State Accused of Neglect in Not Testing Pesticides for Hazards

Contending that the Deukmejian Administration has shown a “disturbing pattern” of neglect about the hazards of toxic substances, a coalition of environmental and health groups on Tuesday accused the Department of Food and Agriculture of failing to enforce a 2-year-old law that requires pesticides to be tested for health effects.

“As of today, 80% of the needed birth defect, cancer, genetic mutation and other chronic health studies are missing, inadequate or incomplete for the top 200 pesticides,” said Karen Snyder, research associate for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

A Department spokeswoman acknowledged that all the studies have not been completed, but said the tests require time to be “scientifically valid.”

“You also have to take in consideration the intricacy of these studies,” said Julio Calderon, press officer for the Pest Management Division of the department. “You have to go through the life cycle, the reproductive cycle, the generational cycle to get results. For example, birth defects may not show up in the first or second generation but will in the third generation.”

According to Ralph Lightstone, attorney for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, beginning March 1 the Birth Defect Prevention Act of 1984 requires the pesticide industry to apply 10 tests to 200 pesticides commonly used in California agriculture to determine whether they have a wide range of adverse health effects. In the event the manufacturers fail to meet the deadline, the state is required to do the testing itself and to bill the producers for the cost.

No Problems Yet

To date, neither has happened, according to Lightstone and representatives of the other groups--including the Sierra Club and the March of Dimes--that took part in Tuesday’s press conference.

“The key thing about that deadline and all the provisions of the bill . . . is that the deadlines in this law were agreed to in the end by the industry and the department,” Lightstone said.

“So having agreed to that program, we would have expected them to live with those deadlines.” Not only has the department failed to initiate the studies, he said, but it also has “moved into this phase of endless debate” about whether the studies are adequate.

Calderon disputed Lightstone’s interpretation. According to food and agriculture officials, the March 1 deadline was for the companies to submit all “currently available data” on a particular chemical, which Calderon said the pesticide industry has done.

Data for 151 Chemicals

“We have already reviewed data for 151 chemicals and have asked companies to initiate new studies or provide rebuttal information. For the 49 that turned in the data late . . . we are going through the data to determine what needs to be done,” Calderon said.

Lightstone countered that the department’s interpretation “doesn’t follow either the law or common sense.” He pointed out that the bill requires the data to have been submitted by Dec. 31, 1985. March 1 of this year was when the actual testing was to have begun.

In a letter to Food and Agriculture Director Clare Berryhill, Lightstone and other coalition members also charged that the department was dragging its feet by accepting information from pesticide companies and then allowing the companies more time to challenge the department’s findings.

“The time for debating those points is over,” Lightstone said. “(It’s) time to begin testing so we can find out which pesticides are dangerous.”

Required by Law

However, Calderon said that the pesticide companies have a right to challenge the department’s findings. “We’re doing exactly what the law requires us to do,” he said.

Sen. Nicholas C. Petris (D-Oakland), author of the bill, disagreed. “The department had opposed the bill throughout the entire process until the closing days,” he said. “And now we’re looking at the current situation and we find that we still have data gaps.”