List shows pesticides laced with unlabelled substances
Most of the components, even suspected carcinogens, are not listed on the labels, leaving consumers in the dark about what is in the products they buy. Some of the common ingredients, especially the peanut butter, pose potential hazards for people with food allergies.
Subject: List shows pesticides laced with unlabelled substances........................
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 09:52:57 -0400
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
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an article from the Globe and Mail entitled: List shows pesticides laced with unlabelled substances by MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, dated Saturday, June 9, 2001.
Pesticides contain a slew of unusual ingredients, ranging from peanut butter and cookies to cancer-causing agents, according to a federal list of the roughly 5,000 non-active ingredients found in Canadian pest and weed killers.
Most of the components, even suspected carcinogens, are not listed on the labels, leaving consumers in the dark about what is in the products they buy. Some of the common ingredients, especially the peanut butter, pose potential hazards for people with food allergies.
The 86-page list obtained by The Globe and Mail shows that pesticides are loaded with bizarre compounds. Some contain such seemingly benign ingredients as bread crumbs, bran, apple jelly or gum, as well as fragrances, perfumes and dyes. Others are laced with nasty compounds that can cause cancer and birth defects, or are otherwise suspected of being harmful to health.
In the unwholesome category are such items as asbestos fibres, formaldehyde, lead, cadmium and methyl chloride, commonly used as a paint stripper.
The list, dated December, 1997, is of materials in pesticides that are not considered the active ingredient, which actually kills the target animal, fungus or weed. These non-active ingredients may make up anywhere from 1 per cent to about 99 per cent of the product.
Manufacturers are required to divulge on their product labels only the active ingredients, but little disclosure is required for anything else in the package. The non-active components are often kept off the package because they are considered trade secrets.
Assembled from the 6,000 or so pesticides used here, the list contains complex chemical names that only someone with a degree in chemistry could decipher. Pesticide makers are required by law to submit data on these non-active items, known in the industry as formulants, to the federal Pest Management Regulatory Agency, a division of Health Canada.
The pest agency doesn't make the list public, although many details on formulants have been released in the United States by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Canadian organization initially denied it had created a list of pesticide contents, but changed its position when faxed part of the record obtained by The Globe.
Formulants are typically used to make pesticides stick better to plants, to allow the active ingredient to penetrate target insects, to make them more resistant to rain, or to attract vermin to poisons.
Peanut butter or cookies, for instance, can be used to lure rodents to eat poisons.
"Rats and mice love cookies," said Diana Somers, acting director of the health-evaluation division at the agency.
"That way you can get rid of [the pest] without spraying all over the place."
Ms. Somers said the formulants in pesticides are often used in other household products.
"If you take a look at cosmetics, if you take a look at cleaning products, they're all like this," she said. "These aren't unique products."
She said manufacturers use formulants to make pesticides more effective.
"All of this . . . optimizes the active ingredient and what it's intended to do," she said.
The secrecy surrounding formulants in Canada has angered environmentalists, who want companies to provide greater disclosure about what consumers and farmers are actually buying when they purchase pesticides.
They have argued that the formulants need tighter regulations and better disclosure to allow consumers to reject products containing possible carcinogens or allergens.
"They definitely should not be in pesticides," Janet May, acting executive director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance, said.
The group has advocated that pesticides be banned from municipal areas, and it says the long list of little-known ingredients is one more reason consumers should avoid using these products.
"They're far from being inert or inactive. I'd say some of [the secret ingredients] are quite toxic," Ms. May said.
Both the U.S. and Canadian governments have reacted to some of the concern about formulants and want pesticide manufacturers to eliminate the most harmful ones from their products. Better disclosure practices -- including alerts for pesticides containing substances that could cause allergies -- are under consideration.
The most common ingredients on the Canadian list are dyes, fragrances and perfumes -- products that would allow manufacturers to, say, make bacon and cheese-flavoured pesticides or add a cherry fragrance.
And, Ms. May said, "Manufacturers often use fragrances to mask an offensive chemical smell."
Source url: http://www.globeandmail.com
Well Mr. Helliker, How on earth can you continue to ignore these unregistered "inerts", if they are in fact, (unregistered) formulants to make the active ingredient in your "registered" pesticides more effective and/or optimize the active ingredient and what it's intended to do, which is to KILL and/or INJURE and/or to REPEL?" Do these very descriptions not describe what you say is meant by the term "pesticide" and/or "active ingredient"? As you are well aware your unregistered "inerts" make up the bulk of your "registered" POISON formula and are not even considered when you "scientifically" determine the "risk" of your "registered" pesticide formulation. The MSDS for some of your so-called "inerts" do not allow them to be used by themselves - in some of the very areas you "legally" allow your "registered" POISON formulations to be routinely applied! How on earth can this be called "regulation"? You are making us live on this planet/earth as if we had another one to go to. Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten
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