Rachel Gabel claims SB26-062 “prioritizes rodents over people” and “strips tools away” from professionals. That framing is rhetorically sharp — but misstates the bill and the toxicology. The column follows a familiar pattern: deploy a vivid public-health anecdote, inflate disease fear, caricature the bill as a “ban,” and then discount contamination evidence by attacking affiliations rather than mechanisms. The result invites readers to accept routine use of compounds SB26-062 is trying to constrain precisely because they spread harm beyond the target.

Gabel foregrounds Denver’s Lincoln Park encampment and lists worst-case diseases to imply Colorado faces a standing rodent-borne disease emergency requiring broad access to the most hazardous rodenticides. Yes, Denver cleared Lincoln Park in January 2020 citing rats and health hazards. But that illustrates a systems failure, not proof Colorado should normalize routine, landscape-level poisoning. Poison can reduce rodents temporarily; it doesn’t change the conditions that set carrying capacity — so the problem returns while toxicants radiate.

Colorado public health messaging is more precise than the column suggests. Jefferson County Public Health notes rats are generally a nuisance and not a public health risk in Colorado, while acknowledging disease transmission pathways. That prevents disease lists from substituting for evidence of a statewide emergency — and aligns with SB26-062’s structure: prevention first, narrow escalation when public-health authorities determine it’s necessary.

Gabel’s most consequential “scientific” claim — “short half-life” baits are safe for predators — fails. Brodifacoum and Difenacoum have hepatic (liver) half-lives on the order of months (e.g., ~113.5 and ~128 days in rat liver). Long half-life plus repeated exposure means bioaccumulation equals poisoned rodents become contaminated prey.

Finally, the harm is not “urban-only.” Monitoring shows anticoagulant residues across landscapes, consistent with exposures from barns, feed storage, outbuildings and other rural infrastructure.

Bottom line: SB26-062 does not eliminate rodent control. It shifts routine poisoning to accountable use; convenience to responsibility. The sixth mass extinction is unfolding; future generations won’t ask what argument felt satisfying — they’ll ask why we ignored the evidence and added preventable harm to food webs we were already unraveling.

Rainer Gerbatsch

Arvada

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