SPECIAL SECTION: PESTICIDES: Keeping the Pesticide Pipeline Full

If lawn care operators could be assured that today’s products would remain available in the long-term it might reduce the need for invention of new products and innovation in formulation technology. That is hardly the case. Industry veterans know that in comparison to products used in the 1960s through 1970s, many of today’s lawn care pesticides are less toxic, more targeted, lower in odor and have more specific label use directions. Vast improvements have also been made in application equipment and applicator training. Despite all this improvement, activist challenges to pesticide use means there can be no assurance that today’s active ingredients will be available tomorrow.

Research by basic manufacturers is necessary to create new and better compounds, formulations and technologies. Continued industry professionalism is necessary to keep good pesticide tools registered. Suppliers must improve the pesticide tools already available and work together when necessary to keep them in use. A most notable instance of this was the creation of the 2,4-D Task Force, which was formed in the late 1980s when 2,4-D came up for EPA re-registration. The task force was made up of a group of companies all having a vested interest in the fate of 2,4-D. Re-registration required a large volume of data be generated, and the mission of the task force was to fund and develop that data conjointly and to oversee progress throughout the re-registration process.

Despite all progress in industry professionalism and pesticide technology, government and legal challenges to pesticide use are increasing, says Frank Gasperini, director of state issues for Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE). Gasperini says activist tactics today are taking three primary approaches:

1. The preemption challenge. Activists seek to change laws already on the books to permit local communities to ban or restrict pesticides (“preemption” or “preeminence”). Activists claim that in a democracy local governments must have the right to determine what is used or not allowed in their communities. While this may sound logical, preemption law requires local communities to abide by federal and state pesticide rules and regulations. Preemption law is based on the fact that only larger governmental bodies have the necessary tax funds and technical expertise to register and approve labels for pesticides. In 2005, legislative challenges based on preemption were introduced in Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. RISE actively works with local members and allies to oppose such legislation. Attempts to regulate pesticides at the local level have included action against specific products.

In an important court case involving preemption issues, a U.S. District Court recently upheld a local ordinance in Dane County, Wisc., banning the use of fertilizers and fertilizer-pesticide combination products containing phosphorus. The pesticide industry sued, arguing that the local ordinance should have been struck down since by law fertilizer-pesticide combination products are pesticides and therefore regulated by federal law, and should also be preempted by the state.

2. The precautionary challenge. By definition, a pesticide poses a theoretical risk to non-target species and the environment. While pesticides in the United States are the most thoroughly researched in the world, the activist challenge is that no risk is acceptable and that unless and until all risks have been thoroughly researched, pesticides should not be allowed. This approach to limiting or eliminating pesticide use has been adopted to some extent in Europe and Canada, where in 2004 the city of Toronto passed a local ordinance to ban use of pesticides for so-called “cosmetic” use, by 2006. The precautionary argument targets legislators to take action against pesticides for a range of reasons, including fear of increased risk to children, fear of incomplete and ineffective work by regulatory agencies, environmental pollution, “unknown” hazards for pesticide inert ingredients which activists inaccurately claim are not tested, the unknown environmental fate of active ingredients, the unknown effect from the combination of exposure to multiple pesticides, and more. The activists’ proposed use of precaution rejects the validity of the entire pesticide registration process, as authorized under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

3. The cosmetic challenge. This argument attacks the risk/benefit relationship used to register pesticides and attempts to create a split between pesticides for public health, agriculture and turf and ornamental uses. The argument is that greater risk is acceptable for control of public disease vectors (mosquitoes and ticks) or for food production than it is for “cosmetic” lawn care uses. At its extreme this position claims that so called cosmetic uses are not justified at all, and therefore lawn care pesticides should be banned or severely restricted. Attempts to regulate pesticides based on non-essential, cosmetic use have been attempted in at least 13 states so far. The argument against cosmetic use of pesticides ignores many of the benefits they provide, including reducing lawn and landscape pests that are nuisances or health risks to humans, improving property value and improving the health of plants that improve the environment.

Effective industry response to activist attempts to restrict or eliminate pesticide and fertilizer uses must be as broad as the challenge. Pesticide applicators must ensure that products are used properly every time because misapplications and spills can generate the negative publicity used to spark calls for legislative or legal action. Pesticide manufacturers and formulators must continue to support RISE and state associations in legislatures and the courts. Suppliers and lawn care companies need to work together to education federal and state legislatures through Legislative Days events, and educate the public through customer contact and public outreach and education through organizations such as Project Evergreen.

The bottom line is that new pesticide compounds and technologies need to be discovered, and existing products and labels must be maintained, continuously improved and their use defended by all participants in the industry.