Farmworkers Self-Help, Inc.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it will ban any residue of the toxic pesticide carbofuran on domestic and imported foods. The chemical is applied to a variety of crops in the United States and abroad, including:

• Alfalfa
• Bananas
• Coffee
• Corn
• Potatoes
• Rice
• Soybeans
• Sugar Cane
• Sunflowers

EPA officials say they made the decision on the grounds that the chemical residue poses an unacceptable safety risk to toddlers. The move came as a surprise to environmentalists as well as the US manufacturer, FMC Corporation. A million pounds of carbofuran are applied each year in the United States, affecting less than 1 percent of the nation's farmed acres, according to the EPA, but it is used more heavily in developing countries. The EPA had said earlier this year that it would not apply the ban to imported food, but now says it will.
The EPA indicated two years ago that it intended to cancel carbofuran's registration, a different regulatory path that determines whether a product can be sold in the United States, because of the hazards it poses to workers who apply it as well as to birds and other wildlife. Manufacturer FMC has been fighting the move in federal court, arguing that the agency must prove that the chemical represents a public danger.
A 2006 EPA document examining the pesticide's environmental effects found that if a flock of mallard ducks wandered into an alfalfa field within a week after the chemical was applied, 84 percent of the birds would die. The pesticide also kills bees, which have experienced an unexplained massive population collapse in recent years.