EPA Expected to Not Ban Fruit Pesticide

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to disclose in Washington today that it has backed away from plans to ban a potentially cancer-causing pesticide widely used on apples.

Instead, the agency will call for new regulations curbing the pesticide’s use pending additional studies.

The pesticide, called daminozide and marketed under the name Alar, is used to make apples redder and crunchier by slowing the ripening process and providing them with a longer shelf life. The EPA announced its intent to ban the substance in August, saying that the amounts found on food products are enough to cause cancer in one of every 1,000 persons over a lifetime of exposure.

But a scientific advisory board later told the agency that its estimates were based on faulty studies and that the available evidence, in fact, does not warrant a ban. Apple growers strongly oppose cancellation of the product’s use, predicting that industry losses would reach $200 million a year and that the consumer would get an uneven supply of inferior apples.

Doubts About Danger

“We had felt it was a carcinogen,” said an EPA official involved in the agency’s handling of the chemical. “I guess now we don’t believe it’s enough of a carcinogen to take action. We have enough doubts to take the advice of the scientific advisory board.”

The new regulations call for reducing the allowable use of the pesticide from four pounds per acre to three pounds and cutting in half the level at which the substance is considered safe for human consumption. In the meantime, the agency has ordered up to seven studies on the health effects of the substance and regular market-basket surveys to determine the levels of residue of the chemical in food products.

About 75% of the pesticide is used on apples, 12% on peanuts and the rest on grapes, peaches, pears, prunes, nectarines, tomatoes and ornamental shrubs. Apple industry representatives praised the agency’s decision to back away from a ban.

“We had really been distressed before because apples have always been a very strong health product,” said Tom Hale, president of the Washington Apple Commission, a group of apple growers in Washington, the largest apple-producing state in the country. “We’re not going to have any problem in meeting the residue level established by the EPA and we’ll be able to provide that crunch that people enjoy.”

Disappointed by Decision

But Ellen Haas, executive director of Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, a Washington-based consumer group, said she was disappointed by the decision.

“It’s a step in the right direction, but unfortunately it’s too small a step,” she said. “If something is shown to be carcinogenic in tests, then there is no safe tolerance level. This is particularly disturbing because the pesticide has been found in baby food and applesauce.”

A spokeswoman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture said that Alar is not widely used in California, which produces 5.7% of the U.S. apple crop. In 1983, the state’s crop was valued at $54 million.

Alar is manufactured by Uniroyal Chemical Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Uniroyal Inc. Renee Potosky, a Uniroyal spokeswoman, said that most growers already use less of the pesticide than is now allowed and that the residue found on food is substantially less than will be permitted under the EPA’s new standards.

She predicted that the new studies, which will be completed in 1988, will affirm the company’s contention that the product is “very, very safe.” Potosky complained that the EPA based its previous cancer estimates on animal tests that, if performed on humans, would have shown evidence of cancer only in people who consumed 50,000 pounds of apples a day.

“Our own risk estimates are something approaching one in a million, which is well within natural occurrences,” she said.