Cypermethrin pollution kills river life

A pollution incident involving the insecticide cypermethrin has killed thousands of crayfish and other river life in the Sherston Avon and the Luckington Brook on the border of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire in southern England.
    On 20 April the Environment Agency, the investigating authority, confirmed that half the population of the white clawed crayfish, Britain's only native freshwater species, had been affected.
    Concerned members of the public rang the Agency's hot-line on 16 April when they spotted large numbers of dead and dying crayfish and invertebrates.
    "This is a serious pollution incident which has devastated this important crayfish community," said Jim Flory of the Environment Agency. The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that the Agency was looking to protect the population in the Sherston Avon for restocking elsewhere in the country. 
    Analysis of river water samples has pinpointed cypermethrin in large enough quantities to cause the deaths. The chemical has a range of agricultural uses including spraying and as a sheep dip. Further analysis of sediment and dead crayfish is currently being carried out to identify the source of the pollution.

Environment Agency news release 20 April 1998.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 40, June 1998, page 15]