Three salmon-killing pesticides banned for household use but still used widely in agriculture and elsewhere are dangerous enough to salmon that anyone using them will have to stay far away from the water, federal officials ruled Tuesday.

The National Marine Fisheries Service said the pesticides -- part of a class of insecticides that grew out of World War II research on nerve gas -- are too toxic to risk exposing them to the 28 Northwest salmon species protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Although malathion, diazinon and chlorpyrifos are used most widely on farms and orchards, they also are employed in cities and suburbs to control pests on golf courses, for termite control and outdoors at a property's boundary, said Joshua Osborne-Klein, a Seattle lawyer with the public-interest law firm Earthjustice.

"This is going to keep these pesticides out of the water, which is good for salmon," he said. "It's also good for other types of wildlife and it's also good for people, because it will keep them out of the water and reduce the amount of pesticides on food."

He said Washington State University's agricultural extension service and others can recommend less toxic or nontoxic alternatives to the pesticides -- the first three of 37 that will be the subject of rulings by the National Marine Fisheries Service in response to a lawsuit by environmentalists.

The chemicals, found by the U.S. Geological Survey to contaminate rivers throughout the West, interfere with a salmon's sense of smell, making it harder to avoid predators, find food and even find native spawning streams and reproduce. At higher concentrations, they kill fish.

Full Story: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/388318_salmon19.html

For more information on this topic or related issues you can search the thousands of archived articles on the OCA website using keywords:

Become an OCA Member! Sign up below: