Hantavirus and EPA: A Collaborative Defense against Viral Threats — A Conversation with Dana S. Lateulere and James V. Aidala

This week, I was pleased to welcome back to the studio Dana S. Lateulere, Regulatory Consultant with B&C and its consulting affiliate, The Acta Group (Acta^®), and James V. Aidala, Senior Government Affairs Consultant at B&C and Vice President, Policy and Government Affairs, at Acta, to discuss the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) significant role in combating pathogens like those spreading the highly virulent Ebola virus and Hantavirus. Both Dana and Jim have extensive expertise in how EPA deploys its authority under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to protect the public’s health from these and other deadly pathogens. We discuss how EPA reviews, approves, and regulates products to combat these pathogens, how EPA has modernized its process to meet the demands of the moment, and why the public health products EPA regulates under FIFRA are more essential now than ever.

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This podcast transcript has been lightly edited for accuracy. It is an approximation of the podcast audio, and the audio recording remains the definitive record.

Lynn L. Bergeson (LLB): Hello, and welcome to All Things Chemical, a podcast produced by Bergeson & Campbell (B&C^®), a Washington, D.C., law firm focusing on chemical law, business, and litigation matters. I am Lynn Bergeson.

This week, I was really pleased to welcome back to the studio Dana Lateulere, Regulatory Consultant with B&C and its consulting affiliate, The Acta Group (Acta^®), and Jim Aidala, Senior Government Affairs Consultant at B&C and Acta, to discuss the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) significant role in combating pathogens like those spreading the highly virulent Ebola virus and hantavirus. Both Dana and Jim have extensive experience in how EPA deploys its authority under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to protect the public’s health from these and other deadly pathogens. We discuss how EPA reviews, approves, and regulates products to combat these pathogens, how EPA has modernized its process to meet the demands of the moment, and why the public health products that EPA regulates under FIFRA are more essential now than ever. Now, here’s my conversation with Dana Lateulere and Jim Aidala.

Dana, welcome to the studio, and Jim, welcome back. I’m delighted you’re both here today.

Dana S. Lateulere (DSL): Thanks for having me.

James V. Aidala (JVA): I’m glad to be here, yes, for both of us.

LLB:   Excellent. It was fortuitous I picked up my New Yorker yesterday and read a very interesting and — I’m sorry to say — kind of scary article in the June 1 edition titled “Breeding Ground: The Climate Is Changing, Microbes Are Evolving, Are We Ready?” [The title was changed to “Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes.”] It seemed like an appropriate topic to kick off our conversation.

Microbes are resilient. Some of climate change’s greatest threats apparently come not from warm places heating up, but from cold places defrosting, releasing viruses hundreds of thousands of years old, unleashing all kinds of potential illness and virus into the environment. I tell you, it read like a script from “The Last of Us” [TV show]. Yes, really; this stuff is not easy reading. There are lots of new theories about adaptability of microbes that infect humans, which include mostly viruses and bacteria, but who knew?

Fungal diseases have been largely not part of our watch list because we are protected by what is known as a thermal barrier, meaning that historically our high body temperatures — which are of course not shared by plants or cold-blooded creatures — have kept fungal infections away. Who knew? We have less protection now, given fungal ailments, as fungus keeps tabs with global warming. We’re going to talk a little bit more about these and other anomalies occasioned by our changing climate and just the evolution of microbes writ large.

On that happy note, Jim, let me toss the first question to you. Given the recent disturbing public reports about cruise ships and the hantavirus causing fatalities leading to, I think, a lot of really public alarm about that disease and others, what role can pesticides play to address these concerns?

JVA:   Just as a preliminary comment, and given your introduction, there’s always been a question about whether the bugs, and the viruses, and the other pathogens can out-evolve us. In other words, they can adapt faster than we can, either come up — certainly, as a species, but then also as an inventive species trying to figure out a new way to control said pathogen or pest — adding to your happy note.

