The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), makes decisions regarding the regulation of pesticide use. Under this statute, the EPA can only register a product when the agency determines that use of the product does not pose an unreasonable risk of adverse effects. Under the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), in determining the level of a pesticide residue which may remain on food, the agency must determine whether there is a reasonable certainty of no harm, taking into account: (1) aggregate exposure to the product from all non-occupational sources; (2) the cumulative risks posed by the product and others having the same mechanism of toxicity; and (3) the special susceptibilities of infants and children.
Overall, EPA’s system for regulating pesticides is flawed. In implementing FIFRA and the FQPA EPA’s decisions are often marred by one or more of the following defects:
- Harmful substances are rarely banned: Even when EPA finds risks of concern to workers, it rarely bans use of the substance or imposes restrictions that are adequate to prevent the harm. For example, with the OP pesticide azinphos-methyl (AZM), the EPA will allow the product to be used for four more years under circumstances that it knows will put workers at risk of harm.
- Industry generates data: EPA relies almost exclusively on studies conducted by the pesticide industry or its paid consultants. Studies conducted by independent scientists are frequently ignored.
The pesticide industry is very much in favor of testing pesticides on people with the aim of increasing allowable levels of exposure and hence levels of use. PANNA is strongly opposed to such practices. Scientists within the Agency have opposed this practice and PANNA together with partners have filed a suit claiming that EPA's human testing rule violates the congressional mandate under which it was promulgated. - Industry intentionally doses people with toxic pesticides: EPA has recently formalized the system whereby it can base its risk assessments on industry experiments involving the intentional dosing of people with toxic pesticides (http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-GENERAL/2006/February/Day-06/g1045.htm). These studies are conducted on a handful of healthy, young volunteers, who are not representative of our widely diverse population. As a consequence, the information generated will not protect the young, the old or those who are particularly sensitive to the pesticide. Furthermore, the rule unlawfully departs from the National Academy of Science’s proposed scientific and ethical safeguards; it fails to protect against all pesticide experiments on pregnant women, infants, and children; and is unlawfully inconsistent with the internationally recognized Nuremberg Code.
- Inhalation of pesticides in the air is often ignored. Both fumigant pesticides (gaseous pesticides applied to soil before planting) and many other pesticides move easily through the air from the site of application onto people and into nearby homes. This "pesticide drift" is especially important in agricultural communities where people live, work and play. While EPA is evaluating inhalation exposure from fumigants, they fail to evaluate inhalation exposure for other pesticides for data even show significant exposure through inhalation. PANNA and Farmworker Pesticide Project published a report on the extent of pesticide exposure due to drift in the apple-growing region of Washington State.
- Overexposure to pesticides is ignored: Frequent causes of overexposure to workers or their families are ignored entirely. Thus, EPA consistently fails to consider the injuries caused by pesticide drift (onto nearby fields or homes) or the take-home exposures that farmworker children experience when their parents come home with pesticide residues on their skin and clothing.
- Inconsistent definition of "reasonable" risk: The interpretation of "reasonable" risk varies. EPA sometimes allows a cancer risk, for example, of one in a million and other times accepts one in 10,000.
- No national system for pesticide related injuries: The agency has never created a national system to collect data on pesticide-related injuries, so the full extent of the harm caused by pesticides is unknown.
- Risks of cancer ignored: EPA has repeatedly ignored epidemiological studies of cancer risk for pesticides such as captan and atrazine. It also allows farmworkers to face a risk of cancer that is 100 times greater than the risk allowed for the general public. EPA has allowed industry to substantially weaken its cancer assessment guidelines (see PANNA report, OMB Undermines Guidelines on Cancer Risk).
- Indications of neurological damage ignored: New studies show that farmworkers can suffer neurological damage—including a loss of attention or intellectual functioning—from prolonged exposures to even low levels of neurotoxic pesticides. These studies have not been taken into account in determining whether these pesticides should be used. Also, some pesticides have been to interfere with the development of the nervous (see relevant articles).
- Endocrine disruption ignored: EPA does not currently evaluate or consider the endocrine disrupting properties of pesticides during registration. Endocrine disruptors are mistaken for hormones by the body and thus may alter the function of hormones. Since hormones regulate things like growth and body development, there is great potential for damage. Estrogen-mimics interfere with the reproductive system, causing infertility, malformed sexual organs, and cancer of sensitive organs. Many commonly used pesticides that are known or suspected endocrine disruptors.
- Pesticide synergy: Pesticide exposures in the real world are not isolated incidents, although testing for health and environmental impacts occurs in isolation. Research shows that combinations with pesticides and other chemicals, including medications, multiply the toxic effects of individual chemicals and create new adverse impacts not seen in either chemical alone.
- People's different sensitivities to pesticides is not fully taken into consideration:New studies also show that there is a wide range of genetic differences among people—in many cases, much greater than the factor of 10 difference that EPA assumes now in its registration process— making some much more sensitive to the toxic effects of pesticides. These studies have not been considered.
