Meeting for the first time with federal environmental and health officials today, Ohio and local bedbug experts questioned why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn't approved an insecticide called Propoxur to kill bedbugs in homes.
Without an effective, inexpensive way to treat bedbugs, the local leaders said, do-it-yourselfers could hurt themselves and their families when they try to exterminate the tenacious pests using dangerous chemicals in high concentrations.
"We're seeing increased misuse," said Matt Beal, the Ohio Department of Agriculture official who has led the state's effort to get Propoxur approved for home use. "We've had people treated at hospitals."
Although studies at the University of Kentucky have shown that Propoxur is very good at killing even insecticide-resistant bedbugs, the U.S. EPA has told leaders that it won't approve the chemical for use in homes until it is sure that children won't be exposed to too much of it.
Propoxur is labeled as an insecticide for agricultural and commercial use.
Dan Rosenblatt of the U.S. EPA's office of pesticide programs said the agency's formulas show that exposure would be too high -- far too high -- and potentially expose children to nervous-system damage.
"I would prefer we were talking about a different chemical," he said. "The safety findings we need to make are formidable."
But he said the issue is not closed, and further information on exposure rates or changes to the state's proposal for the way it would use Propoxur could result in approval.
Federal officials of the U.S. EPA, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Agriculture and even the Department of Defense met with state and local officials today at the Ohio EPA offices in Downtown Columbus.
The summit drew about 75 people, including representatives of the Columbus and Franklin County health departments, leaders from the pest-control industry and researchers who study bedbugs.
In June, U.S. EPA Director Lisa Jackson told Gov. Ted Strickland in a letter that the agency could not approve Propoxur. Strickland replied by asking Jackson to reconsider, or to find some other way to help the state deal with a bedbug problem that has grown steadily. The meeting today was a result of that letter.
The federal officials offered little hope of an alternative to Propoxur coming along soon. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is testing approved pesticides, but it needs examples of the resistant bedbugs springing up in Ohio's cities to do proper tests, a USDA scientist told the group.
One glimmer of hope for Propoxur might come from recent tests that EPA scientists conducted on a house sprayed with Propoxur, said Lois Rossi, the federal agency's director for pesticide registration. Results of those tests, so new that she had not had time to review them, could help the agency revise its exposure estimates.