Bloom is pushing for a new state law that would ban what is being called “second generation” rat and rodent poisons. The reason there are second generation poisons are the rats — the bane of anyone who has had rid their homes of them — have essentially developed immunity to rat poisons that worked for years.

Typhus is supposed to be rare today because of our successful efforts to keep rodent populations in check and implementing sanitary living conditions. Like the bubonic plague, typhus is a nasty and painful disease that can be an effective killer as it has led to epidemics and pandemics. It killed more of Napoleon’s soldiers in his hasty 1812 retreat from Moscow than the Russians did. During World War I it was blamed for 3 million deaths in Russia plus hundreds of thousands in Poland and Romania.

The analysis says that data is “less conclusive in pointing to (rat poisons) as the specific cause of death in necropsied animals.”

Freely translated, there is no clear scientific evidence that rat poison are killing hawks, bobcats and other predators.