Frightening Tale of Dinoseb Is Rule, Not Exception, in the World of Pesticides

In the next few weeks, farm workers throughout the Pacific Northwest, some as young as 8 years old, will enter fields of blackberries, cucumbers, lentils and other crops. There they will be exposed to a pesticide called dinoseb. Dinoseb is what is known as a teratogen (from the Greek terata for monster) because it induces birth defects. Specifically, dinoseb exposure may result in deformities of the fetal brain and spine, as well as sterility through testicular atrophy, and genetic mutations. Banned in several countries, it is also a potential human carcinogen and can cause blindness through cataracts.

At about the same time, 3,000 miles (indeed, some might say “light years”) away, the U.S. Senate will again be taking up legislation aimed at reforming the nation’s antiquated pesticide law, known as the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). For nearly a decade, past attempts to do so have all resulted in failure and frustration. Few senators will know about dinoseb or the risks being taken by the farm workers and the children of the Northwest. But the dinoseb story is instructive of why Congress must--finally--enact FIFRA reform to protect not only the nation’s farm workers but its consumers, its food supply and its drinking water.

A year and a half ago, EPA Administrator Lee Thomas actually issued an “emergency suspension” of dinoseb, finding that it presented an “imminent hazard to human health.” Thomas said then that he was taking this action because “women of childbearing age who wear state-of-the-art protective clothing will still have no effective protection against potential dinoseb-induced birth defects.”

After the dinoseb suspension, sources within EPA indicate that a “political firestorm” took place. Intense pressure, especially from congressional representatives from the Northwest, was exerted on Thomas to reverse his decision. The EPA administrator, indeed, lifted the dinoseb ban in Washington and Idaho for dried peas, chickpeas and lentils on the explicit condition that “women of childbearing age--i.e., under the age of 45,” not be involved in applying dinoseb “because of the serious nature of these risks and certain moral issues involved in exposures to unborn children.” However, since there is no ban on women entering fields treated with dinoseb, the administrator’s order ignored risks to those women and the sterility risks to men.

EPA’s dinoseb loophole ended up swallowing the rule. Agricultural interests in the Northwest convinced an Oregon judge that the EPA administrator had acted arbitrarily in allowing the use of dinoseb on some crops but not others. So the judge expanded EPA’s decision allowing dinoseb use on a host of other crops in several states.

How did it come to this? Why are such chemicals as dinoseb allowed to be used in the first place? Because the dinoseb case is not the exception, it is the rule.

FIFRA, written largely by and for the agrichemical industry, has not been seriously amended in 16 years and is severely flawed. Thus, under its provisions, hundreds of “old,” largely untested, pesticides continue to be used. (Ninety percent of the 2.6 billion pounds of pesticides used annually in the United States have never been adequately tested for chronic health effects like cancer, birth defects and nerve damage, according to the National Academy of Sciences.)

Further, cumbersome regulatory procedures obstruct effective government action even against obvious bad actors like dinoseb. A full-scale trial is required to ban a hazardous chemical, after “preliminary” procedures that themselves can take five years or more to complete. When the government actually suspends a pesticide (a rare event), FIFRA then requires EPA to “indemnify” its producer, out of its own budget at fair market value, for all of the existing stocks of the pesticide and then pay millions more for its treatment and disposal. This government insurance policy for marketing defective products is unique in American law.

The failures of the political process to reform FIFRA are not without human cost. Recent pesticide debacles include heptachlor turning up in 90% of Hawaii’s milk (1982); ethylene dibromide contaminating the nation’s grain supply (1984); Temik in more than 1 million California watermelons (1986), and, most recently, a carcinogen, daminozide, in children’s apple juice.

As the curtains close on the 100th Congress, citizens continue to hope that legislators will fulfill their responsibility to protect the American people from pesticides. There is still a slim chance that FIFRA, the “stepchild” of our environmental laws, will finally come of age.