New Effort to Ban Imidacloprid Used on Long Island

With three million Long Islanders dependent on a single underground aquifer for drinking water, local environmental groups have asked the State Department of Environmental Conservation to immediately ban the three most frequently found chemicals, atrazine, metalaxyl, and imidacloprid, from use on the Island. The D.E.C.’s own Long Island Pesticide Use Management Plan, issued in December, shows that imidacloprid was detected 782 times at 182 locations on Long Island, metalaxyl 1,292 times at 727 locations, and atrazine 126 times at 88 locations.

Paul Wagner, vice president of Treewise Ecological Landscape Management in East Hampton, said that the insecticide imidacloprid is widely used in lawn care here for grub control. The herbicide atrazine is used to fight weeds in corn and other crops. The European Union banned it in 2003, citing “ubiquitous and unpreventable groundwater contamination”. The same year, however, the Environmental Protection Agency approved its continued use in the United States. Nine years later, atrazine is still a widely used herbicide, with more than 60 million pounds applied annually across the country.

Source: The East Hampton Star, January 26th, 2012
http://easthamptonstar.com/?q=News/2012126/New-Effort-Ban-Three-Chemica…