But the specific answer to your question now is two ways. You could either kill the vector, in this case with the cruise ship issue, kill the rats and mice that maybe are the carriers for this particular disease, or you kill the disease. You see people — you’ve seen people in moon suits and decontaminating everything. We saw this a lot during COVID. I’m sure we’ll be talking about COVID over time here with the various sprays and things that, quote, “kill the pathogen,” kill the virus in this case. That’s how EPA can get involved, because they would have to register both the rodenticide to control rats and mice, but then also approve the disinfectant to kill or otherwise control the pathogen.

LLB:   As soon as I hear “rodenticide,” it’s obvious EPA has a very significant role to play here, as it did for similar outbreaks of pathogens, as we were reminded as recently as the pandemic. What is EPA’s role, and does EPA’s review include whether the products are particularly efficacious? Do they work? Is that part of the review process, Jim?

JVA:   The good news — the short answer is yes — and the good news is for something that’s a public health pest — unlike if you’re worried about the weeds in your lawn, if you’re a farmer. It used to be, before about 1978 or so, EPA would also review the efficacy of the product for herbicides, other products, insecticides, and so forth. For the modern era, Congress, to relieve the work burden on EPA, took that requirement away. You have to have efficacy data available, but EPA can ask for it at any time because you’re supposed to always have it available if you’re the registrant, but they often don’t look at it, except for things like rodenticides and disinfectants that make public health claims. If you are trying to say that you’re going to control mice that could spread disease, if you’re going to control the virus, you’re going to kill the virus, you’re going to kill the bacteria, virus, et cetera, and disinfect the surface by disinfecting material, then you do have to have efficacy data.

LLB:   Which is a good thing, right?

JVA:   Sure, and then EPA has to review that, which takes time, energy, resources, and all that. Again, that was probably some of the things we’re going to talk about.

LLB:   Exactly. I know we do an awful lot of FIFRA work here — FIFRA is an acronym for the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. It’s one of the lesser known really important statutes EPA administers. One of the questions that our listeners might be interested in hearing is how does EPA regulate these products, especially when they are new or not widely recognized? To the point I raised at the beginning, as noted in this scary New Yorker article, climate change is contributing to, among many other challenges, a rodent boom. Wetter years increase the odds of viral transmission, making rodent disease more frequent and more variable. How does EPA keep up with that, Jim?

JVA:   Carefully, to say the least, but basically they have had experience with new and emerging pathogens, or something we didn’t expect, or something that evolved to be more dangerous than we had thought before, a new species, or strain, or whatever the right zoological words are. They do have some experience with, quote unquote, “new” pathogens. Especially during COVID, this was very much, literally and figuratively, in demand by the public and even by applicants then submitting registration applications. When there’s a new outbreak or some kind of new exposure that’s a whole different vector, it may have been out there. As you just said, maybe in the permafrost, it’s been there. But since there weren’t too many humans back in the era of the dinosaurs — or even whatever small mammals — I’m not trying to get into other streaming shows. But the issue of just generally that these things can pop up, at least insofar as our experience. EPA is familiar with that.

One of the ones that I remember the most from years ago, let alone COVID, which has of course really been a current template — and I think Dana can talk about that one in a second. But I just remember when the anthrax contamination of the Senate — somebody sent anthrax spores to a few senators, number one. But that also meant that all the trail where those letters went through were contaminated facilities, and EPA got very involved in that at the time, 20 years ago or so, 20 years plus if I recall correctly. That also, I think, helped energize the kind of concern. It’s not like the first time there’s been a new pathogen, but that was certainly one of the times you had to get EPA’s, shall we say, very strict attention in how to deal with it, and what does work. By definition, if it’s a new pathogen — anthrax was not, good news, bad news — but with COVID, it was new, but then how do we make sure we can control it, because suddenly a whole bunch of people want to claim they can control it, for good reasons and also for just marketing reasons. But is that true? EPA has procedures to figure a lot of that out.

LLB:   Dana, maybe you can help our listeners understand a little bit how EPA goes about that process. How does it evaluate whether an existing pesticide product that has known efficacy will control something that is considered a new pathogen? Can you drill down a little bit on that?

DSL:   I can try, sure. They can’t, obviously, tell immediately if it’s going to affect the new pathogen, but what they can do is they have a list of prequalified disinfectants, and they can compare it — kind of a bridging of data — to see if the existing data set against other pathogens would allow them to make that determination. As Jim said, EPA has been through this a few times, before COVID and since COVID, and has head-on taken the demand from the registrants.

