DURSBAN TO BE REMOVED FROM USE

[bill phagan]

Just got info the EPA will be removing dursban products from shelves. Baits are not included. This is one product of many our industry anticipates being removed from use due to the Food Quality Protection Act and pesticide concerns. Dow has agreed to voluntarily withdraw this organophosphate (Chlorpyrifos)product immediately. For those of you who are in the pest control profession, I urge you to get with your association, as we are, and fight to retain our products and not over react to the tree huggers without appropriate documentation and evidence. There are PC associations in all states. Check www.cpcoofflorida.org for yours. <p>For more info on Dursban removal check www.pctonline.com/article1.asp

[Charles]

Well they must be removing it for a good reason. Like it is dangeruos to your health. What reason is given for the removal? Is it getting into the drinking water? The atmosphere? i am all for the environment. We all gotta live here for awhile

[Scraper]

From what I understand it is being taken away for most purposes although it is not totally being banned. Dow's Dursban products which are geared for homeowners are the ones with Chlorpyrifos. I agree with Charles...I want to live here for a while too and if it is harming the environment, then do away with it. I'm sure EPA is not pressuring DOW without good hard evidence and I'm sure Dow being the megacompany that it is will come out with something to replace it very soon if they already don't have it waiting in the wings. Remember DDT? Boy did that stuff work great! Then we nearly lost our national bird!!! Still got a bottle in my garage as a souvenir.

[Lazer]

Removed from shelves???<p>Pesticides need to be registered with the EPA on a recurring basis. Most of the time a product is discontinued, the EPA does not renew the registration, the pesticide is no longer manufactured and the existing supply sells out.<p>To pull existing product off the shelf would be extraordinary.

[Charles]

Like Bill said they are removing it. Its an AP story today. But in the article they sadi they could sell the remaining of the product already on the shelf .But could not replace it

[Charles]

I just saw on Dan Rather, that they save dursban can cause nerve damage especially in children. He confirmed that they are letting them sell the remainder of the product on the shelf and that that fact has some people upset.

[thelawnguy]

My understanding, after reading the story, is that it will be unavailable to the homeowner market but still available to licensed pesticide applicators. Gets it out of the hands of the homeowner who dumps the whole bag around the tomatoes to keep the ants away:)<p>Bill

[Lazer]

If it's no longer available to the homeowner, but only to the licensed pesticide applicator-- that means it would be a RUP: Resticted Use Pesticide with all the implications and paperwork that go along with that.

[1stclasslawns]

Lindane is also no longer mfg for use in the U.S. <br>When present supplies are sold out that is it, or so Ive been told.

[steveair]

Lets see. Cigarettes are a known, proven cause of all types of cancer. Second hand smoke, also, has been proven to affect those who inhale it. Dursban, on the other hand &quot;supposely&quot; causes nerve damage among young children. <p>Verdict.....<p>Lets ban dursban, but before we do, lets light up a big fat stogie to celebrate the fact that the public will surely re-elect us now that we have done this NOBLE thing to benfit all man-kind.<p>When was the last time you talked to someone and they talked about how they were spraying some ants that were creeping around their garden, and suddenly their 6 month old toddler, tucked away in its crib a 100 yds away from any part of the garden suddenly started drooling at the mouth, its eyes starting spinnning around in its eye sockets, and later on it grew up to be a runner up for the role of &quot;corky&quot; on the show &quot;life goes on&quot;<p>Then, when was the last time you heard, or rememember for that point, a friend or relative developing some sort of lung cancer from cigarettes?<p>What a bunch of crap!<p>I think I will write my politician up today and tell him about how my back is starting to hurt because I have to lift that heavy gate on my landscape trailer up 10 times a day and that my doctor has told me that I am in for back problems in a couple of years that could lead to serious medical problems. <p>No, wait. that won't work. Lifting heavy objects all day has a 99.9% chance of causing back problems. Thats too good of a chance. Now, if it had a .000000000000001% chance of hurting me, then I would probably be on channel 4 news tonight,along with hundreds of other outraged landscapers, complaining about how we are outraged that we have been exposed to this threat for many years and that no one has done anything to help us, and that starting immediately, all homeowners who hire a company to mow their lawn must come out every week and help us lift out gates up and down so that we don't become crippled. <p>Sounds along the same lines to me.<p>steveair<p><p><p>

[PLS]

The EPD. The EPD is Goverenment. Is there one thing that goverenment does extremly well and efficently besides take money from the ones who work for it and give it to the ones who won't work for it. Better known as income redistribution, Hell on second thought, Their not even efficent at that!!! I would'nt be so quick to trust that the EPD is doing this &quot;For the children&quot;, Remenber there is politics involved here. The EPD has their political agenda. Oops, Sorry, I'll get off my soap box now.

