Big Green: Trying to Control the Chemicals That Permeate Daily Life : Environment: The Big Green initiative attacks the contaminants--pesticides that lace California’s water and food and endanger health.

At first blush, I can understand why people in other states often dismiss California’s “Big Green” initiative that purports to be “healthier for the State.” California’s health statistics put a state like Illinois to shame. On average, California children do better than those from at least 45 other states: they’re born heavier, survive their first year in greater numbers and live longer than almost all the rest. Lifespan is near the top, second only to Utah, Hawaii and, on any given year, Arizona or Florida. California teen-agers are the embodiment of the Golden State--they are taller and reach sexual maturity earlier than those in almost all the other states.

But this healthy image doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. California air quality suffers from pockets of severe pollution. On any given summer day, more Californians suffer the consequences of air pollution than do citizens in any other state. Most ill health is because of the air quality in the Los Angeles basin. Compared to the average Californian, members of ethnic and minority groups--including most of the poor--show enormous disparities in health outcomes. Families living in East Palo Alto, Watts, West Oakland and now some rural areas rival those in West Chicago; infant death rates, prematurity, and stillbirths make these places look like Third World countries.

OK. But what about the environment? California already looks pretty “green” from the Rust Belt. Its forests include more first-growth redwoods than all of the continental United States, except Washington state and Oregon. It has more arable land than any other state. It produces more of the fresh produce in the United States than any other region. And as a whole, it has more land in national parks than any in the lower 48. California has more to lose than any other state.

Cities such as San Francisco have almost pristine water sources for their urban needs. But look a little closer. The water isn’t pure. Levels of contaminants are kept within “reasonable” ranges only by bending the rules. In the summer, chloroform and other trihalomethane levels in Southstate potable water systems routinely exceed already lax California standards. Through a little sleight of hand, they are permitted to operate by averaging their levels over the year.

Meanwhile, pollutants from agricultural and industrial sources are contaminating ground water and deep aquifers. Ground water is the primary source of drinking water for 40% of all Californians. A total of 65 different pesticides have been uncovered in ground water supplies. Some 600 million lbs. of pesticides are sold in California annually. Pesticides such as simazine and atrazine have penetrated the water system of the Central Valley. And soil sterilizants such as dibromochloropropane (DBCP) have contaminated 2,500 wells, pushing many towns in the agricultural regions to sue for entire new water supplies. Ten years ago, the state made similar accommodations by “averaging” this pollutant in contaminated wine. Against California state policy, one winery was permitted by the Department of Health Services to dilute 40 million gallons contaminated with DBCP to bring it within drinking water standards.

We are learning more daily about how tightly linked some California water is to birth outcomes. When compared to pure bottled water, the state’s Department of Health Services linked drinking tap water in Santa Clara to higher rates of spontaneous miscarriages. Elsewhere around the country, miscarriages have been associated with high levels of mercury, arsenic and the use of surface water--much like that used in L.A. County. Arsenical pesticides are still in wide commerce in California.

California has soaring rates of breast and uterine cancer. Rates of melanoma and some forms of leukemia and testicular carcinoma are above the national norms. Too high to be explained away by chance. Agricultural towns like McFarland, Fowler and Earlimart in the Central Valley south of Sacramento have unexplained clusters of childhood cancers. At one time or another, each relied heavily on pesticides, including arsenicals for cotton farming and other agricultural practices.

California’s citizenry is inadequately protected from these health-limiting pollutants. I know. I was a California health officer for five years. I know first hand that the Department of Food and Agriculture simply could not keep up with the demands of pesticide related poisonings--up 14% between 1975 and 1985--or registration review.

I still field inquiries from other professionals about pesticide-exposed farm workers and just plain folks whose health has gone downhill too fast, or who have had too many bouts of eye and throat irritation, nausea and diarrhea to be explained by chance. Many of them--like those in the vicinity of cotton defoliation operations--have documented exposures to pesticides. Through careful epidemiologic studies performed by state and Los Angeles County health officials, these pesticide exposures have been linked to observed patterns of illness. But no one has acted on these observations.

