
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 3, 1990                   TAG: 9005020194
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Tammy Poole
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SOME INSECT REPELLENTS ARE BEING RECALLED

Two major brands of insect repellent and scores of others are being pulled from store shelves because an ingredient used for decades damaged reproductive organs and caused tumors in test animals, government regulators said recently.

In all, 200 brands of insect repellent, including Deep Woods OFF and Cutter's, use the ingredient, which is called 2,3,4,5-Bis(2,butylene)tetrahydro-2-furaldehyde as an additive to repel flies that bite, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

About 25 percent of all insect repellents on the market use the additive.

The manufacturer, McLaughlin Gormley King Co. of Minneapolis, provided the government with preliminary test results showing that the additive caused "adverse reproductive effects, ovarian atrophy and . . . tumors," in laboratory rats and mice.

The company has volutarilly canceled its registration on this product and informed all the users. Cancelling the registration means the company is asking for revocation of the license to produce or sell a pesticide.

Two of the major users of the additive are S.C. Johnson and Son of Racine, Wis., which makes Off, and Miles Laboratories of Chicago, producer of Cutter's.

Both companies began notifying retailers a couple of weeks ago to take the products containing the ingredient off their shelves. In both cases, the withdrawal affects only a portion of the product line, and does not include every insect repellent the companies make.

The voluntary recall involved several products carrying the Cutter's name, she said. Three of Cutter's products did not contain the ingredient in question: the tick repellent, the maximum strength formula and the stick repellent.

The recalled products are being replaced with new ones carrying a yellow sticker saying it is a new formula, she said.

Sixty-five other companies also produce repellents using R-11 under a variety of brand names.

Among those are pet products, including some flea and tick repellents marketed under the Adams or Mycodex brand names, said Linda Kriesman, a spokeswoman for SmithKline Beecham Co.

The products have been reformulated, and the new formulas either have been approved already by the government or are awaiting approval, she said.

The government has done no independent testing of the additive - it requires pesticide manufacturers to conduct safety tests - and does not know how dangerous it may be.

"We just don't have enough data to do a risk assessmennt," Heier said. "We have no evidence that it hurt anybody."

The previous information was supplied by the Associated Press

by CNB