The Environmental Protection Agency is ordering Amazon and eBay to stop selling a number of unregistered pesticides, including products falsely claiming to combat the coronavirus, putting the companies on notice that they could face fines if they continue.
The EPA issued so-called “stop sale” orders to the two major online retailers Wednesday, a move that comes after multiple warnings asking the companies to better police their platforms, Susan Bodine, the agency’s enforcement chief, told the Washington Examiner. That included a meeting in April in which EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler pressed the two companies and other major e-marketplaces on the issue.
“It is confounding, because EPA has been working with them for a couple of years now, that the issues continue to arise,” Doug Benevento, the EPA’s associate deputy administrator, said in an interview. “It’s particularly serious in light of the coronavirus outbreak.”
For months, the EPA’s enforcement office has been policing the borders and online retailers to prevent the sale of products falsely claiming to protect against the coronavirus.
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It’s the first time the EPA has issued a stop sale order to eBay, and the fourth such order to Amazon, which the agency said has failed to properly monitor its platforms for unregistered products even after a settlement in 2018. The orders open the door for the EPA to seek penalties or take other enforcement actions if it discovers the retailers continuing to sell the products.
According to Bodine, EPA investigators discovered Amazon selling more than 30 unregistered products and eBay selling more than 40 unregistered or restricted products. It is illegal for companies to sell pesticides the EPA has classified for restricted use to the general public.
“These are products that are dangerous, and you cannot sell them to somebody who hasn’t gone through the training for proper use,” Bodine said of the restricted products, adding EPA investigative staff were able to purchase them without having the proper certifications.
For example, among the products listed on eBay were 55-gallon drums of methylene chloride, a potentially deadly chemical found in paint strippers that the EPA banned the consumer sale of last year, according to documents shared with the Washington Examiner. Environmentalists had urged the EPA to go even further and ban methylene chloride for commercial use, too, as the Obama administration had sought.
The eBay listing discovered by EPA investigators had marketed the drums of methylene chloride as a coronavirus disinfectant, as well as a paint stripper.
People view Amazon and eBay as trusted retailers “and believe they’re going on and getting something of quality based upon the reputations of the company, and, in these cases, at least, what we’re seeing is that’s not true,” Benevento said.
The EPA has taken actions against manufacturers of the unregistered products, too, but the agency felt it necessary to address the online retailers directly because of their ability to spread the products across the United States and beyond its borders, Bodine said.
Despite multiple run-ins with the EPA already, Amazon still hasn’t taken the proper steps to police its platform for unregistered products, according to the agency. The company had to set up a corporate compliance program as part of its 2018 settlement with the agency, but Bodine said that approach isn’t working, and the EPA intends to meet with Amazon to determine the next steps.
Neither Amazon nor eBay check products with the EPA’s approved list before listing them for sale on their sites, Bodine said. In fact, out of the major e-retailers Wheeler met with back in April, only Walmart screens its products beforehand, she added.