LLB:   Are there specific procedures that EPA has to address new pathogens?

DSL:   Yes. In 2016, actually, EPA issued what’s called the Emerging Viral Pathogen Guidance — we’ll just call it the EVP — where EPA allows the use of certain approved disinfectant products against an EVP that has not already been identified and added “approved” to that product label. The intent is to allow an expedited process for registrants to be able to provide information to the public on products that are effective against the new pathogen during whatever the specific disease outbreak is. The process was activated for the first time in response to the COVID epidemic. It’s been activated, as I said, several times since and has now been activated in response to the hantavirus.

LLB:   I think we issued a blog on our FIFRA blog on May 21 about the activation of the EVP. Maybe can you explain a little bit more to our listeners about how this guidance actually works? It’s so critically important, and there’s been so much attention devoted to these viruses. How does it work?

DSL:   Yes, I agree. It’s very important. An EVP designation is approved — hopefully prior to an outbreak — and I’ll explain in a minute how you get that designation. But once a registrant is prequalified for this designation, it allows them to include claims of efficacy that it can kill this EVP on its websites and other social media, information when it gives the product to the hospitals or emergency care centers. Again, it’s all about getting that information out there, a fast response to the public.

How you get that EVP designation is you go to EPA and you request them to review the data that are on file for your product to confirm that your product is known to kill a harder to kill virus or a combination of viruses. That has to be done by labeling, so it does take a little bit of time. Basically, there are three types of viruses, and they’re classified or ranked by how hard they are to kill. A Tier 1 virus is an enveloped virus. Tier 2 is the large, non-enveloped virus, and Tier 3 is a small, non-enveloped virus. The higher the number, the harder it is to kill.

Once the CDC identifies and classifies whatever the EVP is, EPA can activate the EPA guidance for that type of virus. For instance, for the hantavirus, which was identified as a Tier 1 enveloped virus, approved claims against any small non-enveloped or large non-enveloped (the harder to kill viruses), would qualify you for the EVP designation to make claims against the hantavirus. For hantavirus, EPA now directs the public to its List Q. Once you have made the designation on your label for any of these types of viruses, EPA can add your product to these lists that it keeps on their websites of disinfectants that are approved for these different EVPs.

LLB:   Dana, that’s very helpful. Jim, this sounds eerily familiar from the 2020 experience we had with COVID. Is that essentially what is happening now, what happened back in, what, the March, April timeframe of 2020 for COVID?

JVA:   Sure, essentially in parallel to everything that Dana just said, “We are a Tier 1 envelope. Look on List Q. Everybody knows that.” But in the meantime, then the industry people have this concern, CDC has the concern, EPA has the concerns and has developed this policy. What I found interesting when I first learned about all this in terms of COVID was that this policy was put out in 2016. So whether EPA was playing Carnac [Carnac the Magnificent, a Johnny Carson recurring skit] — again, I’m showing my age.

LLB:   It’s prescient, right?

JVA:   Yeah, prescient. I can pronounce “Carnac” better than I can pronounce “prescient.” That’s a problem.

But anyway, COVID did see a lot of submissions coming in, and it overwhelmed EPA, not insofar as they all up and quit. Obviously, if you remember the earliest days of COVID, people weren’t going to work. You weren’t moving around. You put your Amazon packages in the garage for three days and only opened them up with rubber gloves and a mask on, literally. I just remember all that. Everyone was clamoring for products to try and do something about it — spray your mail, spray food, or anything that came from outside your home — to try and make sure you didn’t get exposed to COVID at the time, until we had a better handle on everything.

The submissions came in in the Antimicrobials Division (AD) of EPA, where these would be reviewed — literally and figuratively worked overtime, worked quite hard, nights, weekends — to try and figure out what products these kind of policies would apply to, in other words, what products would work, what products, shall we say, couldn’t make the claim, because a whole bunch of people wanted to?

It’s interesting, Dana. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard over time, or Lynn, if you know, for some reason, what percentage of products were not approved because they didn’t meet the criterion. I’ve never heard that number.

