Feds require new pesticide measures

Federal regulators will require new measures to protect agricultural workers from five pesticides, including two widely used in the Northwest potato industry, but are allowing continued use of another that is widely banned under international treaty.

Methyl bromide, which broadly annihilates soil pests and weeds but is banned under the Montreal Protocol because it depletes the ozone layer, has been allowed for some uses if growers lack feasible alternatives. Those uses will continue under the Environmental Protection Agency's decision announced Thursday.

However, stricter safety measures will be required for the pesticide, as well as chloropicrin and dazomet, two other pesticides often used as alternatives to or in conjunction with methyl bromide. Also facing restrictions: metam potassium and metam sodium, pesticides widely used by potato growers.

The pesticides, all fumigants, are injected into soil before planting and do not leave a residue on the produce itself.

Stricter safety measures include buffer zones around treated fields, sign postings, requirements that applicators use respirators, and some changes to how and when the pesticides may be applied, among other things.

"It's fair to say that for a lot of people there will be change, there will be transition, and it will vary depending on the crop and the fumigant," said Steven Bradbury, director of the EPA's special review and reregistration division. "We expect there will be some good dialogue as we go forward about these decisions."

The decisions will be posted in the federal register July 16, after which a 60-day comment period follows.

About 55 percent of the metam sodium and metam potassium usage in the U.S. occurs in Idaho's Snake River Plain and Washington and Oregon's Columbia Basin, where potatoes are grown. The pesticides protect crops against a number of diseases and pests, such as nematodes, as well as kill weeds.

Keith Esplin, executive director of the Potato Growers of Idaho, expressed disappointment with the decision and called it an "unnecessary burden" on growers.

"There have been very, very few problems recorded, and almost all those that were had some application error or mistake," Esplin said. "When you have such a good track record, with tens of thousands of applications, then they want all these measures to take away a theoretical risk that hasn't even been proven, it is pretty frustrating."

A spokesman for the United Farmworkers of America, which has fought for stricter pesticide regulations, did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

As for methyl bromide, farmers who grow crops such as strawberries, tomatoes and peppers say they have struggled to find alternative products that work as well, and the Bush administration has pushed for exemptions to the international treaty that bans the pesticide's use. In 2007, 5,482 metric tons of methyl bromide were applied in the United States under such special exemptions.