Carbofuran is a broad spectrum insecticide sprayed directly onto soil and plants just after the plant emerges to control beetles, nematodes and rootworm.
Carbofuran is currently used on "a variety of field, fruit, and vegetable crops," EPA Spokesman Dale Kemery told AHN in an email interview Friday.
It is a highly toxic chemical and humans that have short term exposure to the pesticide above recommended limits experience reversible health problems that include headache, sweating, nausea, diarrhea, chest pains, blurred vision, anxiety and general muscular weakness. Longer term exposure can cause damage to the nervous and reproductive systems.
Carbofuran enters surface water as runoff from fields where it was sprayed or by leaching into groundwater from treated crops. In either case, there is a possibility that the pesticide will build up in drinking water beyond the maximum allowable limits.
Because of those concerns, the EPA is acting now to take steps to cancel this pesticide and "proposes to revoke the tolerances (legal food residue limits)" of carbofuran, Kemery said.
He explained what the EPA is doing.
"At present, due to risks associated with carbofuran in food and drinking water, EPA is proposing to revoke all carbofuran tolerances or legal residue limits. A 60-day comment period on the proposed Tolerance revocations will begin next week," Kemery said.
He added, "This is part of a broader series of actions that the agency initiated in January 2008 to move toward cancellation of all carbofuran uses in the U.S. because of unacceptable dietary, worker, and ecological risks."
Virtually every meal that a person might eat now could contain food that was raised using the pesticide carbofuran, the pesticide is also used on a variety of crops fed to livestock as well as non-food crops - including tobacco.
Field, fruit and vegetable crops that carbofuran is used on include: bananas/plantains; barley; cucurbits - a class of plants that includes such foods as cucumbers, melons, squashes and gourds; grapes; popcorn; potatoes; oats; peppers - except chile peppers; rice; soybeans; sweet corn; sorghum; sugar beets; sugarcane; wheat; alfalfa; cotton; fallow or idle land, which will probably be planted in some food or non-food crop later; field corn; ornamentals and turf grass.
The EPA proposal will revoke the current tolerance levels for residue of carbofuran both on U.S. grown food crops as well as imported food, but won't apply to non-food imports, Kemery said.
In addition, Kemery told AHN that at some future date the EPA plans to cancel all carbofuran use in the United States, although no target date has been set yet for accomplishing that.
