Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pest Management
How To Find Ingredients in Pesticide Products
Beyond Pesticides offers resources below to evaluate the health and ecological effects of specific chemical exposure from ACTIVE INGREDIENTS in pesticide products, as well as regulatory information and supporting scientific documents. Because various pesticide products can contain more than one active ingredient, it is important to READ the LABEL to determine chemical components.
With 192 different active ingredients and counting, it is essential to establish the connection between the use of these chemicals and their respective hazards.
View the step-by-step guide on how to search for the active ingredient(s) in pesticide products below:
- Go to U.S. EPA's Pesticide Product and Label System and enter the product name. The generic product name may vary.
- After searching, click on the chemical ingredients tab or the link for the most recent label to find Active Ingredients.
Chemical List Label List
If one selects the chemical ingredients tab, skip to Step 4 . If not, proceed to step number 3 - To find the active ingredient(s) on the label, search for the page in the document containing the date of registration. Usually, the active ingredients section occurs within the first few pages of the label document.
- Return to the Beyond Pesticides Gateway and search for the active ingredient name in the yellow box to the right or from the list below.
Phenothrin
d-Phenothrin/Sumithrin
General Information
- Fact Sheet: Synthetic Pyrethroids.pdf
- Product Names:
- Chemical Class: Synthetic pyrethroid
- Uses: Commercial and industrial settings, in animal kennels, medical institutions, and other institutional settings; greenhouses, homes, and gardens, and in recreational areas, vector control for mosquitoes (indoor and outdoor); targets ants, aphids, bed bugs, bees, beetles, billbugs, box elders, borers, cockroaches, cadelles, caterpillars, centipedes, crickets, daubers, earwigs, fleas, flies, gnats, hornets, crawling insects, flying insects, grain insects, lace bugs, leafhoppers, leaf miners, lice, moths, mites, mealy bugs, midges, millipedes, mosquitoes, rust, scab, scales, scorpions, silverfish, spiders, sow bugs, thrips, ticks, wasps, waterbugs, weevils, worms, and yellow jackets.
- Alternatives: Least-toxic insect control, Least-toxic mosquito control
- Beyond Pesticides rating: Toxic
Health and Environmental Effects
- Cancer: Likely (135, 136, 137, 138)
- Endocrine Disruption: Suspected (30, 136)
- Reproductive Effects: Suspected (137)
- Neurotoxicity: Yes (29, 137)
- Kidney/Liver Damage: Yes (11, 137)
- Sensitizer/ Irritant: No
- Birth/Developmental: Not Likely
- Detected in Groundwater: Not Likely
- Potential Leacher: Not Likely
- Toxic to Birds: Not Likely
- Toxic to Fish/Aquatic Organisms: Yes (137)
- Toxic to Bees: Yes (57, 137)
Residential Uses as Found in the ManageSafe™ Database
Additional Information
- Regulatory Status:
- EPA Reregistration Eligibility Decision (RED) signed (6/2008)
- Beyond Pesticides' RED comments.
- Supporting information:
- NCAP Sumithrin Factsheet (Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides)
- PAN Pesticides Database: Phenothrin (Pesticide Action Network)
- Studies:
- Evaluation of the genotoxicity of the pyrethroid insecticide phenothrin. Nagy, K. (2014) Evaluation of the genotoxicity of the pyrethroid insecticide phenothrin, Mutation Research/Genetic Toxicology and Environmental Mutagenesis. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S138357181400134X.
- Insecticidal Activity, Toxicity, Resistance and Metabolism of Pyrethroids: a Review. Singh, A. ., Singh, A. ., Singh, P. ., Chakravarty, A. ., Singh , A., Singh, P. ., Mishra, M. K. ., Singh, . V. ., Srivastava, A. K. ., Aggarwal, H. ., & Sagadevan, S. (2022). Insecticidal Activity, Toxicity, Resistance and Metabolism of Pyrethroids: a Review. Science and Technology Indonesia, 7(2), 238–250. https://doi.org/10.26554/sti.2022.7.2.238-250
- Advances and future prospects of pyrethroids: Toxicity and microbial degradation. Singh, S. et al. (2022) Advances and future prospects of pyrethroids: Toxicity and microbial degradation, Science of The Total Environment. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969722016540.