Firm Changes Its Story on 2 Herbicides

A Michigan chemical company, which had said it stopped making two herbicides to comply with Proposition 65, changed its explanation Thursday, saying instead that the products were withdrawn after the federal government questioned their safety.

“I just got it confused,” said Jeffrey T. Walker, a government regulatory specialist with Celex Corp. “There’s lots of different rules and regulations and I just got them mixed up.”

Walker told The Times Wednesday that his firm stopped making the products because of California’s anti-toxics initiative--the first time a company had said publicly that it was complying with the new law by removing hazardous chemicals from its products.

After Celex reversed itself Thursday, environmentalist supporters of the initiative questioned whether the firm’s turnabout was prompted by pressure from businesses opposed to Proposition 65.

“This looks like a flip-flop under extreme pressure from other elements of the pesticide industry who don’t want people thinking that Proposition 65 is actually working,” said David Roe, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. “It wasn’t until the chemical industry read about this in the newspaper that Celex tried to change its story.”

Under Proposition 65, businesses are prohibited from exposing the public to chemicals that cause cancer or birth defects without first providing a warning.

On March 11, Walker wrote a letter to the Natural Resources Defense Council saying that Celex had stopped making two products, Super K-Gro Liquid Fence & Grass Edger and Super K-Gro Vegetation Killer, because of the requirements of Proposition 65.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Walker confirmed the company’s action and said that both products contained arsenic compounds covered by the initiative.

But on Thursday, Walker said the company abandoned the use of the chemicals not because of Proposition 65 but because the federal Environmental Protection Agency requested further tests to prove their safety.

Walker said the arsenic compounds were both contained in a substance called cacodylic acid. A spokesman for the EPA confirmed that the agency asked manufacturers of cacodylic acid in 1984 to conduct a dozen tests on the substance over the next six years.

Roe said that regardless of the reason for halting manufacture of the products, Celex’s action still shows there are safer alternatives to the chemicals used by many industries. “You don’t need to expose people to cancer in order to kill crabgrass,” he said.