LLB:   Nor have I.

JVA:   But that would be an interesting question, back to EPA someday. But obviously, some products didn’t work, even though everyone wanted to make this claim. AD and the staff at EPA were working mightily and furiously to try and keep up to the load of submissions that came in.

LLB:   I think EPA worked very hard and was absolutely overwhelmed with applications because people legitimately saw not only a need, but a business opportunity, perhaps not fully appreciating all of the procedures, and process, and science showings that any type of pesticide registration application requires, but we were overwhelmed, too. I mean, we had sent all of our people home in early 2020, and through much of 2021, people continued to work remotely, but it was a super busy time. How did EPA adapt? Did they change processes, or bring on new staff, or just adapt in the moment? Jim, do you have any sense of that?

JVA:   All of the above. It was all hands on deck. I think they did reallocate some resources internally to the extent they could. But again, disinfectant review — that part is perhaps different in terms of the efficacy data. But that’s why this policy would make it easier. Someone who was a registration person knowing about just how the process works, would say, “Okay. Is this a product that’s coming in on List Q” — or whatever the approved list is  — and meets the criteria that Dana outlined? Then you can move on to the process, and specific claims, and things like that. Again, I think at some level it’s just like in any time, people — and what you just said about trying to address a market need. “I don’t know if I can make that one yet.”

I remember one of the things that came up for our clients — as well as anybody in looking at this issue — was how do you establish the efficacy for something that’s a little more than state forward about disinfecting a surface? A hard non-porous surface is one of the terms of art, right? But they wanted to be able to — people wanted to disinfect a whole bunch of stuff. How do you make sure that that might work? That was a major issue for people wanting to just — literally, I’m just going to use the word “spray” — really meaning just apply — airplanes, and hospital rooms, and just anything. Again, especially in the earliest days of not knowing how transmission was readily happening and all that. It was not only people pursuing a market opportunity. It was also a public demand. That’s partly why EPA was so busy trying to figure all this stuff out.

LLB:   There’s an expression: Never waste a crisis. I think EPA certainly didn’t waste a crisis and has learned an awful lot as a result of the COVID experience. Dana, in your view, is EPA better prepared now, or are the crises that are upon us, and likely to be upon us, too diverse and indistinguishable to market any particular one way of going here?

DSL:   No, I think they’re much better prepared. I think they learned quite a bit from the COVID experience. To add onto what Jim was saying about the changes in staffing, I know that they moved people all around in the AD. One thing that was important was they had this screening set up that was not part of the normal process for a submission coming in, where they were just weeding through all of the different submissions that just did not meet the criteria at all for submission.

I don’t know the final statistics, but I do know informally someone who worked on that committee, and only ten percent of the packages, they said, would even make it forward for review, because all these people that had never been through the process, and didn’t understand all of the things that were required, and there are all these forms that just have to be done. So many were getting kicked — that was taking so much of the time originally that they made a whole staff just to screen through the original submissions and kicked out most of them, actually.

Yes, they learned a lot from that, and also for that they limited. If you were coming in for an EVP for COVID, that’s the only thing that you could be asking for at that time. No more other label amendments or anything. It was a total streamlined, expedited, and they got a lot of them through. The list got put together very quickly, so kudos to them for that. Hopefully, we won’t go through something that extreme again.

LLB:   I think we can count on it, right? I mean, the process is greatly improved, and kudos to EPA for being as market-ready as it proved to be during COVID. Just as EPA was triaging, I think, we were kind of triaging, too, as consultants to the private sector, trying to help our clients if they had a new, better pixie dust that they thought would be effective as to COVID, right? I mean, we had to choose among our children as well, but what was it like then? Do you remember being overwhelmed? I do.

DSL:   Yes, yes, I do.

LLB:   Not that very long ago.

DSL:   No, no, it was overwhelming. I know for a fact that a lot of the registrants — the wannabes — would call EPA or e-mail, and they would just tell them, “You need to get a consultant. Come back to us after you’ve talked to somebody who understands the process and knows what to expect,” because it was just such a big time suck for them — for lack of a better term — to go through all these packages that just were not ready for prime time.

