Soil Fumigant Requirements

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Every fifteen years under the FIFRA requirements the Environmental Protection Agency makes re-licensing decisions concerning pesticide products, and this fall the agency is looking specifically at four soil fumigants. Jim Fitzgerald with Far West Agribusiness explains.

FITZGERALD: Those four products are Methyl Bromide, Chloropicrin, Metam Sodium/Metam Potassium and Dazomet. So those are the four products that are typically handled in the northwest for potato fumigants and various crops that need to be fumigated including ornamentals. And of course EPA desires to make sure that those particular products are safe.

The EPA will be opening up a public comment period on these fumigants later this month and will also be working on the labeling of these products.

FITZGERALD: EPA went through the labels in January of 2012. They held several meetings with the states and registrants, and any tweaks or modifications to those labels were in place by December of 2012. So by putting out a comment period this fall this is the first time, if there's been any label changes, to have applied those particular products under the new labels.

Fitzgerald says this is a formality and that he doesn't really expect to see these fumigants disappear.

FITZGERALD: Any particular product in today's world is scrutinized more and more - our ability to measure not just parts per million, but parts per billion. And of course they're always learning more about effects, whether it's pesticides or anything in normal everyday life. So it's just a precautionary safety measure to make sure the products we use are safe.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.