Lobstermen Sue Over Possible Link Between Malathion, Lobster Die-Off

[hatrack]

In November 1994, the Environmental Protection Agency wrote Cheminova Inc. that it had rejected the chemical company's proposed label for the pesticide Fyfanon, a brand name for malathion. The EPA said the label needed a warning that the spray should not be used "around bodies of water where fish or shellfish are grown and/or harvested commercially."

But almost five years later, in September 1999, when tons of Fyfanon were sprayed to kill mosquitoes in neighborhoods that drain to Long Island Sound, the label still did not include the suggested warning.

The restrictive language didn't appear on Fyfanon packaging until the following month, a few weeks after millions of lobsters began to die in the Sound.

The Fyfanon label's painstaking evolution, as charted in documents filed as part of lawsuit lobstermen are waging against Cheminova, illustrates how seemingly minor wording changes can take years to materialize on 55-gallon drums of pesticides, even though they are recommended by the government. The lobstermen say Cheminova was negligent in allowing Fyfanon to be used bearing what they claim was an outdated label.

Whatever the resolution of the label question, it remains unclear whether the spraying had any impact on the lobsters. Scientists agree only that pesticides may have played a role, along with unusually warm water temperatures, a parasitic disease and other environmental factors. To prove negligence, however, the lobstermen have only to prove that the Fyfanon spraying was a substantial factor in the lobster collapse, not the main cause."

EDIT

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lilobs264097991dec28,0,6400751.story?coll=ny-linews-headlines

[tk2kewl]

1. I have been following this story since it is local to me

Unbelievable, really. The harvast has essentially completely collapsed (approx 1% of what it was before) since this chemical was applied.

And image what tort-reform (read: responsibility-relief) could do for these companies.

http://www.lsc.usgs.gov/FHB/workshops/28/19.htm

on edit: add link and add info about harvest being reduced to 1% of original. also note that other factors such as warmer waters may have contributed to decline

[SariesNightly]

2. Double standards

From Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit, Inconsistency = e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but specific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved".

Cui bono?

[atommom]

3. You can't pick and choose which arthropods your poison will kill.

But the delays in updating the labels are just ridiculous. You have to wonder how many other chemicals are being used in unsafe ways because the companies haven't gotten around to changing the labels...