Still, her veterinarian recommended she purchase one, so Bomwell went to the pet store near her home in Somerset, New Jersey, and selected Bayer’s Seresto collar.
A day later, on June 2, 2020, Pierre had a seizure, collapsing while Bomwell was making dinner. Lying on his back, the dog stopped breathing and his eyes rolled back.
Bomwell tried giving him CPR. Then she called the police. An officer helped her lift the dog into her car, and she rushed him to the hospital. Pierre died before he could receive medical treatment. Bomwell didn’t think to take off Pierre’s collar.
“I just didn’t put it together,” she said.
Bomwell isn’t alone. Seresto, one of the most popular flea and tick collars in the country, has been linked to hundreds of pet deaths, tens of thousands of injured animals and hundreds of harmed humans, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents show.
Yet the EPA has done nothing to inform the public of the risks.
Seresto, developed by Bayer and now sold by Elanco, works by releasing small amounts of pesticide onto the animal for months at a time. The pesticide is supposed to kill fleas, ticks and other pests but be safe for cats and dogs.
But thousands of pets are being harmed, according to federal documents obtained through a public records request from the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization that watchdogs the EPA as part of its work to protect endangered species. The center provided the documents to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.
Since Seresto flea and tick collars were introduced in 2012, the EPA has received incident reports of at least 1,698 related pet deaths. Overall, through June 2020, the agency has received more than 75,000 incident reports related to the collars, including nearly 1,000 involving human harm.
The EPA is in charge of regulating products that contain pesticides. The agency has known about these incidents for years but has not informed the public of the potential risks associated with this product, said Karen McCormack, a retired EPA employee who worked as both a scientist and communications officer.
McCormack said the collars have the most incidents of any pesticide pet product she’s ever seen.
“The EPA appears to be turning a blind eye to this problem, and after seven years of an increasing number of incidents, they are telling the public that they are continuing to monitor the situation,” she said. “But I think this is a significant problem that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.”
The EPA declined to say how Seresto compares to other pet products. But in response to a question about whether the product is safe, an agency spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the two pesticides in Seresto have “been found eligible for continued registration” based on best available science, including incident data.
“No pesticide is completely without harm, but EPA ensures that there are measures on the product label that reduce risk,” the spokesperson said. “The product label is the law, and applicators must follow label directions. Some pets, however, like some humans, are more sensitive than others and may experience adverse symptoms after treatment.”
Amazon, where Seresto is the top-selling collar, also has received numerous complaints about the product from customers who detailed significant issues. Dozens of people over the years have claimed the collar caused skin rashes in their pet. Others said it led to neurological issues in their pets.
Despite the many warnings, Amazon has not removed the product from its online marketplace. Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
This isn’t the first time that the EPA has failed to properly regulate flea and tick collars containing pesticides, said Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The NRDC filed a petition against the agency more than a decade ago over its approval of a different pesticide than the one used in Seresto that is linked to cancer and brain development issues in children.
In April 2020, a federal appeals court called the EPA’s refusal to respond to NRDC’s requests “nothing short of egregious” and told agency officials to make a decision on whether to ban the pesticide within 90 days. The EPA decided not to ban the pesticide, called tetrachlorvinphos. That pet collar continues to be sold under the brand name Hartz Ultraguard, Hartz InControl and Longlife.
NRDC has challenged that decision; that lawsuit is currently pending.
Even so, the number of incidents linked to that pesticide pales in comparison to those linked to Seresto. From 1992 to 2008, the EPA received about 4,600 incident reports regarding pet collars containing tetrachlorvinphos, including 363 deaths, according to EPA documents.
Broken down per year, that’s 30 times fewer incidents and 10 times fewer deaths than Seresto.
And those are most likely an undercount, said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity and an expert on U.S. pesticide regulation. Donley said the number of reported incidents for Seresto is “just the tip of the iceberg.”
In order to report an incident, a person has to make the connection between the collar and the issue with the dog, understand who to contact and how to report it, he said.
“Most of the time, people are not going to make the connection or they’re not going to take an hour or so out of the day and figure out how to call and spend time on hold,” Donley said.
He said the incident data creates lots of questions about EPA processes.
“My God, if this doesn’t trigger a concern, that’s a fundamental problem with the process,” Donley said. “The fact that EPA has not done anything to alert the public that there might be an issue here, it strikes me as bordering on criminal. The EPA has this system in place to compile information and it’s just collecting dust in some database.”
