Environmentalists battle use of ozone depleter

Daytona Beach News-Journal - Daytona,FL,USA... Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), would require anyone shipping products to the United States to treat crates, shipping pallets and other ...

WASHINGTON -- The last of the big ozone eaters is not giving up without
a fight.

Environmentalists say action by two agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture, will cause an increase in production of a substance called methyl bromide.

The substance destroys ozone in the stratosphere the same as chlorofluorocarbons, halons and other substances.

But unlike methyl bromide, the other ozone-depleting substances have
been largely phased out under the Montreal Protocol, a treaty signed by the United States and more than 100 other countries in 1987 in order to protect the ozone, which filters harmful ultraviolet rays from sunlight.

"Methyl bromide is the only big one left," said David Doniger, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He said the environmental group has decided to sue the Department of Agriculture over a rule approved last month to increase worldwide use of methyl bromide.

The rule, approved by the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service (APHIS), would require anyone shipping products to the United States to treat crates, shipping pallets and other wood to kill pests.

APHIS said it was concerned about invasive species that can hitch a ride on raw wood, and then escape into the U.S. environment.

Invasive species of insects, plants, germs, snails and other creatures cause billions of dollars worth of damage in the United States every year, experts say.

The new USDA rule would require shippers to treat pallets, crates and other materials with either heat or methyl bromide to kill the pests, and to mark the material with an international symbol certifying that it had been treated.

Doniger said treating with methyl bromide will be much cheaper than building facilities for heating material like wood pallets and crates, which are traditionally built out of the cheapest wood available.

"This will lead to a huge increase, at least 100,000 tons a year, in the use of methyl bromide," Doniger said.

But James Nicol(cq), business manager for agriculture of Great Lakes Chemical Corp., one of the world's largest producers of methyl bromide, said Doniger's estimate is off.

"The numbers NRDC is quoting are not credible," Nicol said. "We don't see anything like that amount of product being used in this
application."

He noted that Great Lakes had participated in the phase-out of other ozone depleters, including chlorofluorocarbons and halons, which are fire retardants that were used to charge extinguishers.

The Montreal Protocol made an exception for use of methyl bromide in shipping, Doniger said, because it represented a relatively minor amount of material worldwide.

"We've been telling (the Agriculture Department) for years that they
need to do something about invasive species, and they have ignored us," he said. Now that the agency has squandered the chance to solve the problem using limited amounts of methyl bromide, he said, "we're going to sue them."

Bruce Scholnick, chief executive of the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association, said a "significant amount of work is going on" to find alternative ways to treat the shipping material.

"Some of these things are somewhat esoteric," he acknowledged, citing a system developed by scientists at Virginia Tech that would place crates and other items in a large airtight chamber and use a powerful vacuum to kill any pests hiding inside them.

He rejected a suggestion by Doniger that pallets and crates could be
made from other materials, such as plastic.

"Plastic is a petrochemical product, so it comes down to whether you want to ship goods or drive your car," he said.

Meanwhile, the United States earlier this year obtained a "critical use exemption" allowing U.S. farmers to exceed the Montreal Protocol limits for methyl bromide in order to kill weeds, insects and plant diseases in the soil.

Vegetable growers, especially tomato and strawberry producers in Florida and pepper growers in Georgia, are among the chief users.

EPA is writing regulations to control the actual use of the extension next year.

NRDC filed a Freedom of Information Act suit to get EPA records showing the total amount of methyl bromide that manufacturers and importers have on hand.

Two methyl bromide companies, Hendrix and Dail of Greenville, N.C., and AmeriBrom Inc., a subsidiary of an Israeli company that extracts the chemical from Dead Sea brine, have filed "reverse Freedom of Information Act lawsuits" to block release of the information.