Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
When you count all the things that are known to cause damage to the earth’s protective Ozone layer Methyl Bromide is 50 times more destructive! In fact Methyl Bromide is a deadly neurotoxin. Methyl Bromide has also been linked to gene mutation, chromosome damage, and DNA damage.
More conservative estimates rate this compound at 3 to 5 times more damaging than CFC’s but, in either case if there were alternatives to the use of this agent…why in the world wouldn’t you use them?
Methyl Bromide is injected into soil before many crops such as grapes, almonds, strawberries and others are planted. The Methyl Bromide sterilizes the ground before crops are planted. After harvest this chemical is used to decontaminate products and storage product areas. It kills nematodes, insects, rodents and weeds. Methyl Bromide also kills the Ozone.
Here we have a deadly neurotoxin, a chemical that is classified as a category 1 compound by the EPA, the most deadly category of substances that is still being used, by the millions of tons, today. Yet in 93% of the applications of Methyl Bromide there are less toxic alternatives available. Why is it still being used?
Though this chemical has been banned under the Montreal Protocol, and there are other products that could be used as an alternative; the U.S. ask for and was granted ‘critical use exemptions’ by the Montreal Protocol. How much Methyl Bromide does the U.S. use?
The entire developed, in 2006 used 5,000 tones of Methyl Bromide. The U.S. received an exemption to use 8,000 tons. While fewer and fewer nations are requesting ‘critical use exemptions’ for its use, the U.S. continues to cry, “We need’, “We have no other choice”. The U.S. is submitting requests into the year 2009.
The U.S. is looking more and more like ‘Audry II’ from ‘The little shop of horrors’, screaming “Feed me”, and like O.J. still looking for the ‘real killers’, the U.S. seems still to be looking for ‘alternatives’ to Methyl Bromide use that other nations have apparently been able to locate.
This is bad stuff folks. Another enormous hole in the Ozone is growing over the Antarctic this week. In the past 2 years a hole the size of Europe has opened researchers fear that as spring comes to the southern hemisphere, so too will more holes in the Ozone.
Follow the money! If there are alternatives available why wouldn’t you use them?
The U.S. claims, affordable alternatives are not yet available.
Can we afford the alternative of giving the U.S. everything it cries for?
As Janos Mate of Greenpeace International points out, Italy, Greece and Spain have nearly eliminated their agricultural use of Methyl Bromide.
Photo: USDA.gov nematodes
Labels: Agriculture, EPA, Methyl Bromide, Ozone, Toxin, USA, neurotoxin
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Methyl Bromide the Ozone and the USA