[thelawnguy]

When the last hearing on Dursban was held, nobody from the industry showed up to extoll the products virtues, on ly the tree huggers who wanted it removed. Several trade mags put out the call to write to the (whatever agency it was we were supposed to write to). I didnt bother to respond. Did you (collectively)? This ban is what happens when folks sit on their butt thinking someone else will take care of it.<p>Bill

[lawrence stone]

Typical big brother bullshit. Instead of ordering a partial phaseout over time the<br>wackos react in this fashion as a spin stunt<br>to advance thier agenda.<p>Now they have every soccer mom thinking this<br>stuff is killing thier babies.<p>Again all they (feds) are doing is getting the ignorant unwashed masses in an uproar.

[Charles]

Steveair, why did you have to throw smoking into this discusion? lol You just asking for it. Talk to any doctor and they will show you using x-rays what smoking will do to you. They showed my dad after his quadruple bypass surgery what smoking had done to him. Needless to say he hasn't smoked a cig since then. They don't call them coffin nails for nothing. Even some of the tobacco companies have admited it. On 60 min. They had doctors on that told of how smoking causes impotence in alot of men over 40 who have been smoking for awhile. This is a fact! One of the effects of smoking is the it narrows most of the arteries in your body! Including those that go to you weiner! And the arteries to your brain. Among other things. These people did a 4 year study on Dursban. How long have you guys studied it? The government does alot of crazy things But they do alot of good too. WE all work outside. Therefore we should all care about the environment. If this drought and heat is caused a somewhat by global warming we should all want it investigated and corrected. Industry as shown by the tobacco co dont care about us they care about the bottom line. Who else is going to keep them in check but the government? Part of our lake is contaminated by PCBs now. Because and industry dumped in it 10 years ago.... I could go on but i won't.

[Lazer]

Again this board contains inaccurate posts from lawn care &quot;professionals.&quot;<p>6 chemical producers signed an agreement with the EPA to stop MOST production of chlorpyfos by DECEMBER. That's a far cry from being &quot;pulled off the shelves.&quot;<p>The only reason why this is news is because it it a very common insectide that the public is aware of and the media loves this kind of stuff.<p>It's a common occurance and happens all the time as I already posted. There will be plenty of other cost-effective insecticides in the future.

[Scraper]

From additional infrmation I have seen, I understand that a big problem with the Dursban products was homeowners were using it indoors to kill ants and stuff. Imagine? Duh!

[steveair]

Hello again,<p>I think what was just said is a good point to be made.<p>The problem is not with dursban, but more with who is using it. Of course it is bad to spray dursban all over the inside of your house. You don't have to be rocket scientist to figure this one out. I think the brute of the problems come from those who see a ant in a baby's room, and then decides to empty 5 cans of aerosol bug spray next to the cript to solve the problem.<p>Again, lack of public education is to be blamed for this ban.<p>I have mentioned this before, but I talked about a study that a professor up at college showed me in a pesticide class I took about 4 years ago. Basically, the study said that during the year, only 2 deaths, nation wide, could be accredited to pesticides. One, happen to have been a suicide case where the person decided to drink a gallon of round-up, and the other was closely related. <p>When you look at the odds of other things in life as being &quot;dangerous&quot;, the use of dursban is a drop in the ocean. A child probably has a 10,000 time more chance of being hurt in a car accident than it does from inhaling dursban, yet are there laws to ban us from driving our kids around in our cars. <p>This whole subject gets me worked up, but the fact is, there is nothing we can do. We can fight it all we want, but it is useless. Even if every landscape contractor in the country banned together, I doubt it would do a thing, especially at this point.<p>steveair

[Scraper]

Here is a link to EPA's website regarding Dursban...<p>http://www.epa.gov/epahome/headline_0608.htm<p>If it doesn't work go to their homepage at www.epa.gov. It is right on the front page.<p><br><p><font size="1">Edited by: Scraper

[Scraper]

Here is a link to EPA's website regarding Dursban...<p>http://www.epa.gov/epahome/headline_0608.htm<p>If it doesn't work go to their homepage at www.epa.gov. It is right on the front page. There is also an article about IPM on their homepage for those who care.<p>

[TURF Editor]

