EPA Proposes Pesticide Protection for Workers : First Expansion of Rules Governing Agricultural Uses Would Benefit Hundreds of Thousands

The Environmental Protection Agency, in what would be the first expansion of rules governing agricultural pesticide use, Wednesday proposed extending new protection to hundreds of thousands of workers in forests, nurseries and greenhouses.

The agency also called for a series of new regulations on the use of all agricultural pesticides, including requirements for better training in the use of chemicals, safer working conditions and more information for workers in affected areas.

The moves come amid reports of increasing numbers of pesticide poisonings and pressure on the federal government to show leadership in combatting the problem. Estimates of the number of poisonings range from 12,000 to as many as 300,000 annually.

Stronger Protection

At a news briefing, Louis P. True, director of the EPA’s agricultural pesticide program, said the proposed new regulations “strengthen the protection for all” of the estimated 2.8 million farm workers nationwide “at reasonable cost” to farmers.

However, both farm workers and farmers disagreed and immediately attacked the regulations: Advocates for the workers said the rules do not go far enough and the farmers said they would be too costly. EPA officials estimated that the new rules would cost growers, pesticide manufacturers and state agencies $170 million a year, but farm organization officials said the costs are still being tabulated.

The revisions in pesticide regulations are the first since the EPA set protections in 1974 under the Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.

The proposed regulations will be published in the Federal Register next week, after which the EPA will allow a 90-day comment period. EPA officials expect the regulations to become final next year.

Coverage Broadened

Broadening coverage to include workers in greenhouses, nurseries and forests adds 400,000 new workers to those, such as hand laborers, who are already covered. The new regulations would not cover noncommercial use of pesticides in homes, family farms, research and direct injections into plants.

One of the major provisions in the proposed rules establishes a requirement that fields be closed for either 48 hours or 24 hours after treatment with the most toxic compounds of organophosphates and carbamates. The rules expand warning requirements on fields that have been treated, requiring written warnings instead of the current system in which oral warnings are allowed.

The EPA also proposed:

--Testing of the blood of those who apply pesticides over given periods to gauge levels of toxicity.

--Requiring employers to provide transportation, medical assistance and information to workers who suspect they have been poisoned.

--Training for pesticide handlers in the materials’ use and safety.

--Requiring employers to provide eye wash, soap, water and disposable towels for workers handling pesticides.

New Rules Faulted

While the new rules provide new, specific coverage for workers, advocates asserted that they fall far short of what is needed--and what is mandated in some states, including California, which has more sweeping regulations to protect workers.

True said the EPA is simply trying to “set national standards, a floor from which states may depart.”

The EPA has said it will take until the year 2025 to complete analysis of the health risks from the 600 chemicals used as agricultural pesticides, raising fears that its new rules--especially the 24-hour and 48-hour re-entry provisions--still leave workers vulnerable to danger.

Valerie Wilk, a health specialist for the Farmworker Justice Fund, complained that the EPA believes “a chemical is innocent until proven guilty. You have to pile up those bodies” before the EPA sufficiently tightens restrictions on using poisons.

Proposals ‘Inadequate’

Calling the new proposals “inadequate,” Shelley Davis, a staff attorney for the Migrant Legal Action Program, said that until long-term research provides information on the chronic effects of pesticides, farm workers will remain “guinea pigs.”

In proposing its new rules, the EPA is trying to make it easier to fix responsibility for mishaps. In an explanation of its new rules, the EPA said: “Ultimate responsibility for compliance with worker protection requirements rests with the owner of the property on which a pesticide is used, or with the lessee in the case of leased property.”

Elizabeth Whitley, executive vice president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, which represents most of the nation’s growers of fresh produce, said the proposals “definitely will work a hardship on growers. They will be costly, cumbersome and time-consuming.”

To monitor the use of pesticides, she said, a grower “has to turn into a pesticide detective.” Whitley said the cost of compliance ultimately will be passed on to consumers, resulting in higher prices at the produce market.

Like the rules, themselves, whether they can be enforced is a matter of debate.

True said the states, not the EPA, are responsible for most enforcement of farm worker protection. But Ralph Lightstone, an attorney for the California Rural Legal Assistance, declared: “The enforcement system is a disaster.”