Source:ABC Bird
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced the cancellation of
two toxic pesticides that were documented by American Bird Conservancy to have
recurrently poisoned hundreds of birds.
"ABC has repeatedly raised concerns with the EPA about the toxic impacts of
both dimethoate and methidathion on some of America’s migratory bird species
that feed in fields where the
pesticides are used. There are a number of
less toxic, widely-available, and equally effective insecticide alternatives
that can be used by our nation’s farmers, and so we applaud the EPA for taking
these final steps to cancel the registered uses of these harmful chemicals,”
said Darin Schroeder, vice president of Conservation Advocacy for American Bird
Conservancy, the nation’s leading bird conservation organization.
Dimethoate is an insecticide used on many different food products
including blueberries, a fruit often eaten by birds such as Cedar Waxwings and
Baltimore Orioles. ABC’s records show multiple poisoning incidents by this
chemical resulting in over 600 bird fatalities. ABC has repeatedly requested EPA
to revoke import tolerances for dimethoate and twelve other chemicals – meaning
that food containing residues of the pesticide would no longer be allowed to be
imported into the United States. ABC believes that as long as such tolerances
exist, the use of these pesticides will continue on crops grown for export in
Central America, where many migratory birds spend their
winter.
Methidathion is used to control a variety of insects and mites in
many crops such as fruits, vegetables, tobacco, alfalfa, and sunflowers. ABC’s
Avian Incident Monitoring System database shows that it has been associated with
numerous hawk poisoning incidents. Data on deadly encounters involving birds and
chemicals is documented by the AIMS database, a centralized source for field
data on lethal and sub-lethal impacts of pesticides on birds. Unfortunately,
while the system had provided documentation on such incidents dating back to the
1980s, in 1998 the EPA relaxed reporting rules on pesticide poisoning of
wildlife to the point where they are now effectively meaningless.
"Of the
five billion pounds of pesticides that are applied worldwide each year, 20% is
used in the United States. The assumption that because these pesticides are
licensed by the federal government their use is automatically safe is unfounded.
In fact, pesticides like dimethoate and methidathion continue to cause
significant bird mortality each year,” said Mr. Schroeder.
In 2002,
American Bird Conservancy formed the National Pesticide Reform Coalition (NPRC)
to improve collaboration between conservation organizations on pesticide issues
and increase their influence on regulatory decisions. ABC leads this coalition,
which numbers more than 20 partner groups. Over the last decade, ABC and NPRC
efforts have led to the cancellation of over a dozen pesticides that are
particularly harmful to birds, including fenthion, chlorfenapyr, ethyl
parathion, and carbofuran. These combined restrictions have caused bird deaths
from pesticide poisonings to drop dramatically from an estimated 67 million
birds per year in 1992 to perhaps fewer than 15 million per year today.
Yangzhou pioneer chemical CO.LTD
dicamba at 4.4 kg/ha per surface area of ponds dissipated at
about 1.3 ppm/day. Dicamba dissipated as a logarithmic function of concentration
with time. Reaction of seedling crops to irrigation water containing dicamba
varied among species and cultivars. Relative tolerance from these studies was
ranked from most to least tolerant as follows: sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.)
Moench. ‘RS-626’ and ‘Pioneer 820’] > cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.
‘Blightmaster’ > ‘Paymaster’ > ‘Dunn’) > cucumbers (Cucumis sativa L.
‘Straight eight’).