Looking beyond the Label

On 16 February 2001 the attorneys general of Alaska, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York filed a lawsuit charging that the U.S. EPA has delayed by three years action requiring pesticide manufacturers to list all ingredients on product labels. Manufacturers are only required to state the ingredients that actually kill the target organism, but inert ingredients make up as much as 99% of pesticides sold at retail. Many of the 2,300 inert ingredients registered with the EPA are known to pose serious risks to human health. Massachusetts attorney general Tom Reilly said that most people would equate the term "inert" with "harmless," and that allowing pesticide manufacturers to label risky chemicals in this way is "dangerously misleading."

COPYRIGHT 2001 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group