New EPA Limit on Pesticide Hailed by Growers, Assailed by Activists

New federal limits on a widely used pesticide drew applause from many California fruit and vegetable growers Friday, but consumer activists denounced the regulations as a betrayal of public health.

The Environmental Protection Agency, after eight years of review, said Thursday that it has withdrawn permission to use the pesticide captan on 42 fruits and vegetables. However, the agency added that it will permit continued use on 26 other crops.

The action takes effect immediately, EPA officials said, but growers may use existing stocks of the suspected carcinogen, or cancer-causing agent, for up to one year.

“What they did here was a good balance. I don’t have a problem with it,” said Ted Batkin, manager of the collective marketing boards for several of the affected fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes, melons and celery. “It is not a disaster for us because usable alternatives exist--and usually already are being used.”

‘Serious Economic Harm’

Gary Obenauf, director of research for the California Prune Board, said he was pleased that the EPA backed away from plans to ban captan from all use on foods. That decision, he said, saved growers of many types of fruit--particularly peaches and other varieties for which appearance is critical to sales--from “serious economic harm” from fungus damage each year.

Others, however, complained that the EPA put the health of farmers’ wallets before the health of farm workers and consumers.

“For the EPA to spend eight years in special review of a known carcinogen and then offer up this kind of a compromise, it proves the EPA special review process is a complete failure,” said David Bunn of the California Public Interest Research Group. “Captan should be off the market.”

Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers union called the EPA’s decision a clear example of politics overwhelming science. The UFW lists captan as one of five table-grape pesticides threatening both farm workers and consumers. Union leader Cesar Chavez is advocating a consumer boycott of grapes for this reason.

‘Ban Captan’

“There is no excuse for them not to ban captan on grapes--and everywhere else, for that matter,” Huerta said. “The EPA has known for years that this causes cancer.”

Captan, which was registered for use as a fungicide in 1951, is one of the oldest and most widely used pesticides in the world. EPA officials said about 10 million pounds of captan are sold annually by more than 80 companies under such brand names as Merpan and Orthocide.

Captan is used to control fungus on a wide variety of products, including potatoes, tomatoes, citrus fruit and lettuce. It is even included as an anti-fungal agent in paint, mattresses, shower curtains and shampoo, exposure to which may increase cancer risk.

Because of its popularity, captan also is a special concern to regulators, consumers and farmers alike. In their 1987 book, “Pesticide Alert,” Lawrie Mott and Karen Snyder of the Natural Resources Defense Council specifically cited the widespread use of captan as “an illustration of EPA’s inadequate regulation of pesticides in food.”

‘Probable Human Carcinogen’

Mott and Snyder noted that the EPA had allowed growers to continue using captan even though the agency conceded that it is a “probable human carcinogen,” and even though many doctors and scientists believe that no level of carcinogen can be considered “safe.”

They also criticized the EPA for employing tolerance levels established before captan’s carcinogenicity was known. The EPA scaled back tolerance levels for some products Thursday, but some scientific uncertainty lingers over whether those new levels are safe.

In 1985, after five years of special review, the EPA concluded that even trace residues of captan on food were likely to pose significant risks to consumers simply because the pesticide was used so often on so many types of fruits and vegetables. At that time, it proposed to ban all use of captan on food.

Agriculture interests challenged the proposed ban. Growers offered to gather data demonstrating that actual captan residues on food are less than the worst-case scenario assumed by EPA. Collections and analysis of that information took 3 1/2 years.

Balance Benefits, Risks

In allowing continued use of captan on some products, the EPA said Thursday that it was trying to balance the pesticide’s benefits--more produce at lower prices--against the risk of causing cancer in consumers.

The agency said restrictions announced this week will permit continued use of captan on crops for which it is especially helpful in controlling rot, while reducing overall captan-related cancer risks tenfold.

Before the new restrictions, the agency said, captan probably was causing one additional cancer in every 100,000 people who ate residue-tainted produce over the course of a 70-year lifetime. That risk should now be reduced to one added cancer in every 1 million consumers, the agency said.

Consumers can protect themselves further, the EPA said, by washing and even peeling fruits and vegetables, since many pesticide residues do not penetrate the produce.

Major Exposures

Mott, Snyder, Bunn and others have argued that such analyses ignore other, major pesticide exposures. Some pesticides, for example, soak into the ground and foul drinking-water wells. Farm workers, meanwhile, can be exposed to large pesticide doses as they spray, harvest and pack fruit and vegetables.

In addition, pesticides naturally break down into other, sometimes equally dangerous, chemicals called metabolites that can have different and persistent traits. Captan, for example, breaks down into another carcinogen that may penetrate food.

CAPTAN PERMITTED

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still permits use of the fungicide captan on these fruits and vegetables:

Almonds Blueberries Eggplant beds Mangoes Pepper beds Seeds (all types) Tomato beds Apples Celery beds Grapes Nectarines Pimiento beds Spinach beds Apricots Cherries Green onions Peaches Plums and prunes Strawberries Blackberries Dewberries Lettuce Pears* Raspberries Taro * use permitted only after harvest