EPA Publishes Iodomethane Cancelation Notice

The Environmental Protection Agency published a notice in today’s Federal Register (77 FR 69840-69842) that it had received a request from Arysta LifeScience North America, LLC to cancel its registration of iodomethane as a fumigant. This follows an announcement earlier this year by Arysta that it was canceling the production and sale of Midas®, it iodomethane based fumigant product.

As I noted in an earlier blog, iodomethane (methyl iodine) had been touted as a replacement for methyl bromide as a soil fumigant since it does not have the same ozone destructive characteristics as methyl bromide. In fact, the EPA had awarded Arysta an ‘Ozone Layer Protection Award’ for its Midas fumigant based upon that products substitution for methyl bromide.

Today’s announcement by the EPA is more of a formality than anything since Arysta has stopped marketing this product, but it does act as a notice that the elimination of methyl bromide as a fumigant will be even further delayed since it is the only fumigant effective in a number of critical uses.

As long time readers will be painfully aware, I have long chided DHS for their removal (72 FR 65404) of methyl bromide from the DHS list of chemicals of interest (COI – Appendix A 6 CFR) for the CFATS program. Their naïve acceptance of the EPA assurance of the phase out of the commercial use of this material means that there are some numbers of facilities in the United States that produce, store or use this material that may not have adequate security to protect against the theft or diversion of this material for use as chemical weapon by terrorists.

Today’s announcement by the EPA just further argues that DHS should add methyl bromide back to the COI list in an expeditious manner.

Methyl Iodide Approval

Long time readers of this blog will probably be sickeningly aware of my campaign to get methyl bromide added to the Appendix A list of chemicals that prompt a Top Screen submission. DHS left off this toxic inhalation hazard (TIH) chemical because the EPA was ‘phasing out’ the use of this chemical as a fumigant in support of the ozone protection treaty.

The phase out is way behind schedule, mainly because of the lack of an approved substitute in a number of applications, including soil fumigation for strawberry crops. Well, according to an article at BusinessWeek.com a step forward in the phase out process happened last week when the State of California approved the use of methyl iodide as a fumigant for strawberry fields.

What is amazing to me is the amount of opposition there is in the environmental and worker safety community to the approval of this chemical. I fully understand that methyl iodide is toxic, but by definition fumigants are toxic. If methyl iodide is not approved, then the growers will continue to use methyl bromide, a much more toxic chemical and one that is known to deplete the ozone layer.

It should be a matter of timing people. Make a pro-forma objection to methyl iodide so no one suspects that you find the chemical acceptable. Then let it be approved so that the methyl bromide phase out can proceed. Then start your program to shut down the use of methyl iodide; I don’t like strawberries that much and don’t know any owners or workers, so if you shut them down it won’t hurt me (excuse the sarcasm please).