Both Sides of Pesticide Issue Criticize EPA

It’s hard to please everybody. In the case of the Food Quality Protection Act, it appears that the Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t come close to making anyone happy.

As the agency tries to implement provisions of the 1996 law, which requires it to determine what pesticide residues are safe for adults and children in food, lobbyists on opposing sides of the issue have been staking out positions critical of EPA.

Environmentalists and public health groups say the agency is endangering children by failing to order an extra margin of safety when it reviews pesticides to determine what “tolerances” are safe.

They have taken aim at the Clinton administration, contending that it is bowing to agricultural and chemical interests--particularly with the recent creation of a 49-member federal advisory committee to advise EPA on how to proceed.

“The industry wants more time,” said Jacqueline Hamilton, senior project attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It amounts to an uncontrolled experiment on our children, which we think is unacceptable.”

Members of Congress have been peppering the agency with letters.

The House Agriculture Committee warned EPA not to make “hasty decisions, which could result in negative consequences for U.S. agricultural producers and non-agricultural users.” The House Commerce Committee requested that the agency not rely on “assumptions and defaults” to make decisions about pesticide uses.

Agribusiness thinks the EPA is moving too aggressively to take pesticides off the market without adequate scientific review or approving alternatives. A powerful industry combination, led by the American Crop Protection Association, got the attention of the Clinton administration with predictions that the food supply would be wiped out if pesticide use was severely limited. This is particularly so, they argued, for a class of chemicals known as organophosphates.

A brochure on the Food Quality Protection Act published by the crop group said EPA is not doing fair assessments, and, “From wormy apples in agriculture, to cockroaches in the kitchen and crabgrass choking the lawn, Americans in every walk of life will miss the benefits of effective pest control.”

The dispute is an odd one--even for Washington--because the law passed unanimously with broad support from these interest groups. The idea was to set a stringent safety standard for pesticides, applying an extra tenfold margin of safety if there was any uncertainty about how a substance could affect children. The other half of the equation was that the nation’s food supply wouldn’t be harmed by the changes.

For the first time, the agency would consider exposures from pesticides from many sources, such as uses in the home and the water supply, along with residues on foods.

So far, the agency has reviewed about 90 tolerances of the 9,700 it must analyze by 2006. Congress passed the law out of concern about the level of pesticides found in foods, even though residues are typically only present in trace amounts.

The agency is preparing to examine organophosphates and carbamates, which are widely used.

In nine cases ,the EPA ordered an extra margin of safety for children. This struck environmentalists as far too few; industry groups were alarmed and pushed for the EPA not to make changes until more information was available--an argument that critics of the industry said was at odds with the law.

The industry also was worried that EPA was about to halt the use of organophosphates. Industry and farm groups began creating a “road map” for how the act should be implemented, and prepared to bring legal action, if necessary.

A group called the Food Chain Coalition, made up of dozens of users, wrote the agency in March, saying, “EPA has fostered the widespread perception that the agency has already determined that certain pesticide tolerances must be revoked and that proposals to that effect will be issued soon.” The group said the agency was not using “sound science” and revocations would be made to fulfill a “political agenda.”

A senior EPA official said, “We’re not on the verge of taking virtually every pesticide off the market. These claims are overblown and exaggerated. We can protect the public health and ensure American agriculture continues to be productive.”

Environmental groups, expecting the White House to weigh in, hand-delivered a letter to President Clinton on April 7, asking that implementation of the law not be thrown off its timetable.

A day later, Vice President Al Gore told the heads of the Agriculture Department and the EPA in a memo that they should “work together to ensure that implementation of the paramount public health goals of the new law is informed by a sound regulatory approach, by the expertise of the Department of Agriculture, by appropriate input from affected members of the public and by due regard for the needs of our Nation’s agricultural producers.”

On April 10, an outside working group was formed to help EPA make decisions about what to do about organophosphates--a move that was immediately criticized by health and consumer groups as an attempt to mollify the industry.

But Jay Vroom, president of the American Crop Protection Assn., said the committee will help break the ideological logjam.

“Hopefully, all of us will get around the table and peel away that distrust,” Vroom said. “We’re going to have a lot of conversation about this.”