In the face of an EPA ban, D-Con maker Reckitt-Benckiser is the last company fighting to keep its anti-coagulant rat poison on store shelves. Photo by Chip Scheuer.
Stella McMillin remembers the day a dead coyote from Santa Cruz came into her lab for testing. When the examination started, McMillin, a scientist for California Fish and Wildlife, realized the cause of the animal’s death was probably rat poison.
“It was very bloody inside,” she says.
When an animal has died from anti-coagulant rat poisons, like D-Con, their cavities and organs are often filed with blood—so much that sometimes all of it has drained out of their heart. They’ve often suffered bruises under the skin. These special rat poisons, by stopping their blood from clotting, cause internal bleeding in an animal.
“They almost look like a bloody sponge,” McMillin says.
This particular coyote in 2006 tested positive for four different anti-coagulant rodenticides. Tests on two dead mountain lions in 2011 yielded similar results—one tested positive for four anti-coagulants, and the other for two.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to ban these dangerous chemicals, like brodifacoum, since 2008, when the agency gave companies three years to come up with safer alternatives. The deadline came, and the EPA declared it would ban the chemicals, an announcement Santa Cruz Weekly reported in 2011. Three companies then waged legal fights to keep their items on store shelves. Now only Reckitt-Benckiser, the company that makes D-Con, is still fighting.
Bald eagles, golden eagles, turkey vultures and the spotted owls, which are endangered, have all tested positive for anticoagulants, according to California Fish and Wildlife. So have San Joaquin kit foxes—also endangered—bobcats and fishers. Wildcare, headquartered in Marin County, began testing for rodenticides in 2006. So far, 69 percent have tested positive for anti-coagulants, though it’s sometimes hard to get a clear sample, because some animals that come in for testing sometimes have shown signs of poisoning.
These animals in most cases aren’t eating the poison directly. Brodifacoum is what environmentalists call a “second-generation” poison. If a rat or mouse eats some and gets sick, it might wander into an open field and become an easy target for wildlife. A predator that eats it will also ingest the poison.
Animals are not the only casualties of brodifacoum. Every year, according to American poison control centers, between 12,000 and 15,000 children eat the stuff, which often comes in small colorful pellets.
Shelf Life
Many Santa Cruz environmentalists and naturalists are familiar with anti-coagulants and are worried about their dangers. But if any opposition has mobilized, it hasn’t been very vocal.
“It’s probably an issue we haven’t really addressed a much as we could have,” says Matthew Strusis-Timmer of the Santa Cruz Bird Club. “There’s so many issues that birds face. We have seen declining numbers of various species over the years in our county.”
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance in November 2011 urging businesses to take anti-coagulant poisons off shelves. Humboldt County, where rat poisons are very popular on marijuana farms, passed its own ordinance last spring urging businesses not to sell rat poisons of any kind. The ordinances don’t have any teeth, though, because it’s up to state and federal regulators to control the poisons.
WildCare has been getting the word out in the North Bay Area about avoiding Reckitt-Benckiser items. But full-blown boycotts are tricky with a $32 billion company that encompasses French’s, Clearasil, Woolite, Lysol and Durex—or as Kacmarcik puts it, “everything from mustard to condoms.”
If a national ban does go into effect and survives possible lawsuits from Reckitt-Benckiser, the poisons would leave stores like drugstores and Safeways, but licensed pesticide professionals could still apply them. Shoppers could still buy first generation poisons, which don’t typically kill predators.
Post-Poison
Kelle Kacmarcik has a few tips for alternative ways of getting rid of rats and mice. The main one: eliminate any attractants, namely food, water and shelter.
In a woodpile or patch of English Ivy, for example, a rat can tiptoe around in the dark undetected from predators. And while listening to Kacmarcik, Wildlife Solutions Manager for WildCare, an ivy bush starts to sound downright cozy.
“They just love it, man. It’s so perfect for them,” she says. “It takes over a fence, and they can climb up that like it’s nothing. It’s a rat ladder.”
Solutions like these are part of what environmentalists calls integrated pest management or IPMs—ways to eliminate pests without harming the environment. Kacmarcik helps households tackle prevention first and mechanical rat traps as a last resort.
Kacmarcik worries that when people are killing foxes, hawks and owls, they only worsen rodent problems and further our dependence on poisons. The two most common victims are grey foxes and Great Horned Owls.
“Everyone loves those animals, especially raptors—people find them fascinating,” Kacmarcik says. “They’re both super beneficial. They consume large numbers of rodents. But obviously when you poison a rodent, whoever eats that rodent becomes poisoned themselves.”
Endgame?
Two years after announcing their intention to ban anti-coagulant rat poisons, the EPA filed a Final Notice of Intent to Cancel in January, hoping to protect kids, pets and wildlife. Reckitt Benckiser, which is headquartered in Europe, hasn’t had any comment for this story—nor for any story since Humboldt’s North Coast Journal made fun of a representative for spinning poison bans as a just way to spread disease.
Maggie Sergio, a volunteer for Raptors Are the Solution, says the threats poisons pose to wildlife and children outweigh threats of disease. Sergio, who used to hold Kacmarcik’s job at Wildcare, has been working for years to get dangerous poisons off store shelves. It’s forced her to learn a lot about environmental policy.
“It’s been an education,” Sergio says, “and it’s been a frustrating education about how our system works and doesn’t work. But before 2008 we didn’t have the EPA on conference calls with multiple environmentalists. Now you have Raptors Are the Solution, Defenders of Wildlife, the American birding community, Earthjustice, Center for Biological Diversity, and the Humane Society. Everybody was at the party. They’re all telling the EPA to do something about it. A lot more people know about it now. That gives me hope.”