We got a lot of the regular type, the “me-too” registrations, as we call them, for ready-to-use products and disinfecting wipes. But also, as you were mentioning, a lot of out-of-the-ordinary products with these new novel ideas and concepts people came up with in their kitchens and basements for natural, and safer, and better alternatives. And a lot devices: People had come up with great ideas for new devices. Through all that, as you know, we were able to help many clients manage the maze of device regulation and compliance. Also, there were some people who did have good ideas and mixtures ready for minimum-risk pesticides that we helped get them through the state registrations.

LLB:   Right. Mustn’t forget about our state registrations, right.

JVA:   I think — just to add a little bit on that, especially for any — and it’s not just for COVID, but especially what consultants are good for — and this is just an advertisement, but it literally is very true. It’s a different issue; it’s square peg, round hole, as I call it. So if everything was straightforward and quote, “normal,” this fits exactly the category, what EPA wants to hear about, and what your product, and what your regulatory team — because not every company is new. Some of them, they’re an established company, have been through registration before, but then they’ve got some new twist to it. Well, you say it’s a new twist, which might be the market innovation that you really think is a competitive advantage, but at the same time, EPA. It’s little bit different from what EPA is looking at.

Oh my goodness. Then suddenly, “We’re not sure.” And then you can get into a long do loop. I’ll leave it at that. That’s some of what in a day-to-day business in the registration world and consultants do for a living. If everything was straightforward and normal and easy, they wouldn’t need consultants, number one. But number two, this is especially something where you end up with, not just during a new pathogen, but even in something that’s established, but you want to do it a little bit differently and all. So again, this is something that can spasm up the system. Having somebody who’s really been through all the different kinds of scenarios and things could be helpful.

LLB:   That’s a good thought, Jim. Maybe we can pivot for a minute to the Ebola outbreak in Africa. Do you, Jim, expect to see new disinfectants come through EPA’s door anytime soon?

JVA:   Possibly, especially as soon as they start to see cases that are outside the fairly localized areas. Apparently, there’s been other Ebola breakouts in that part of Central Africa, number one. But then if you start to see — whatever the magic word is, as an epidemiologist — the person-to-person spread outside of Africa, and you may recall some the forensics after COVID, especially flights between Milan and New York. You could see where places had a hotspot for whatever reason and then some carriers may have gone to somewhere else and created another hotspot.

I just remember the New York Times, between looking at cell phone coverage and flight information, you could see all these funny maps of where the locus of activity was that may have helped spread the virus. We hope that doesn’t happen with Ebola, to say the least, number one. Secondly, if it did, you would see, again, just like in COVID, a public demand for products to do something about it. But again, back to what Dana had talked about before, the policies that help anticipating — and apparently, the Ebola virus is on — I think. Isn’t that on the first category of easy to kill, Dana? Is that right? Do I have that right?

DSL:   Yes. Tier 1.

JVA:   Therefore, it’s on a list of things that everything we just described about COVID could apply, and that would make it easier to see some kind of — addressing some volume of products that come through — applications, I should say, that come through to talk about their products that could be effective.

LLB:   Having spent a moment on Ebola, let’s revert back to rodenticides. Another entirely different approach to controlling the virus — the hantavirus — is to eliminate the vector, the critters. Are there controversies or public health concerns, Jim, about using rodenticide?

JVA:   There have been two long-standing ones about rodenticides. One is, of course, you get worried if there’s a non-target exposure, meaning — that’s a fancy word for saying not only wildlife and the vast outdoors, but even things like your dog, your pets, and then your children. Just remember, that was always a big concern about, at the time, the most commonly used rodenticides — and looking at the reports from the poison control center and what’s the sort of default advice to a parent that says, “I just discovered my child may have, or did — worst case — consume some rodenticide, and should I worry?”

Again, not just child. A child could be a very small infant, and not just the rats in New York. Your crawling-around infant is not that many times bigger than some of the larger rats in the urban areas. Therefore, should I worry? The poison control center gives people advice, but that gives you some indicator, too, of just sort of, is there a problem? Is there some kind of pattern? Is there some kind of reason to be more concerned than otherwise?

