A highly toxic pesticide that is one of the last such holdouts from the 1950s is being banned in the United States after a lengthy review by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA decided not to renew the registration of lindane, an insecticide used to treat seeds for wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley and sorghum crops. In response, the manufacturers agreed to cease sales in the United States, EPA officials said Tuesday.
Lindane is a chlorinated pesticide, much like DDT and similar compounds that were outlawed in most of the world in the 1970s; it is already banned in 52 countries. It does not break down in the environment, so it builds up in food chains and in human bodies, and scatters globally via the oceans and air, reaching even people and animals in the Arctic.
For years, environmentalists have sought a ban in the U.S., especially since Mexico and Canada have already acted. The United Nations was considering adding lindane to a global treaty phasing out chemicals considered the world's most hazardous.
Kristin Shafer of Pesticide Action Network North America, an activist group based in San Francisco, said Tuesday that she was "pleased EPA has finally done the right thing."
Jim Jones, director of the EPA's pesticide program, said the agency weighed lindane's toxicity and its persistence in the environment against its "very few benefits for users," considering the fact that safer alternatives for treating corn, wheat and other grain seeds were available.
"We're making a decision today that I feel very good about," he said. "Most of the uses were deleted a long time ago, and the EPA has taken a number of actions culminating in this one today, where the remaining uses are being voluntarily canceled."
The EPA has acknowledged the hazards of lindane for several years, calling it "quite toxic to humans." It is classified as a possible carcinogen, and in high doses it damages the human nervous system, liver and immune system.
The only remaining U.S. use of lindane is for prescription shampoos and lotion treatments for head lice and scabies, which are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, not the EPA. Lindane prescriptions have been banned in California since 2002, and most U.S. doctors no longer prescribe them.
