Farm workers without protective gear cover a field with plastic tarps after injecting fumigants into the soil. Photo: PAN Archive.
Fumigants Poison Communities
- Fumigants poison rural communities, farm workers, and the environment.
- Fumigants are too toxic to be used safely.
- We have new, safer ways to grow food without fumigants.
Help Phase out fumigants -
Download Action Kit Now!
On November 13, 1999, the poisonous fumigant gas metam sodium drifted silently from agricultural fields into the town of Earlimart, California. Vomiting and gasping for air, over 170 residents fled their homes. At least twenty-four people were sent to local hospitals with nausea, headaches, burning eyes, and shortness of breath.
Across the United States, communities are being poisoned by fumigants. Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, and Texas suffered dozens of poisoning incidents from the fumigant metam sodium in the late 1990s. Between 1992 and 2001, ninety-four methyl bromide poisonings occurred nationwide. As recently as October 2005, sixty residents of Salinas, California were poisoned when the fumigant chloropicrin drifted from strawberry fields a quarter of a mile away. There are safer ways to grow food—it’s time to protect our communities by phasing out toxic fumigants.
What Are Fumigants?
Fumigants are highly toxic pesticides, often applied as a gas to kill pests in the soil before planting crops such as strawberries, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, potatoes, and tobacco. These pesticides are also used to fumigate buildings, stored foods, greenhouses, and imported crops.
Inevitably, fumigants drift into the air we breathe, killing wildlife and affecting workers and nearby communities. Fumigants have both immediate and long-term negative health effects.
The EPA Must Protect Our Health
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with protecting public health from dangerous chemicals in the environment, including fumigant pesticides. EPA decides under what conditions chemicals can be used with no “unreasonable adverse effects,” or whether they are too dangerous to be used at all.
Most of the research that is fed into this decision-making process is provided or funded by chemical corporations with an interest in having their products approved for use. In order to protect our communities, EPA should make sure its decisions are transparent and based on scientifically sound data. EPA’s decisions must account for realistic conditions of use, the vulnerability of children to chemicals, and the fact that people are often exposed to more than one chemical at a time.
|
Fumigant |
Health Effects |
|
Methyl bromide |
Short term: respiratory irritation, central nervous system depression and convulsions, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, tremors, slurred speech, seizures, muscle weakness, behavioral disturbances, diminished reflexes. Skin contact causes severe burning, itching, blister formation, and tissue death Long term: developmental toxicant, neurotoxicant, linked to prostate cancer |
|
Metam sodium |
Short term: headaches, dizziness, irritation of eyes, nose, and throat, nausea, diarrhea, shortness of breath, chest tightness. Symptoms delayed a week or more may include: weakness, diarrhea, cough, and rash Long term: developmental toxicant (metam sodium), carcinogen |
| Chloropicrin | Short term: severe irritation of skin, eyes, and respiratory tract, nausea, and vomiting Long term: chronic respiratory damage |
| 1,3-Dichloropropene (Telone) |
Short term: irritation of skin and respiratory tract, nausea, vomiting, headache, central nervous system depression, and multi-organ system failure, including severe bleeding disorders, high blood sugar, acute kidney and liver failure, and respiratory distress Long term: carcinogen |
| Methyl iodide | Short term: dizziness, sleepiness, nausea, diarrhea, slurred speech, lack of coordination, and muscle convulsions Long term: carcinogen, developmental toxicant |
*MITC, MIC, and H2S are gaseous breakdown products of metam sodium, metam postassium, and dazomet.
No Toxic Replacements: Methyl Iodide Isn't a Solution
"EPA is engaging in a game of distorting science, unnecessarily endangering human lives and polluting the planet. It is time for the agency to stand up to chemical pesticide manufacturers and phase out toxic fumigants."
Dr. Michael DiBartolomeis, Toxicologist
The EPA has continued to promote chemical approaches to pest control, and has failed to put resources toward sustainable farming alternatives. The agency’s basic strategy is still to replace one toxic pesticide with another. The latest horrifying example of this is the proposal to replace the fumigant methyl bromide with another toxic chemical, methyl iodide.