Hi folks -<br>Sorry that this post is so long -- feel free to skip it.<p>Lots of dis-information and half-truths being bandied about here. One hint: NEVER use Dan Rather as a source for accurate information on ANYTHING (that goes for the other networks, too -- not just picking on ol' Dan).<p>I have the actual EPA releases, along with information from Dow Agro, and some other interesting tidbits as well, all on my desk as I write this.<p>Here are the facts:<br>-The labled uses of Dursban are being changed under the Food Quality Protection Act.<br>-The most visible change will be that Dursban, one of the most widely used homeowner applied pesticides in the world, will no longer be available for homeowner use in the USA AFTER existing stocks have been depleated (there will be no &quot;shelf clearing&quot;).<br>- This action is NOT based on any new study or new information. Dursban has been around for over thirty years and is the MOST tested pesticide on the market. Nothing new has been added to what we already know about this substance. <br>- There is not one case -- not one -- of any person, child or adult, being harmed by the proper use of Dursban.<br>-- There are thousands of people who rely on this product to safely and effectively protect themselves and their families from such pests as fire ants, cockroaches, stinging insects, fleas, spiders and ticks-- not to mention the protection from termites.<br>-- There was plenty of testimony (over 200 individuals) of the benefits of Dursban presented in EPA hearings -- from everyone from lawncare operators to homeowners-- even a kid who was bitten by a brown recluse spider.<br>-- All studies (over 3500 to date) show that Dursban does not travel to ground water, and through microorganisms and UV radiation, breaks down on site. After it dries, tests repeatedly show it does not transfer. <br>-Dursban has never been shown to be carcinogenic to humans.<br>--The much reported info that Dursban has been shown to cause nuero problems in rats is not new information. (The stuff is SUPPOSED to kill things. Duh! What do we expect, that the pests will stay away because they are afraid?) Forget the fact that there is much evidence that the rat study does NOT transfer to humans. To replicate the dosage given to the rats in that study, you would have to do an indoor application of Dursban over an entire home every three minutes over 500 times in a row. If you did that with Cheez Whiz it would probably kill you.<p>The above being the case, one can assume that something other than science (hmmm...could it be...politics?) is at the base of this action<p>The attitude that &quot;if they are banning it, it must be because the stuff is harmful&quot; is amazing -- especially coming from some of you who work in this industry. You should know better! (If you care to read a more elaborate essay on what we in the green industry should be doing, check out a guest editorial I wrote for the Plant Health Care web site: http://www.planthealthcare.com )<p>You want to know why the EPA went after Dursban -- THE most well known and often-used homeowner pesticide in the world -- at THIS time, with THIS MUCH hoopla? You need look no further than the headline of the official, EPA press release: ----<br>&quot;Clinton-Gore Administration Acts to Eliminate Major Uses of the Pesticide Dursban to Protect Children and Public Health.&quot;<p>Why do you suppose the headline uses the phrase &quot;Clinton-Gore?&quot; Do you think perhaps it has anything to do with Mr. Gore's current attempt as a job upgrade? <p>I've been in publishing for over 20 years, and have written hundreds of headlines. This one wouldn't make it past a high school newspaper editor. &quot;....Protect Children and Public Health&quot; doesn't even make grammatical sense. Nope, someone was told to make sure the word &quot;Children&quot; appeared in the headline (it also appears numerous times in the story). That we allow our politicians to use our children to further some political agenda ought to piss more people off. I do not understand why it doesn't.<p>So -- the facts are that there is no new information about Dursban. No one has been harmed by it. It is not harmful to the environment. And yet, we can thank &quot;Clinton-Gore&quot; for protecting our &quot;Children.&quot; I hope we can also BLAME &quot;Clinton-Gore&quot; for the pain and suffering experienced next year by all the people (including the &quot;Children&quot;) who will be bitten by brown recluse spiders, stinging wasps and lyme ticks.<p>David G. Cassidy<br>Editor<br>TURF Magazine

[Charles]

I didn't say Dan Rather said it should be banned. Or that Dan Rather did a study. Or that Dan Rather did a study himself that proved Dursban was bad for children. Was just watching the evening news and had read the AP story that the last of the product on the shelves was all there was going to be sold. Dayum lol. This is a lawn service forum. Not a pest control forum. Most of us on here don't research pest control products. Was just confirming what Bill Phagan reported. You guys want to pay me.Then I will do a thesis on Dursban. Til then Bite me.

[fdew]

Thank You Mr Cassidy Your assessment of our Government and of the major news media is quite charitable by my standards. I have come to understand that if the major networks report it it is probably wrong. If the words &quot;for the children&quot;, or Clinton are used then it is with out a doubt a complete fabrication. This is not just a feeling but my observation based on being a news junkie and scouring the Web to find the real story behind our &quot;news&quot;<p>Frank