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For Immediate Release
December, 16 2010, 12:10pm EDT
Contact:
Kate Slusark, 212-727-4592 or kslusark@nrdc.org
California Court: Toxic Pet Products Must Have Warning Labels
NRDC Lawsuit Halts Retailers and Manufacturers from Selling Potentially Harmful Flea Collars Without a Warning Label
SAN FRANCISCO
Major pet product retailers and
manufacturers will not sell flea and tick collars in California that
contain a cancer-causing chemical without a warning label, according to a
settlement in a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
"When you pick up a flea collar at the pet store, you just
want to stop your dog or cat from scratching; you don't want to put
their health -- or your family's -- in jeopardy," said NRDC Scientist
Miriam Rotkin-Ellman. "Warning labels will now help pet owners better
avoid bringing dangerous chemicals into their homes against their will."
Under the settlement, 18 pet product retailers and
manufacturers, including PetSmart and PETCO, agreed not to distribute or
sell flea collars containing propoxur without a warning that they
include a chemical listed as a known carcinogen in California. By law,
these products should have received warning labels as of August 11,
2007.
NRDC filed the lawsuit against the companies in California
Superior Court in Alameda County last year for failing to comply with
California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. This law
prohibits businesses from knowingly exposing consumers to any chemical
"known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive harm" without proper
warning.
In addition to securing warning labels in California, NRDC
petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency last year to remove these
toxic chemicals altogether from pet products nationwide. The petition
is still pending. NRDC testing and careful calculations reveal that the
EPA's decision to leave these products on the market may create a
significant health risk to pets and pet owners, most notably young
children. EPA's most recent risk assessment of flea collars with
propoxur also confirms that these products pose unacceptably high risks
for children.
"The bottom line is -- these products are so dangerous that
they don't belong on store shelves," said Rotkin-Ellman. "EPA, PETCO,
PetSmart and the rest of the pet product industry know this and should
do the right thing. Ultimately the only way to truly protect people and
animals from the toxic, cancer-causing chemicals in flea collars is to
ban them from the products altogether."
A 2009 NRDC scientific analysis, Poison on Pets II,
found high levels of propoxur and tetrachlorvinphos (TCVP) -- both
chemicals common in household pet products that can damage the brain and
nervous system, as well as cause cancer -- on pet fur after use of
ordinary flea collars. This not only poses serious health risks for the
pets who wear the collars, but exposes their human owners and families
to the dangerous chemicals. This is a particular concern for children
because their neurological and metabolic systems are still developing,
and they are more likely to put their hands in their mouths after
petting an animal, causing them to ingest the hazardous residues.
A 2000 NRDC report, Poison on Pets, has already led to
the ban of six other dangerous pesticides in pet products, but products
containing propoxur and TCVP are still on store shelves.
There are safer methods of flea and tick control available
that won't poison pets or people, including frequently using a flea
comb, and regularly bathing pets, washing their bedding, and
vacuuming. If chemical-based flea control is necessary, the safest
options often containing the least toxic chemicals are those dispensed
by pill. NRDC offers a free online flea and tick product guide for pet
owners that ranks more than 125 products, categorizing them by the level
of their potential health threat, at www.greenpaws.org.
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
(212) 727-2700LATEST NEWS
'Game Over Zeldin': 160+ Climate and Health Groups Say EPA Chief Must Go
"The wreckage of Lee Zeldin's EPA will be measured in lives lost, jobs destroyed, the costs of illnesses that could have been prevented, and communities devastated."
Mar 24, 2026
A month after President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced what they celebrated as the "single largest deregulatory action in US history," a coalition of over 160 civil rights, environmental, faith, health, and labor groups came together Tuesday to call for the EPA chief's ouster.
Zeldin was confirmed by Senate Republicans and a trio of Democrats just over a week after Trump returned to power in January 2025. The "Game Over Zeldin" coalition, led by the Climate Action Campaign (CAC) and Moms Clean Air Force, argued in an open letter that no other EPA administrator "in history—Democratic or Republican—has so brazenly betrayed the agency's core mission" to "protect human health and the environment."