People use a lot of rodenticides. A lot of people have a need for that. Anytime you have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of applications of any pesticide a year, you’re going to have some potential problems crop up just by way of the probabilities. Again, there is always a concern for exposure to non-targets, historically, especially, again, around the home, and pets, and children, but then also later concerns about, what happens after the exposed rodent — or whatever target pest — goes outside and dies, and then might be eaten by some carnivore, some kind of predator. For whatever reason, predators — if the rodent is not dead yet, or some like carrion, or whatever it is, but then again, some further concern for non-target exposure.

LLB:   All of the more recent rodenticide products have readily available antidotes available, so is that a required element of their registration?

JVA:   There’s no requirement, and it’s actually become more of a problem because, again, back to one of the things we talked about earlier, if you use the same material on the same species for — and I just described hundreds of thousands of applications — you increase the probability of some kind of resistance to that thing that’s going to kill the critter. As resistance has increased for rodents, they’ve had to innovate new products. Some of those new products don’t have readily available antidotes for potential exposure to pets and children. That’s a concern.

LLB:   How has EPA — and perhaps the registrant community writ large — modified the evolution of rodenticide products to avoid these problems?

JVA:   The major thing — again, one of the major ways to avoid a problem is to either have it be engineered to be as safe as it can be and reduce injuries. The other one is to prevent exposure to anything that you think might be a hazard. So in this case of rodenticides, what you’ll see is bait boxes — even little bait boxes many of us have seen any time you walk around a commercial building or especially around restaurants — you see these larger rat boxes, they look like, not quite the size of a shoebox, with a big hole on one side. The rodent can go in and consume the bait. That way, it’s — in fact, one of the requirements of EPA is, for example, it has to be — if I remember correctly. They may have changed it some, but it has to be horse-proof, that a horse could be stomping on the thing in a barn, in the big box. You’d have to have it — these are the larger bait boxes for rats.

The way they would test them, if I recall correctly, is something like they would take four German shepherds and not feed them for a certain period of time. I don’t mean forever — but three days or something — and then let them loose and have these baits in a box and see if they can get into the box. These baits sometimes, and again, this is one of the things that’s changed is what’s the attractiveness of the bait? Not just to a rodent, but to other animals. And so there’s a lot of it, I think, was fish smell, may have some fish parts. It makes them attractive to rodents, right? If you’re a very hungry German shepherd, can you get to the bait? That was one of the ways that they would require testing of the bait boxes. The home bait boxes, I don’t think are quite subject to such stringent requirements, but the whole idea is to make it hard for the dog or child to be able to get to the bait.

LLB:   Into jail, right.

DSL:   There has been some work on trying to produce some new types of rodenticides, and EPA seems pretty amenable to those. We had a client who we helped register a novel product, a contraceptive product, which obviously did not rely on the typical poisons. There were lots of hurdles because it was a novel project. But we worked with EPA, and they were very receptive and responsive. We were able to get that product registered. I know that it is out in the market, being tested out now. It’s hard to change everybody’s mind, but I think slowly, maybe there could be some new products that aren’t quite so scary.

LLB:   Absolutely. My rodenticide of choice are barn cats. The only thing I have to do —

DSL:   They’re effective.

LLB:   They’re very effective. They’re kind of cute. I have to feed them, though.

JVA:   And they’re not registered.

LLB:   And they are not registered! That’s right, but they sure do get those barn mice.

Are there other issues, Jim, that our audience may be interested in hearing about? Endangered species comes to mind, given how much time you spend on that area.

JVA:   Exactly that. That’s been one of the more recent and more pivotal concerns for rodenticide uses. It’s not like that was never happening before, but a concern as EPA has rolled out its endangered species program to include much more specific directions about avoiding potential harm to a threatened or endangered species. Again, I think I mentioned earlier, potential concerns for a critter that becomes a food item for some other species, right? Some of those species might be certainly a raptor, some kind of other predator species higher up in the food chain, but then some of those would be on the list for threatened and endangered species. Therefore, they might be needing to be more protected from potential exposure.

