Not necessarily. Manufacturers say that laws governing pesticides specify that active ingredients must be identified, but that so-called ?EUR??,,????'??inert ingredients?EUR??,,????'?? are trade secrets, and can remain unstated.

This legal grey area ordinarily isn?EUR??,,????'???t a problem, but it has risen to the surface in an ongoing dispute over aerial spraying in Central California for the light brown apple moth.

Officials say spraying is needed to protect the state?EUR??,,????'???s huge agriculture industry. Close to 100 Monterey County residents, however, say something in the spray made them sick. They want to know all the ingredients, but the Oregon-based manufacturer isn?EUR??,,????'???t budging.

But now the secrets?EUR??,,????'??+including polymethylene polyphenyl isocyanate, or PPI?EUR??,,????'??+are out of the bag. (PPI mimics the scent of a female moth and throws male moths off course.) On Oct. 16, the manufacturer of the pesticides used to fight the moth lost its bid to keep secret the ingredients of its products ?EUR??,,????'??+ a win for environmentalists who are trying to determine whether the pesticides are harmful to the public.

Legal Battle

Monterey County Superior Court Judge Robert A. O’Farrell ruled that the manufacturer, Suterra LLC, had not pursued the proper legal channel and therefore the court had no authority to grant the company its request to keep the ingredients private.

In early October, the judge suspended aerial applications in Monterey County and grounded three state-owned planes, saying he needed more scientific evidence of possible health effects surrounding one of the chemicals in the pesticide, CheckMate OLR-F: polymethylene polyphenyl isocyanate, or PPI.

The state wants to spray a similar pesticide, CheckMate LBAM-F, in Santa Cruz County in early November.

Suterra had requested that the CheckMate ingredients be kept private so that competitors could not copy them. The request was submitted in connection with the Sept. 24 lawsuit filed by a Monterey environmental group to halt the spraying. But O’Farrell said because Suterra was not directly part of the lawsuit the court could not grant its request.

Free-speech Issue

“This is a victory for open government,” said David Dilworth, executive director of Helping Our Peninsula’s Environment, or HOPE, the group behind the lawsuit to stop the spraying. “And it’s a victory for the public interest. The judge isn’t allowing a potentially harmful chemical to be hidden from an independent public analysis”

Some opponents of spraying believes PPI is linked to respiratory problems similar to those reported by nearly 100 Monterey County residents in the wake of last month’s spraying there by a trio of state-owned planes, said Dilworth.

State officials and Suterra, however, maintain that the pesticide, as a whole, is mostly water and “practically non-toxic” Independent chemists contacted by the Sentinel generally support the contention that PPI is safe.

The name of the chemical, along with other ingredients in the pesticide, were mistakenly released by the EPA to the Santa Cruz Sentinel in late September, setting in motion a series of health studies and legal battles that led to the ban on spraying and the judge?EUR??,,????'???s request for more science-based information.

This week, in a separate legal case, a Los Angeles judge denied Suterra a restraining order to prevent the Santa Cruz Sentinel and the Monterey Weekly from publishing the ingredients.

After the Sentinel initially published the ingredients, other publications have done so as well.

Registered by the EPA in 1997, CheckMate OLR-F replicates the scent of a female moth and throws male moths off course.

The state is warning the public that California’s agricultural industry could suffer if an attempt to eradicate the moth isn’t undertaken immediately.

Sources: Santa Cruz Sentinel, Los Angeles Times