attorney General Targets Pesticides Company

        Subject:     Attorney General Targets Pesticides Company
            Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003
           From:     Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation

About 200 environmentalists and students applauded at a Garden City forum Wednesday as Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced plans to sue the maker of a widely used insecticide for publicly claiming it is safe.

"Dow Chemical had sales of $27 billion last year, one would think they could easily abide by the law and accept slightly lower sales" of the insecticide chlorpyrifos, Spitzer said. The chemical is better known by its trade name, Dursban.

But a Dow attorney rejected Spitzer's charge that the company violated a 1994 agreement with the state that prohibited it from advertising that Dursban and other Dow pesticides are "safe." "This is a cheap shot," said Guy Relaford, global legal counsel for Dow AgroSciences, an Indiana-based Dow subsidiary that is the chief manufacturer of Dursban.

Because all chemical pesticides pose some degree of risk, federal regulations prohibit advertisements that describe them as "safe" or "nontoxic." Spitzer's predecessor, Robert Abrams. sued Dow for allegedly violating those regulations. In 1994 Dow settled the case by agreeing not to "publish or broadcast" claims in New York that describe its pesticides as safe.

The new dispute centers on messages the company wrote in Dow magazines and letters it sent to pest-control companies and other users of Dursban, as well as statements on Dow's Web site.

Spitzer's office maintains that those messages, which say that Dursban is safe when used according to the label, are advertisements that are designed to be read by the public or by spraying companies that pass the information on to consumers.

But Dow argues that those messages do not violate the 1994 settlement because they were designed not to boost sales, but to defend Dursban against attacks by environmentalists and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "We have a constitutional right to address policy issues that relate to the safety of our products."

For a quarter-century, Dursban was a mainstay of insect control on lawns and in homes, gardens and even flea collars. The EPA halted home uses of Dursban in 2000 for safety reasons, but the chemical is still widely used on crops and golf courses. Its chemical structure is similar to nerve gas and animal tests have shown it causes nervous system damage at high doses. The EPA asked Dow to restrict home uses after concluding that it poses an "unreasonable threat" to children and infants. Dow rejects that conclusion, saying it only agreed to stop home uses to avoid years of litigation with the EPA.

Spitzer said his lawsuit would be filed next week, after a mandatory five-day waiting period, "unless we get an acceptable answer from Dow." Both sides said they expect to go to court over the matter.

The news came at an Adelphi University symposium on environmental threats to children, organized by Port Washington activist Patricia Wood and her group, Grassroots Environmental Education.

The forum featured talks by two prominent environmental scientists, John Wargo of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Dr. Herbert Needleman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Wargo's research found that some children are exposed to hazardous levels of diesel exhaust on school buses, especially if those buses are idling for long periods. He urged school districts to adopt no-idling policies for buses.

Well Mr. Helliker, When are you going to stop "them" from saying any/all of your “registered" POISONS are "safe"?

If you would like to be included in our mailing list for continuing information on pesticides, please email us at list@safe2use.com.

Nontoxic Products Recommended by Steve Tvedten

Now Available

Safe 2 Use Products and Services