LLB:   Got it. Last question, and this is for either of you. Perhaps you have something to contribute here, but I’m wondering, a lot of FIFRA deals with special circumstances or special needs. Would rodent control to address the hantavirus need or get special consideration by EPA for any particular reason under FIFRA? Jim, do you have any thoughts on that? And then you, Dana.

JVA:   Generally, EPA has authority under FIFRA to deal with new and sudden things, so everything from the potato virus that can wipe out the potato crop overnight. I remember one time we had an application when it was literally, if we don’t get an answer in the next three days, forget about it, because the entire crop of whatever growing area will be destroyed. I mean lost — not destroyed, but lost — from the fungus infection at the time.

There is an ability under Section 18 generally, and then also special local needs under 18 that allow for these kinds of emergency uses, so-called. EPA does have that authority. Rodenticides generally have not needed that, broadly speaking. But I do remember one — for example, it’s a little bit of a colorful tale of the history — in Guam — to control brown snakes because they’re an invasive species — and in certain islands in the Pacific. I think Hawaii’s had the same problem, where the birds never had to evolve a way to get out of the way of certain other species, like snakes. Birds nesting on the ground lose a lot of their eggs. If birds lose all their eggs, you don’t have that next generation of birds.

This snake was a real threat. I know it was actually a USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] program at APHIS, Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, to eliminate brown snakes in Guam by — at the time we just called them toxic meatballs — but they’re actually mice that were full of Tylenol, acetaminophen, which is poison to the mice and poison to the snakes. They would intentionally drop these things out of, I think it was helicopters, if I recall again correctly, to control brown snakes. Again, rodenticides — and that was a special part of a U.S. territory and so was subject to FIFRA requirements. It had to get a Section 18 for that, and it was approved and apparently worked, so good for Guam. Bad for the snakes.

That was just the kind of thing that EPA is prepared to be able to do, and that would apply to a viral control mechanism, besides everything Dana’s talked about, with the lists and whether they’re an easy to kill or whatever. But if something really came up and happened, FIFRA does have that authority to deal with an “emergency.” Sometimes, they can be — they tend to take a little bit of time to react to, but sometimes you need to react so quickly it has to be done in very short order, and EPA generally has been able to find a way to accommodate that.

DSL:   There are issues at the state level, too. What’s going on in Idaho right now — I think it’s in Boise. They have a terrible rat infestation all of a sudden, due to all of their drainage and the water pipes they have. But there’s just so much water, and they just love it. This is a new thing because of the environmental changes. They don’t have anything in place — no one government agency, government office there, handles this type of thing. So they’re all screaming at each other. This is my interpretation of a quick article I read. Yes, to help, and obviously, maybe some of these things could help, those Section 18s or the special needs, if they just knew who should start that process.

JVA:   Another example is after a hurricane, usually a big hatch of mosquitoes. You have to worry about that just generally as not just a nuisance, but as a disease vector. Sometimes it’s needed, you create an app to allow a use that otherwise might not be on the label, or to use other products, or there may be a shortage of the approved uses there for other products that might help and address this. Suddenly three of the southern states are pretty much affected by some hurricane that just came through, and they need that emergency use, and they need it now. Again, it needs to be a rather rapid decision-making process.

LLB:   Dana and Jim, I want to thank you for this really fascinating conversation about FIFRA, hantavirus, and EPA’s really important role in addressing public health. We have a fascinating blog out. We dropped it on May 16. It’s entitled “Cruise Control: Hantavirus, Rodent Control, and FIFRA’s Expanding Public Health Role” if you’re interested.

Dana and Jim, you know so much about this topic. We could speak for hours, but we’ll call it quits. I want to thank you for your contributions and also thank EPA for all of the Office of Pesticide Program staff for the wonderful contributions they make in creating public health tools and preventing disease. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of this, and if you don’t want to get freaked out, avoid that New Yorker article on breeding grounds and microbes, because there’s a lot going on in our climate, and a lot of things can be expected in the years to come. Jim, Dana, thank you so much.

DSL:   Thank you.

JVA:   Pleasure. Yes, thanks.

LLB:   My thanks again to Dana and Jim for speaking with me today about EPA’s essential role in regulating public health pathogens. EPA is doing a great job, and its institutional expertise is needed more now than ever.

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