This as environmentalists urge parents of children battling head lice to avoid over-the-counter treatments that contain the pesticide outlawed for agricultural use in dozen of countries - including Canada - because of its adverse effects on humans and the water supply.
Earlier, the Ontario government and Health Canada said they're not overly concerned about the impacts of lindane-based shampoos, which was banned in California in 2002 amid concerns the chemical was showing up in wastewater.
The lindane-based medications were also reportedly generating reports of skin irritation, dizziness, headaches and, in some extreme cases, convulsions and death.
In 1995, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said lindane-based products should be used only after other alternatives had failed. A public warning explicitly said the remedy should only be used once because patients are at risk for serious neurologic adverse events, and even death, particularly with early re-treatment.
Several U.S. states in the Great Lakes basin are now considering a similar ban.
But Health Canada maintains that it conducted a safety evaluation for lindane and found the risks associated with occasional and short-duration exposure to head lice and scabies products were less serious than when the chemical was used as an agricultural pesticide.
Concerned sectors, however, are urging Canada to follow the lead of other countries and ban lindane, particularly since Health Canada's adverse reaction database includes more than three dozen cases since 1971 that are linked to it.