Would the Big Green initiative make any difference to these people or to California’s well-being generally? The answer, from where I sit, is an unequivocal “yes.”

Take pesticides. It is just good sense and good politics to take the protection of the public from pesticides away from the agency which relies most on their use--the California Department of Food and Agriculture--and put it into the Department of Health Services. And protecting children from pesticide residues in foodstuffs is a top priority met by Big Green.

In spite of the evidence that community as well as worker exposure to agricultural pesticides can cause illness, it isn’t the first rung “acute” health effects I worry about. California children eat produce that is characteristically laced with trace amounts of pesticides. One survey conducted by the Nation Resources Defense Council in the late 1970s showed over a third of sampled produce to have detectable pesticide residues. True, few if any pesticide residues exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s limits for daily allowances. This means that no one is likely to get sick right off the bat. But no one tests the produce regularly enough to know if this pattern holds true year-round.

And here the argument that “natural pesticides” in foods cause more cancer than do synthetic pesticide residues just does not hold up. An NRDC survey done in 1989 showed that, at current levels, preschoolers are at 240-280 times greater risk of cancer from pesticide residues than is permitted under EPA guidelines. And no one knows what the additive effects are of all the unlabelled ingredients on fresh produce. Some pesticides can affect learning or cause latent neurological problems in addition to their carcinogenic risks.

Some 10 years ago, as the head of the State Hazard Evaluation System, I reviewed a study which showed that cancer deaths were directly correlated with the amount of pesticide used in any given county in California. This correlation has now been confirmed.

Of course, it doesn’t prove pesticides are linked to cancer--confounding variables, like simply living in a rural area, can always muck up statistics. But highly reliable, reproducible studies have now shown that herbicide use in agricultural states like Kansas is linked to a form of lymphoma, the same tumor found in excess among forestry workers and phenoxy herbicide-exposed people in Sweden. Should we wait for the other shoe to fall in California? I don’t think so.

Examining cases taken from the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program, we already know that children with leukemia were more likely to have had parents who were exposed to pesticides than were playmates who were cancer-free. Of course, it is the farm workers who stand at the front line of pesticide exposure. The childhood cancer clusters at Earlimart and McFarland among farm-worker children remain “unexplained,” though nonetheless real. Many of the candidate pesticides remain registered--even though their record of testing is shot through with “data gaps.” It is no picnic working wine grapes or raisins. Especially raisins, which must be protected against rot and fungal overgrowth.

Ten years ago I filed a report supporting the likelihood that the major fungicide used on raisin grapes was tereatogenic in animals--and possibly in people. Because it was a direct-acting mutagen and also a carcinogen, I was assured by CDFA officials that it would only be a matter of months before its registration would be suspended. It is still widely used. This pattern of disregarding health official recommendations persists to this day. The California Senate Office of Research documented a similar pattern of disdain by CDFA for recommended health protections just this year.

So it goes with other pesticides health professionals want “off the list”: benomyl, toxaphene, chlordimeform, “DEF,” folex, paraquat--just to name a few. These include teratogenic (causing birth defects) or carcinogenic chemicals that would be suspended if the Big Green initiative passed.

Other chemicals like the chlorofluorocarbons that are relatively “innocuous” in themselves, would be reduced and eventually phased out under Big Green. But these chemicals are also linked to cancer, especially to current epidemic of melanomas. By phasing out these chemicals, Californians would be reducing the risk of melanoma and other skin tumors linked to ultra-violet light exposure, since the CFCs deplete the ozone blocking these high-energy rays.

And “Saving the Redwoods” would do more than make life difficult for logging communities. It would preserve an ecosystem, that like the other life in California, cannot be replaced. Reducing carbon-dioxide emissions would do the same by dampening e rise in our global heat budget--a trend threatening to exacerbate the noxious effects of air pollution as well as to change the character of ecosystems. All life needs to be preserved and replenished with clean, fresh nutrients: air, earth and water. People deserve to control the chemicals in their lives. That is the mind-set Big Green creates.