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Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of Moms Clean Air Force, pointed out in a Tuesday statement that "in just the past few months, he has supported the Trump administration in using taxpayer money to prop up the coal industry; he has made it easier for polluters to spew mercury—a potent neurotoxin that damages the developing brains of babies—into our air and waterways; and he has rolled back the endangerment finding in an attempt to sabotage EPA's ability to cut climate pollution."
The 2009 endangerment finding underpins all federal climate policy. David Arkush of the watchdog Public Citizen—which is also part of the diverse coalition behind the new letter—warned at the time that if allowed to stand, the repeal "will hamstring the government's ability to combat the most terrible environmental threat in human history, harming Americans and the world for decades to come."
Young Americans and a coalition of environmental and public health organizations swiftly filed a pair of lawsuits over the rollback. Another group of 24 states, joined by various US cities and counties, sued last week. The most recent filing is expected to be consolidated with the first coalition's case, according to The New York Times, "making for one of the largest legal challenges to date against the Trump administration's unraveling of federal climate policy."
The new letter stresses the consequences of that unraveling, stating that "because of Zeldin's directives, we will suffer more health-damaging air pollution and be exposed to more toxic chemicals in our homes, in our food, in our products, and in our water. Zeldin's rollbacks will lead to more carbon dioxide and methane pollution that will contribute to worsening climate disasters."
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We refuse to stay silent while Lee Zeldin treats our lives like a line item to be deleted. The EPA is for the people, not polluters. His time is up; Lee Zeldin must go. #GameOverZeldin www.gameoverzeldin.com
[image or embed]
— Physicians for Social Responsibility - National (@psr.org) March 24, 2026 at 12:12 PM
CAC director Margie Alt declared Tuesday that "the wreckage of Lee Zeldin's EPA will be measured in lives lost, jobs destroyed, the costs of illnesses that could have been prevented, and communities devastated. We will be paying the price for decades to come."
"Zeldin ignored science as well as the legal and moral precedent," she said. "Instead, he looked at the numbers and made a choice: He decided that corporate bottom lines matter more than our lives. He decided you and your family are expendable. After a year on the job, it is clear that Zeldin is either unable or unwilling to uphold his oath of office or the EPA's fundamental mission. So let us be clear: Our lives are not expendable. Our health is not expendable. Our climate is not expendable. Lee Zeldin must go."
Other organizations that signed on to the letter include Beyond Plastics, Cherokee Concerned Citizens, Clean Air Council, Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, Earthjustice, Environmental Working Group, Environmental Protection Network, GreenLatinos, Indivisible Action Coalition, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Service Employees International Union, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and more.
"Administrator Zeldin's established pattern of placing polluter profits above the health and safety of people across the country cannot stand," said UCS president and CEO Gretchen Goldman. "The science establishing harm to human health and the environment from global warming emissions is undeniable. The unprecedented, climate-fueled heatwave a large swath of the United States has been experiencing is only the latest example."
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President Donald Trump has been escalating his push for the US Senate to pass sweeping legislation that would ban universal mail-in voting, spreading misinformation about mailed ballots, and slamming the system as "cheating"—but amid his efforts, he found time recently to cast his own ballot by mail for the latest time in Florida's special legislative election.
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It's at least the second time that the president has voted by mail in Florida; he did so in 2020 as well.
“I can vote by mail," he told reporters at the time. "I’m allowed to.”
That same year, he aggressively promoted the baseless notion that voting by mail—a system long used in states run by both Republicans and Democrats, including Utah and Washington—would lead to election fraud.
Numerous US courts found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, in which more voters relied on voting by mail due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The president has said he aims only to prohibit universal mail-in voting rather than stopping individual voters from using mailed ballots; one of the new anti-voting rights bills he's proposed, the Make Elections Great Again Act, would prohibit universal mail voting and limit the system to a select few people by requiring voters to submit an application to receive a mail-in ballot.
Trump referred to voting by mail as "mail-in cheating" in Memphis on Monday, and said for the second time in a week that the US is "the only country that does mail-in voting."
Trump: It was brought to my attention today that we’re the only country that does mail in voting. I call it mail in cheating. pic.twitter.com/2bNmgoK6km
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He made a similar comment last week when hosting Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, whose country is one of dozens that allow voting by mail for some voters. Countries with universal mail-in voting include Canada, Iceland, Switzerland, and Germany.
