As rats overrun California cities, state moves to ban powerful Rat-killers

There were so many earlier this summer outside the CalEPA building in downtown Sacramento officials had to close its outdoor playground out of fear state employees’ kids would catch rodent-borne diseases.

To fight back, building officials set out a controversial type of rat poison whose use may soon be banned statewide by the California Legislature. The poison didn’t stay out very long once word got out the state’s top environmental regulators were using a poison widely condemned by California’s powerful environmental groups.

“Effective immediately, I’m putting a moratorium on the use of rodenticides around the 1001 I Street Building, “CalEPA agency undersecretary Serena McIlwain said on June 19 in an email to staffers. “We will continue to monitor the situation daily and will work aggressively to find effective, less toxic alternatives.”

The rats-versus-pesticide fight at the building that houses the Department of Pesticide Regulation couldn’t have been more carefully designed to highlight the complexities of two budding crises in California.

The state is seeing a troubling resurgence of rodents, which can carry a wide array of diseases that have been around since the Middle Ages. The megalopolis of Los Angeles County, for one, has seen skyrocketing cases of one such disease, typhus. At the same time, researchers are finding widely used rodent poisons at sometimes lethal levels in the bodies of beloved California predators such as birds of prey and mountain lions.

As a result of the widespread wildlife poisoning, nearly every prominent environmental group in the state is advocating for a ban on anticoagulant rodenticides.

The California Legislature is poised to ban the toxins over the objections of well-financed chemical industry lobbyists and pest control operators, apartment owners and restaurateurs wary of rodent infestations. 

But the rat infestation combined with a pesticide ban is no laughing matter to some experts, who say a disease outbreak similar to the one in Los Angeles could happen in downtown Sacramento if rats such as those infesting the CalEPA headquarters aren’t kept in check. 

“When you’re at the stage where you have to close down your playground because you’re worried about exposing children to rats and the disease they harbor, you need to use your 

full arsenal,” said Niamh Quinn.