EPA Admits Disregarding Toxic Studies : Poison: Report on metam-sodium, which was spilled into Sacramento River after a train derailed, is one of as many as 50 findings ignored by the federal agency.

A study warning that metam-sodium can cause birth defects was ignored by the federal Environmental Protection Agency until weeks after a derailed train spilled the herbicide into the Sacramento River, EPA officials acknowledged Wednesday.

For months, the agency has taken no action on as many as 50 similar studies still sitting in the EPA’s Washington files, studies showing that some pesticides now in use can cause cancer or birth defects, EPA critics said.

“Instead of being evaluated right away, these studies have just been filed in a drawer,” said Charles Bembrook, a private agricultural consultant who until recently worked for the National Academy of Sciences. “This is really a major breakdown in the system.”

Bembrook charged that agency officials ignored the warnings that metam-sodium and other pesticides could cause cancer or birth defects because they did not want to slow the process of re-registering the chemicals for continued use.

“This EPA early warning system was decommissioned by EPA managers who didn’t want this re-registration program,” Bembrook said.

The delay allows the continued use of some pesticides that might otherwise be reviewed with an eye to restricting their use.

Douglas Campt, director of the EPA’s pesticide program, acknowledged that the agency did not take action on metam-sodium and some other chemicals after manufacturers’ studies sent to the EPA indicated there could be health problems associated with their use.

Campt, however, denied that the EPA’s inaction was prompted by a desire to keep the pesticides registered, which keeps them on the market.

He said the agency had received reports warning of cancer or birth-defect risks associated with about 150 chemicals, but he could not say how many of those, such as metam-sodium, were ignored.

“Certainly we cannot review every one at once,” Campt said. “Some of those have been reviewed. Some are pending. Some have not been reviewed.”

Bembrook contended that some of those reports have been in the agency’s hands unexamined for as long as 18 months.

Even before Wednesday’s acknowledgment by federal officials that their metam-sodium report had not been acted on, concern over the state’s procedures regarding the chemical had already surfaced.

A Southern Pacific railroad car derailed, dumping 13,000 gallons of metam-sodium into the Sacramento River on July 14, destroying all wildlife along a 45-mile stretch of the river and poisoning Shasta Lake.

State officials first announced that certain levels of exposure to metam-sodium, which is sold under the trade name Vapam, pose no long-term health problems. But more than three weeks after the spill, state officials admitted that the chemical could cause birth defects early in pregnancy.

The new information came to light after health officials examined confidential files kept by the state Department of Food and Agriculture’s trade secrets section.

The same report discovered in the state’s files had also been sent to the federal EPA months before the spill. Campt said someone on the staff of the federal agency had read a summary of the report on metam-sodium, but took no action.

“We would hope that adverse effects would have been picked up at that time,” Campt said. “They weren’t.”

Instead, according to Bembrook, the federal agency’s lapse was only brought to light because of the Sacramento River spill, which forced hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes. The state’s reporting of the birth defect risks prompted inquiries from federal EPA officials, who were told that they had the same information in their own files.

Since 1988, the EPA has received a flood of information under a law requiring manufacturers to submit new studies to fill in missing data on many pesticides now in use. The goal of the law was to eliminate the use of chemicals that are shown to be hazardous.

When new studies of laboratory animals turn up adverse effects, such as cancer or birth defects, the manufacturers are required to notify federal officials immediately, and to flag the reports so that they do not get lost in the mountain of new data.

Some of the 150 potentially hazardous chemicals in the 50,000 studies submitted to the EPA have been reviewed by the staff, who in some cases have only read summaries, said agency spokesman Al Heier. But in 18 cases, the EPA staff has not even looked at the reports, he said.