EPA Moves to Ban 12 D-Con Mouse and Rat Control Products

EPA Press Release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 30, 2013

EPA Moves to Ban 12 D-Con Mouse and Rat Control Products

Action Will Prevent Thousands of Accidental Exposures Among Children Each Year

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving to ban the sale of 12 D-Con mouse and rat poison products produced by Reckitt Benckiser Inc. because these products fail to comply with current EPA safety standards. Approximately 10,000 children a year are accidentally exposed to mouse and rat baits; EPA has worked cooperatively with companies to ensure that products are both safe to use around children and effective for consumers. Reckitt Benckiser Inc., maker of D-Con brand products, is the only rodenticide producer that has refused to adopt EPA’s safety standards for all of its consumer use products.

"Moving forward to ban these products will prevent completely avoidable risks to children, said James Jones, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. "With this action, EPA is ensuring that the products on the market are both safe and effective for consumers."

The agency has worked with a number of companies during the last five years to develop safer rodent control products that are effective, affordable, and widely available to meet the needs of consumers. Examples of products meeting EPA safety standards include Bell Laboratories’ Tomcat products, PM Resources’ Assault brand products and Chemsico’s products.

The EPA requires rodenticide products for consumer use to be contained in protective tamper-resistant bait stations and prohibits pellets and other bait forms that cannot be secured in bait stations. In addition, the EPA prohibits the sale to residential consumers of products containing brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, and difenacoum because of their toxicity to wildlife.

For companies that have complied with the new standards in 2011, EPA has received no reports of children being exposed to bait contained in bait stations. EPA expects to see a substantial reduction in exposures to children when the 12 D-Con products that do not comply with current standards are removed from the consumer market as millions of households use these products each year.

For a complete list of the homeowner use rat and mouse products that meet the EPA’s safety standards, visit: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/mice-and-rats/rodent-bait-station.html.

For a complete list of Reckitt Benckiser Inc.’s non-compliant products, visit: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/mice-and-rats/cancellation-process.html#cancellation.

The EPA’s final Notice of Intent to Cancel will be available in the EPA docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2013-0049 at www.regulations.gov. After Federal Register publication of the Notice of Intent to Cancel, Reckitt Benckiser will have 30 days to request a hearing before an EPA Administrative Law Judge. If a hearing is not requested, the cancellations become final and effective.

Information on Rodenticide products and EPA’s review is available at: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/reregistration/rodenticides/

More information on preventing and controlling rodents is available at: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/controlling/rodents.htm