Another pesticide for our pastures

It’s used to combat the emerald ash borer, so why not the brown marmorated stink bug as well?

That’s certainly part of the thinking of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has given the green light for some farmers in Virginia to use the pesticide dinotefuran. Stink bugs have decimated crops, and one of the materials that would typically be effective against them, a product known as DDT, has been banned by the EPA for roughly three decades.

So as an alternative, farms will apply sprays with the active ingredient dinotefuran, which, according to the U.S Forest Service, has a low potential for risk to humans. In a report -- based on an analysis of stakeholder reports submitted to the Forest Service -- the agency said dinotefuran “is rapidly absorbed and rapidly excreted in mammals and will not accumulate in mammals with long-term exposure.”

Based on what Virginia is seeing, it’s in for a long fight. Stink bugs have “caused approximately $37 million in damage to Virginia's apple crop in 2010,” said a statement from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. “Some experts worry that the pest could spread to cotton, soybeans and corn, major crops in Virginia.”

That’s bad, hands down. Yet dinotefuran is a toxic and potentially dangerous tool in the agri-chemical arsenal. Federal regulators say the bug problem is far worse than the hazards of the cure, so the emergency exemption was granted for dinotefuran, which other states apply to vegetables and grapes more often than they do to stone and pome fruits.

Advocates of sustainable and organic farming will say the dinotefuran path is a treacherous one to go down. But then, what chemical isn’t. I don’t farm the fruits in question and won’t pretend to know the financial quagmire that stink bugs have cast upon these farmers.

As someone who hopes to be a steward to the environment and protect people from both acute and chronic health hazards, the application of dinotefuran is worth keeping an eye on here in Virginia.