Trump's use of mail-in voting led House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to denounce him as a "complete fraud" on Tuesday.
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Trump said last August that Democrats want mailed ballots to be available to voters because "it’s the only way they can get elected," despite the fact that such ballots are used by voters in both parties. He has also expressed confidence that Republicans "will never lose a race" if the GOP moves to restrict voting access.
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The US State Department under President Donald Trump has been accused of stealing more than a billion dollars from immigrants and sponsors in what experts are calling “the largest fraud in the history of the US immigration system.”
A report published last week by the Cato Institute, written by director of immigration studies David J. Bier, found that the State Department and Department of Homeland Security were receiving millions of applications from immigrants whom Trump has made ineligible for legal status and pocketing the fees without ever processing the requests.
"The US government collected over $1 billion in immigration fees then refused to process the applications," said Austin Kocher, a fellow at Immigration Lab and a professor at Newhouse and Syracuse University in a social media post breaking down the report on Monday. "No denials. No refunds. Just silence."
The report zeroes in on a series of policies signed by Trump and enacted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) head Joseph Edlow, which have collectively barred nationals from 92 countries from immigrating to the US.
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Another State Department policy bans visa applications from immigrants in 75 countries from being processed indefinitely, purportedly based on data showing that residents of those countries use welfare at disproportionately high rates.
These policies block more than 320,000 people abroad from entering the US and potentially as many as 561,000 potential permanent residents when those already living in the US are considered.
Although people from these countries are categorically denied immigrant visas and most other visa types under a series of travel bans signed by Trump, the government is still collecting fees for visas, work permits, and green cards.
The report cited evidence that the department has directed consular officers that they "should not counsel applicants or advise them" that they are subject to the bans when they come in for their interviews, because it "could be seen as pre-adjudication."
Upon revealing this directive last month, immigration attorney Curtis Morrison described it as a way that "embassies scam visa applicants subject to the travel ban out of fees."
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To immigrate to the United States or to obtain authorization to work or travel internationally, noncitizens must usually pay a fee to have their applications processed. USCIS’s immigration fee revenues were nearly $7 billion, and the Consular Affairs budget was about $6 billion.
The fees stack up. For instance, to sponsor a spouse, a US citizen must pay a $675 fee to USCIS to petition for their spouse to obtain lawful permanent residence. Then, the immigrant must pay $1,440 to adjust status from temporary to permanent residence. That application takes so long that people usually pay $560 for the spouse to receive an employment authorization document, so the total fees can add up to $2,675.
Bier estimated that more than 2 million applications were affected by the bans, with fees coming primarily from work permit filings and permanent residency or immigrant visa applications.
He explained that these fees are difficult to track precisely because the government does not publish detailed statistics on them. He was also forced to rely on out-of-date fee statistics from 2023-24 because the Trump administration "has simply stopped publishing most statistics."
That said, Bier noted that the numbers are most likely to “understate reality” because they include only those who likely had their requests processed in the past year, not those whose processing was delayed by backlogs.
Of the more than $1 billion in fees the Trump administration would have collected for services it never rendered, data from previous years suggested that about $543 million came from Cuban immigrants, who filed about 935,000 applications during the period under review.
The next highest were Venezuelans, who paid an estimated $138 million in fees. Iranians, Haitians, and Afghans were also among the nationalities with the highest numbers of unprocessed applications.
The Trump administration has used high-profile instances of fraud committed by members of immigrant groups, such as Somalis in Minneapolis, to cast aspersions upon entire nationalities and target them for immigration bans and attacks by federal law enforcement.
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He argued that the Department of Homeland Security "isn't anti-fraud" but instead "openly carrying out the largest fraud in the history of the US immigration system... raking in billions of dollars in immigration fees and not providing the adjudications that applicants are entitled to."
"DHS and State can deny anyone who fails to make their case. Instead, this administration is pocketing thousands of dollars from hardworking Americans and their relatives, including spouses and minor children of US citizens, and then not even looking at their applications," he said. "This is a scam. This is fraud."
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