House to Debate Pesticide Safety Bill : Products Would Be Reviewed, Payment to Firms Curbed

The House, moving toward the first significant change in pesticide laws since 1978, will take up legislation this week requiring the chemical industry to provide more data about thousands of pesticides that have not been fully tested for their health effects.

Under the bill, manufacturers would pay the Environmental Protection Agency nearly $150 million in fees to review about 600 active ingredients in their products and determine whether they are safe. The registration process, fueled by an additional $100 million in federal funds, would have to be completed within nine years.

The legislation also would restrict the controversial practice of compensating pesticide companies with tax dollars when regulators take their products off the market for safety reasons. The chemical industry would bear most of those costs under provisions of the bill.

House Approval Foreseen

Sponsors predicted Monday that the bill, which is backed by the industry and environmental groups, will be approved in the House. But the measure faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where partisans on both sides may try to load it up with so-called killer amendments that would doom any chance of passage.

“This bill is not everything we wanted it to be, but it’s an important first step,” said Janet Hathaway, an attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. “Without it, we couldn’t take other steps to modernize our pesticide laws.”

During recent years, chemical manufacturers and environmentalists have clashed over efforts to amend the nation’s pesticide law, the Fungicide, Insecticide and Rodenticide Act. Both groups have said present law, last changed in 1978, has needed updating to keep pace with changing scientific knowledge about pesticides.

No Agreement on Key Issues

But they have failed to agree on key issues and there has been difficulty finding a consensus. In 1986, for example, the House passed a major revision of the law that died in Congress’ waning hours because of lingering opposition in the Senate.

This year, however, members of the House Agriculture Committee decided to promote a stripped-down bill that both sides could support. The new proposal avoids issues such as ground-water contamination, a key concern of environmentalists, and demands by the chemical industry that Congress preempt states from passing pesticide regulations tougher than those issued by the EPA.

“I don’t think anybody got everything they wanted in this bill,” said Dr. Jack Early, president of the National Agricultural Chemicals Assn. “There’s not a heck of a lot in it for my industry, but it speeds up the registration process, and that’s important for everyone.”

In 1972, Congress required the EPA to “register” new and existing pesticides. Under the process, the agency was expected to conduct an in-depth health and safety review of the data submitted by pesticide manufacturers about each of their products.

The agency complained, however, that it never received enough money to do the job. A 1986 General Accounting Office report concluded that the EPA had completed the registration process for only five of the nearly 600 active chemical ingredients in pesticides and that it would not finish the task until 2024, given current funding levels.

Under the new legislation, manufacturers would pay the EPA fees totaling $150 million over nine years for the pesticide review. That, combined with $100 million authorized by the bill, would provide the funds the agency says it needs to complete the registration process.

Hope Suspicion Subsides

Although the companies have been permitted to continue marketing pesticides that have not been registered, they hope that formal government approval will help them combat suspicions and questions about some products’ allegedly harmful side effects.

The bill also would revise the so-called indemnification feature of the law. Now, the government must buy all stocks of pesticides that the EPA has decided to take off the market. The new legislation would compensate “end users,” including farmers and others who buy pesticides, but manufacturers could only be compensated by an individual act of Congress.

Environmentalists have demanded an end to the indemnification law, saying it discourages the EPA from taking tough action against dangerous pesticides. The industry has long opposed such a change but realized that it was “probably going to become law” when the House failed to adopt a similar provision earlier this year by only three votes, Early said.