Safety for Humans

Pyrethroids are widely used because they have a more favorable toxicity profile to mammals and are thus safer for farmworkers to use. Additionally, any residues on treated crops leaving the farm gate have potentially lower impacts. Unlike the older organo-chlorine pesticides, pyrethroids are rapidly broken down in mammals to lower toxicity degradates that are rapidly eliminated thus avoiding the well -known issue of bioaccumulation in fatty tissues.

All individual pyrethroid active ingredient molecules are required to have the full package of mammalian toxicity studies and the resulting very large database of studies that indicate that, as a class, they behave in very similar ways thus allowing their treatment as a group for the purposes of assessing any risks of consuming foodstuffs with residues of pyrethroid active ingredients.

Similarly, every individual pyrethroid used on every crop has required studies to measure final residues on food items and, across the decades, an extremely comprehensive knowledge base of residue behavior given different timings and numbers of treatments has become available.

Consequently, the use of individual or combinations of pyrethroid active ingredients according to the recently revised labels will ensure that any combined residues of pyrethroids remain below a level of concern which incorporates a large margin of safety.

Operator exposure studies have been conducted for all active ingredients and use patterns and all labels reflect a mandated (and highly conservative) margin of safety.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a useful summary statement regarding the fate and potential impacts of pyrethroids.