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Agriculture Department’s acting Office Manager of the Office of Pesticide Services and the Director of the Division of Consumer Protection.
He says that the EPA lists three levels of toxicity for its pesticides, “CAUTION,” “WARNING,” and for the most toxic, “DANGEROUS.”
Vanquish is listed as “CAUTION,” in toxicity category 3-4, set by the EPA.
Garlon-3A, however, is in the top category, “DANGEROUS,” according to Lawson.
“Its eye-irritant capacity is significant,” he said. “That in itself is no reason for alarm. If it is used properly, it should be no problem,” and is commonly used, he said, for right-of-way pest control.
But Watson further explains that VDOT’s contractors are spraying a one percent solution—10 gallons of herbicides per 1,000 gallons of water.
“We get a percentage that will be at the minimum to knock out the weed,” he said. He added the thistle grows four to five feet tall and two feet around. “You have to cover the plant in its entirety,” he said.
Furthermore, the men with the sprayers have to shoot from a distance of several feet, from the truck to the median, to reach the thistles.
“It is not cost efficient to walk up to every thistle,” Watson said.
The contractors doing the spraying for VDOT work under specific guidelines, says Watson. They are supposed to “spot spray,” using nozzles at the ends of hoses. The spraying devices employ “Poly Control,” Watson says, a process that makes the drops of the solution heavier and less likely to drift through the air to adjoining properties.
Under VDOT’s regulations, the contractors must shut down their spraying operations if the wind picks up above 10 m.p.h They are also instructed to shut down during periods of rain.
Not the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) nor the Region 3 Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, nor the Piedmont Environmental
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