Sulfuryl Fluoride: Releases, 1995-2015

Sulfuryl Fluoride
CAS No. 2699-79-8

The following data comes from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) for Sulfuryl fluoride releases into the environment. It’s important to note that

— Sulfuryl fluoride is used as a structural fumigant and a major food fumigant on post-harvest, processed, warehoused food, and grains. When the pesticide division at the U.S. EPA Office of Pesticide approved its use as a food fumigant in 2004 and 2005, they approved the highest levels of fluoride residues in and on food it its history.

— See the approved levels of residues of both fluoride and sulfuryl fluoride in and on food in the U.S.

— Sulfuryl fluoride is highly neurotoxic. Every animal study performed by Dow chemical found serious effects to the brain. It is also a potent greenhouse gas.

— The Fluoride Action Network together with Beyond Pesticides and the Environmental Working Group fought hard and long to get EPA’s Pesticide Division to ban Sulfuryl fluoride on food. See a compilation of our Objections submitted to EPA to ban this chemical. In the end Dow AgroSciences won by lobbying the U.S. Congress to allow a tiny sentence in the 2014 Farm Bill that reversed EPA’s proposal in January 2011 to phase-out its use.

— Of interest is the fact that the EPA’s Office of Water took over the risk assessment from the Pesticides Division for Sulfuryl fluoride. This was highly unusual, but then again, everything relating to fluoride on a regulatory levels has been this way.

— Not all industries or sources that release Sulfuryl fluoride into the environment are included in the TRI.  Sulfuryl fluoride was added to the TRI in 1995.

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