by PYoungbaer » Jul 6, 2012 9:48 pm
Crockett,
Before you even asked I had already communicated with both USFWS and Hazel Barton, who is the researcher behind the protocols, along with her colleagues and folks at the Southern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study. There is no list. I have read the entire study, which is currently in press. There is nothing in there that has anything to do with these changes in language.
All of us. including USFWS, are frustrated with the sudden injection of another federal agency and their legal folks into the protocols. Nothing changed in terms of the functional effectiveness of the techniques, but USFWS is constrained by another agency's legal assertions from recommending off-label use.
The previous version of the protocols told us all what worked and on what materials to effectively disinfect against the fungus Geomyces destructans. The new version of the protocols only covers the legal asses of government agencies who differed on whether killing the fungus was cleaning or "killing a pest," and thus a "pesticide." It's a labeling issue and legal liability issue from the manufacturer's and regulatory agency's perspective.
Blame the lawyers for this; there was no additional study since the long-awaited revisions were reviewed and approved by the WNS National Plan working group on decon and issued in March.
I'm also very familiar with MSDS forms, having written Vermont's Community Right to Know law as a Vermont legislator in the 1980's. Yes, each chemical with an MSDS will mention appropriate personal protective gear so that employees working with such materials, or firefighters dealing with buildings containing them can protect themselves. However, that's not the purpose of this chart, which is to guide people cleaning cave or research gear, which is why I said you were reading it too literally. The purpose of the chart revisions are to let us know that using certain of these substances on porous materials is "off label" according to the legal beagles.