Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Last September, the EPA released a statement about its plan to ban the sale of “the most toxic rat and mouse poisons and “rodenticide products that use loose bait and pellets.” Its reason for doing so was “to better protect children, pets, and wildlife.” The EPA had previously announced in 2008 that “rodenticide manufacturers would have three years to adopt limits on the sale of the products” after the agency had gone through “thirteen years of studies, hearings, reports and legal battles.”
According to PRWatch, the EPA became aware that rodenticides “were finding their way into the food chain” by the early 1980s. Poison control centers in this country had been receiving 12,000 to 15,000 calls annually regarding the exposure of children under the age of six to rat poison.
From PRWatch:
In 1998, the Clinton administration’s EPA deemed that rodenticides had to taste bitter, so kids wouldn’t eat the products, and be colored with a bright dye, so it would be obvious if they did. The EPA backed down from these requirements in 2001 after George W. Bush took office and made the measures “voluntary,” reportedly due to industry pressure.
After seeing no drop in the number of children being poisoned by rodenticides, in 2004 the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed suit to force the EPA to take action, and a New York district court criticized the agency for reversing itself and caving to pesticide manufacturers. The court wrote, “the EPA lacked even the proverbial ‘scintilla’ of evidence justifying its reversal of the requirement it had imposed, after extensive study, only a few years before.” In response, the EPA took steps to regulate the products. Those rules were intended to go into effect this year, but were delayed by the resistance of Reckitt Benckiser and two other rodenticide manufacturers, Liphatech and Spectrum Group.
The EPA estimates that the unreported child exposure rate may be four times as high as the 12,000-15,000 calls to poison control centers each year, and some believe the number to be ten times as high. Poisoned young children can experience internal bleeding, bloody urine, bleeding gums, and blood coming from their ears. African-American and Hispanic children living below the poverty line have been disproportionately affected. A New York study found that 57 percent of children hospitalized for eating rat poison between 1990 and 1997 were African-American and 26 percent were Latino.
