L.A. Asks State to Tighten Regulation of Pesticide Methyl Bromide

Prompted by the death of a 36-year-old Toluca Lake woman who was apparently poisoned by fumigation gas, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday asked the state to impose new restrictions on the use of a powerful pesticide.

In the last 13 years, the pesticide methyl bromide has been blamed for 18 deaths in the state, mostly burglars or homeless people who entered fumigated buildings where the chemical was used.

The latest victim appears to be Sandra Cornwall Mero, who died in March, two weeks after she was discovered unconscious by her landlady in her Toluca Lake home.

Mero’s mother filed a lawsuit in April against the firms that manufactured and applied the chemical, alleging that methyl bromide poisoned her daughter after it seeped into her house through pipes from an adjacent building that was being fumigated. The suit also names the building’s landlord.

The council voted unanimously to ask the State Department of Pesticide Regulations to implement tougher inspection and notification procedures and help ensure that better odor warning agents are used with methyl bromide.

Councilman John Ferraro, who introduced the motion, said he wishes the council could have imposed tougher restrictions itself but noted that only the state can regulate the use of the chemical.

“A complex web of more than a dozen agencies regulate the use of methyl bromide, but it is outside the city’s direct jurisdiction,” he said.

Larry Feldman, the attorney representing Mero’s mother, Violet Cornwall, called the council’s action “a step in the right direction.”

“It’s such a deadly poison,” he said, “that it’s essential that every safeguard humanly possible be employed.”

Feldman said an autopsy confirmed that Mero died of methyl bromide poisoning.

Mero, an entertainment company employee, lived in a home with pipes connecting it to a nearby studio. Feldman said the pipes were apparently used to carry electrical and speaker wires between the buildings years earlier.

The day after the studio next door was fumigated, Mero told friends by telephone that she awoke feeling ill, Feldman said. She went back to sleep and was found unconscious the next day, he said. She lapsed into a coma and died at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank.

The case has been investigated by County Agricultural Commissioner Leon Spaugy, who is the local enforcement arm of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation. Spaugy declined to disclose the results of his investigation, saying only that the coroner’s report did confirm that methyl bromide was the cause of death and the case has been turned over to the district attorney’s office for review.

But he added that the council’s recommendations are reasonable.

“If there are opportunities where we can tighten up the inspection procedures,” he said, “there is no reason why we can’t look at those.”

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said it was decided not to bring manslaughter charges against the pest control firm that used the methyl bromide due to “inadequate showing of gross negligence.”

But the district attorney is still studying whether food and agricultural regulations were violated, she said.

Methyl bromide fumes attack the central nervous system and respiratory system, causing dizziness, vomiting and disorientation.

Use of the chemical was about to be banned in California last year until the state Legislature delayed the ban at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson and farm groups, who use the chemical for soil fumigation.

Still, methyl bromide will be outlawed in 2010 in the U.S. and many other countries under an international agreement signed in Montreal in 1993 because of fears that it damages the atmosphere’s ozone layer.

Because methyl bromide is an odorless gas, it is usually mixed with chloropicrin, a tear gas agent, to make it more detectable. But Feldman said that for some unknown reason, Mero did not smell the chloropicrin when it entered her home.