Methyl iodide may be even more hazardous to human health than methyl bromide. The state of California considers it a carcinogen, and cancer researchers have used methyl iodide in laboratories to induce cancer in cells. EPA found that methyl iodide causes thyroid tumors and significant changes in thyroid hormone levels. EPA has not evaluated potential adverse effects that might arise from these changes. Other animal studies evaluated by EPA indicate that methyl iodide causes respiratory tract lesions, neurological problems, and miscarriages. With today’s farming practices, methyl iodide cannot be safely used as a fumigant.
Join the Campaign to Phase Out Fumigants!
The U.S. EPA is currently evaluating the use of fumigant pesticides through a re-registration process. This process gives the public the opportunity to speak out in favor of ending the use of fumigants, protecting the health of our communities, and helping farmers get the assistance they need to transition to nontoxic pest control. Fumigants are among the most toxic chemicals used in agriculture and account for about 10% of all pesticide consumption in the United States. Removing fumigants from the market would encourage farmers to adopt healthier and more sustainable farming practices.
Join doctors, public health experts, scientists, farmers, farm workers, and communities in urging EPA to phase out fumigant use and provide funding to help farmers adopt sustainable alternatives!
Action Steps:
"In 1996 my family and many others in my neighborhood were exposed to methyl bromide which drifted from the strawberry field next to our home. It is so important to become informed and ask questions. Don’t be naďve and believe, like we did when we first moved into our home, that the government is protecting you with strict regulations….this is just not the case."
Lynda Uvari, Community & Children’s Advocates Against Pesticide Poisoning, Ventura, CA
"Non-chemical solutions exist. We simply need funding to further develop them and put them in the hands of the producers."
Rodrigo Rodríguez-Kábana, Distinguished University Professor,
Dept. of Plant Pathology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL
Community groups across the country are working together to end the use of fumigants. For more information and to get involved, contact: Pesticide Action Network North America, Phone: (415) 981-1771, E-mail: fumigants@panna.org, Web: http://www.panna.org
1. Sign a postcard asking EPA to phase out fumigants immediately, and collect signatures from neighbors, friends, and family. For a Postcard Drive Action Kit, go to www.panna.org/fumigants.
2. Support farmers who don’t use fumigants or other highly hazardous pesticides. Buy organic, especially for fumigant-intensive crops such as strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and potatoes.
3. Attend EPA’s California or Florida public hearings on fumigant pesticides. Call us or visit
www.panna.org/fumigants for updates.4. Write letters to Mr. John Leahy at EPA to tell him to phase out fumigants. If you have personal experiences with fumigant problems be sure to let him know.
Mr. John Leahy, Senior Advisor
Office of Pesticide Programs
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20460-0001
Make sure to include the following docket ID numbers in your letter, so it will be recorded in the EPA Docket: Docket IDs #EPA-HQ-OPP-2005-0123, EPA-HQ-OPP-2005-0124, EPA-HQ-OPP-2005-0125, EPA-HQ-OPP-2005-0128, and EPA-HQ-OPP-2005-0252
There Are Better Ways to Grow Food
Sterilizing soil with fumigants is an outdated technology from the 1920s. Research in the past twenty-five years has yielded great advances in farming practices that are safer for people and the environment, and that nurture rich, healthy soil. These methods also produce abundant food and are increasingly cost-effective. Least-toxic alternatives to dangerous fumigant pesticides work and are already in use.
Safer alternatives to fumigants include choosing locally appropriate plant varieties, rotating crops, planting cover crops, soil solarization to control diseases and weeds, manual weeding, and using traps and predator species to minimize insect damage. Studies in many countries in Europe, Latin America, and other regions are finding successful alternatives as well. These ecologically sound practices can be greatly expanded.
Less than 1% of the research dollars in the U.S. Farm Bill currently go towards developing and implementing these safer alternatives. It’s time for EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to invest in helping farmers transition to innovative new techniques or adopt effective traditional techniques that can bring us into a more sustainable future.
Protect the Ozone Layer Too!
The fumigant methyl bromide is not just toxic to people, it also destroys the ozone layer. In 1992, the world committed to phasing out methyl bromide and other ozone depleting chemicals in a treaty known as the Montreal Protocol. The phaseout deadline for industrial countries—including the biggest user, the U.S.—was January 1, 2005.
But the United States is back-peddling on its promise. It is demanding “critical use exemptions” for 2007 and 2008, allowing continued use of methyl bromide. Meanwhile, other countries are successfully switching over to better farming practices.
The United States can and must respect its commitments to protect the earth’s ozone layer and promote least-toxic alternatives to methyl bromide!