- Disproportionate risk: EPA fails to take into account the numerous circumstances and realities that make some population groups more vulnerable to daily pesticide exposures—including children, farmworkers and their families and communities, the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, the chemically sensitive, and those living in poverty. People of color are disproportionately represented in these impoverished areas.
- Costs to workers and society are not considered: EPA’s cost-benefit decisions, required by federal law, are one-sided evaluations. While EPA quantifies the monetary benefits to growers of using a pesticide, it never quantifies the costs to workers and society of associated with the short- and long- term health effects or environmental contamination caused by exposure to pesticides. By failing to value these risks, the analysis is tipped in favor of the chemical.
- Less and non-toxic strategies ignored: The current system assumes that if a pesticide meets a highly questionable "acceptable" risk threshold, it has value or benefit. This is the practice even though there are typically less or non-toxic methods or products available. Absent altogether is any analysis of whether the so-called "pest" (insect or plant) has been accurately defined.
- "Inert" ingredients: Manufacturers are not required to disclose the so-called "inert" ingredients of its products. Despite their name, these ingredients are neither chemically, biologically or toxicologically harmless. Although inerts are generally only subjected to minimal testing, 292 chemicals listed by EPA as inerts of unknown toxicity are registered by the agency as active ingredients in other pesticides; and many are known to state, federal and international agencies to be hazardous to human health or the environment. For example, a recent article reported that PBO (piperonyl butoxide), an inert ingredient that makes pyrethroid pesticides ten times more lethal to black flies and mosquitoes, also enhances the toxicity of these pesticides to fish and sediment-dwelling organisms.
- Assumption that label instructions are followed and enforced: A serious flaw in EPA’s registration process is that their assurances that human health and the environment will be protected are based on the assumption that the label instructions will be followed to the letter, including such behaviors as applying the correct amounts, wearing protective gear if called for, not applying the pesticide near water or during windy conditions, and more. There is also an assumption that someone is enforcing these label restrictions. EPA delegates all enforcement to state or local regulatory systems, which are weak or even non-existent in many states. To illustrate the effect of non-enforcement, how many people do you think would obey the speed limit if there were no traffic police?
Contributors this subsection include: PANNA staff; Jay Feldman and John Kepner, Beyond Pesticides, Washington, D.C.; Shelley Davis, Farmworker Justice Fund, Inc., Washington, D.C.
Cumulative risk assessment for OP pesticides. The 1996 Federal Food Quality Protection Act requires U.S. EPA to assess the cumulative impact of pesticides that have a common mechanism of toxicity. This is an important step forward that changes EPA's traditional one-pesticide-at-a-time approach to assessing pesticide risks to a more comprehensive and realistic strategy. The OP pesticides were the first group of pesticides considered under this mandate. A revised draft of the OP Cumulative Risk Assessment (CRA) was released by EPA in June 2002, and an updated draft CRA was released in August 2006, with a public comment period that closed October 2, 2006. August 2006 marked the ten-year deadline for EPA to complete its OP risk assessment.
There are a number of problems with the OP risk assessment as written and even EPA scientists have spoken out (Letter from EPA scientists) against the political and industry interference with their scientific conclusions. PANNA and the Farm Worker Pesticide Project, along with 18 other co-signers submitted comments on October 2, 2006.
The major points of the comment letter include: (1) EPA overlooks recent data on large variations of susceptibility to OPs between adults and children and data on non-cholinergic health effects; the agency assigns non-protective safety factors; (2) EPA failed to assess important risks of residential exposure to OPs from drift; there are now a lot of OP drift data from California and Washington; and this omission is a violation of EPA’s Environmental Justice mandate; (3) EPA fails to adequately consider OP exposure among farm children and farm worker children as especially vulnerable populations.
More on the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). In response to the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 U.S. EPA began a process of reviewing existing pesticide active ingredients using a new set of standards that are more protective of public health than those used before 1996. Unfortunately, there is still no mechanism to evaluate the effects of the many simultaneous exposures to different groups of chemicals people experience every day. See PANNA’s review and update on the FQPA (link toDelivering on the Food Quality Protection Act, July 2006).
The pesticide industry has done its best to delay governmental progress on the 1996 mandate. PANNA and partners have been working for some time to oppose these industry shenanigans including one collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council and others to file a successful lawsuit to block industry’s attempts to delay enforcement of the law. The settlement of the lawsuit in 2001 puts EPA on a strict timeline to finish the work for many high-use chemicals. If the law is properly implemented, we may see significant new restrictions and reductions in OP pesticide use.
Some good news is that new restrictions have been imposed on most pesticides evaluated under the 1996 law. Some uses (such as residential uses of diazinon and chlorpyrifos) are being phased out altogether because of the unacceptable risks posed to children. The bad news is that the process is so slow that many high-use chemicals have yet to be evaluated. And tragically, the risks to agricultural workers are often simply overlooked.