The “secret” ingredients in a few widely used
pesticides won’t be secret anymore, thanks to a small nonprofit
group in Eugene, Ore. The Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to
Pesticides won a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Oct. 16 against
both the Environmental Protection Agency and the pesticide
industry, which had claimed that “inert” ingredients are trade
secrets.
The court ruled the EPA must divulge,
with a few exceptions, all the contents of six pesticides,
including Roundup and Velpar, to the
public.
While the active ingredients of
pesticides that kill or repel pests are identified by law on
product labels, “inerts’ are defined as anything added to make the
product more potent or easier to use, says Caroline Cox of the
coalition. The EPA has identified over 2,000 different inerts that
make up the bulk of most pesticides; they include everything from
eggshells and cookie crumbs to chemicals more toxic than the active
ingredients.
Most substances have not been tested
by the EPA for toxicity, Cox says, and calling them “inert,” or
inactive, may be a misnomer. The inerts xylene and nonylphenol, for
example, can cause reduced fertility, memory and hearing loss or
fetal death, and they could be in many household pesticides. We
don’t know, Cox points out, because the public isn’t privy to that
information.
Even though the grassroots
organization hopes this case – six years in the making – will set a
precedent, Al Heier, spokesman for the EPA, says the court decision
changes very little. The EPA must still be very cautious about what
information it releases, he says, because, by law, the penalty for
revealing a company’s formula for a pesticide – a “trade secret’ –
is up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine.
Each
dispute may have to be settled in court, says Heier. With 18,000
pesticide products on the market, NCAP’s Cox says the nonprofit’s
fight for the facts might take a very long time.
*Katie
Fesus
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline What’s not on the label.
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