Pesticides in Pet Products: Why Your Dog or Cat May Be at Risk

By M.B. Pell and Jillian Olsen, The Center for Public Integrity. Posted February 2, 2009.

Three years later, after the company and the agency experimented unsuccessfully with stronger warning labels, the EPA entered into negotiations with Hartz Mountain Corp. and the company agreed to stop selling the product.

"When we register these products, we feel they're safe," said Marion Johnson, branch chief of the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs registration division.

Rice, chief of the EPA's Office of Pesticides registration branch, said the agency knows it has had problems with these products in the past. Still the EPA holds the position, as with all products registered by the agency, that pyrethroid-based spot on treatments are not harmful if consumers follow label instructions. The 25,000 reported incidents alone will not change this conclusion, Rice said. The EPA is investigating pyrethroid incidents, involving both humans and pets, and when it finishes this process -- the EPA does not have a target date yet for doing so -- it may make regulatory changes, but until then the agency stands by its conclusion. "Our decisions to register these products and compounds are done with significant data," said Marion Johnson, branch chief of the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs registration division. "When we register these products, we feel they're safe."

So safe in fact that Johnson said the EPA does not expect any pets will have a sensitivity to spot on products leading to an illness; the incident reports, in Johnson's view, are not at all definitive. Manufacturers, for their part, do acknowledge the existence of sensitive cats and dogs. "There is a certain percentage of dogs out there that, just like with humans, will have an allergic reaction no matter what," Windrum, the Sergeant's spokeswoman, said. Less than 1 percent of sales result in an adverse reaction when the product is used as directed by the label, she said.

The EPA cannot make its own assessment because unlike the regulations directing the FDA's approval of human products, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act does not require pet products to undergo field trials prior to approval. So the agency can only require less extensive testing, often only on one breed of dog or cat. This makes it difficult to predict the effects on the broader population of users.

The EPA also considers the need consumers have to control fleas and ticks on their pets and the benefit provided by low-cost pyrethroid spot ons when making decisions about these products. The over-the-counter pyrethroid spot ons are typically half the price of Frontline and Advantage.

EPA scientists continue to monitor the safety of pet pyrethroids. In November, several EPA employees at the Office of Research and Development authored a piece in BMC Genomics, an online journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles, that found exposure to the pyrethroids permethrin and deltamethrin in young rats "could result in detrimental effects on neurological function later in life." The study found this was a possibility even using doses of permethrin that do not cause immediate, acute symptoms. The authors of the article suggested many other avenues of research -- including examining the effects of other pyrethroids on neurological function.

The EPA also hopes to improve the quality of incident reports through an online reporting system for veterinarians that began this fall. In addition, the agency is analyzing pet incidents to identify patterns that may lead to additional labeling or further regulatory action, and reviewing the process of approving pet products to see if changes are warranted.

"We need to make sound scientific decisions," Johnson said. "On the one hand we have the data that says this product might be safe and on the other we have incidents that say it might not be."

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