A pesticide used by the USDA to kill a rare potato pest has turned out to have nasty side effects for several eastern Idaho growers, officials said this week.
Methyl bromide, a highly toxic fumigant, was used as part of a treatment plan to eradicate pale cyst nematode following the discovery of the pest in Bonneville and Bingham counties in 2006.
Now, some growers have found that the pesticide contaminated a number of their crops grown on the treated fields and caused severe health issues for some cattle, Idaho Department of Agriculture officials told the state legislature’s budget committee this week. Agriculture officials are asking for $250,000 to conduct research on the problem, as well as to dispose of 2,000 tons of contaminated hay in a local landfill.
“It is a mess,” agriculture director Celia Gould told the committee Monday. “What the research hopes to show is, how do we get (the methyl bromide) out of the soil?”
The contamination issue is just the latest challenge faced by a number of regional growers after pale cyst nematode was discovered in their fields in 2006, the first time the pest had ever been found in the U.S. A number of growers filed a lawsuit against state and federal agriculture officials last spring that said the pale cyst nematode regulations, including methyl bromide treatments, had been “ad hoc” and “overreaching,” and had cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The microscopic parasite attacks potato plants’ roots, and has been known to decimate potato fields in Europe. State and federal agriculture managers took aggressive steps to stop the pest from spreading after its discovery, including applying the rarely used methyl bromide and then covering those treated fields with tarps.
Lloyd Knight, the Idaho Ag Department’s administrator of the Plant Industries Administration, said Friday that the state was first notified of the methyl bromide problem last February. Farmers noticed that cattle that had eaten hay grown on methyl bromide-treated fields had an array of health issues, including illness, trouble calving and abscesses. Several cattle died, he said.
“Alfalfa seems to be something that picked up bromide more than any other crop,” Knight said.
The research, which is already under way, will look at a number of different crops to see which ones pick up the bromide more than others, Knight said. That will help the state give growers “a menu” of what they can safely grow in contaminated fields, he said. Outside the $250,000 in state funding, officials also have applied for about $350,000 in research funding from USDA.
The research team will be led by Cynthia Curl, an assistant professor in Boise State University’s Department of Community and Environmental Health. University of Idaho researchers, including several from the Idaho Falls UI extension, will also take part in the effort.
Curl said initial statistical planning on the research is taking place. She said a primary goal will be to determine the extent of the contamination problem and how long the methyl bromide levels in the soil might remain high.
Nearly 10,000 acres of farmland remain under quarantine for pale cyst nematode, and close to 3,000 are still classified as being infested with the pest. State and federal agriculture officials have agreed to not apply any more methyl bromide treatments “until we know what we’re up against,” Knight said.
The EPA, USDA and FDA are all monitoring the situation, he said. Knight said officials don’t believe there’s a food safety issue, and initial testing of well water near the treated fields did not find any levels of bromide. The research plan calls for additional water sampling in the area.
Gould said the way the bromide made its way into crops, and later cattle, “was totally different than anything that was anticipated by anyone, including the EPA.” The label instructions for how to apply the pesticide were followed, she said. Officials hope to learn the full extent of the problem with more research.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg, possibly,” Gould said.
Source: The Times-News