JEFFERSON CITY -- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving to ban the manufacture, sale and use of lead fishing sinkers.

Waterfowl, particularly trumpeter swans and common loons, sometimes swallow the sinkers. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) filed suit against the EPA, claiming that the sinkers cause fatal lead poisoning in tens of thousands of waterfowl. The suit seeks an EPA rule that would require warning labels for lead sinker packaging.

EPA officials agree the sinkers are poisonous, and say they will propose a rule this month outlawing the sinkers.

EDF and several other groups have petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ban lead sinkers in national parks and parts of the national wildlife refuge system. The rule proposed by the EPA might include only those sinkers whose size and shape contribute to ingestion by waterfowl.