APPENDIX II-A: Pesticide Registration: No Guarantee of Safety by Caroline Cox

Excerpted with permission from Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides http://www.pesticide.org

Our national pesticide law is not a health- or safety-based law. Instead, it is based on risk-benefit analysis: Hazardous pesticides can be registered as long as they offer enough economic benefits. It is nearly impossible to do a sound risk-benefit analysis. There is no satisfactory way, for example, to weigh the costs of two million dead birds, or 100 children born with birth defects, against the profit margins of chemical manufacturing companies.

The registration process is cumbersome and expensive, but it misses or ignores many important effects:

Pesticides are registered while important health and safety data are still being generated.

Reevaluations of old pesticides mandated by laws passed in the 1970s are still incomplete.

Pesticides may continue to be used after evidence of their hazards is given to EPA.

Pesticides may never be required to be tested for certain kinds of hazards.

True resolution of these problems will come only when we prevent pest problems and implement alternative pest management techniques.

No Guarantee of Safety

As a starting place, it is crucial to understand that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not view registration, the process that allows a pesticide to be legally sold in the U.S., as a guarantee of safety. In fact, EPA regulations specifically prohibit manufacturers of pesticides from making claims like "safe," "harmless," or "nontoxic to humans and pets" with or without accompanying phrases like "when used as directed."1

The Regulatory Framework

Several flaws built into the pesticide registration process make it impossible to guarantee the safety of a pesticide.

First, the law regulating pesticides is not a health- or safety-based law. Instead, it is based on a risk-benefit standard. This allows pesticides to be used even if they pose hazards to humans and the environment as long as the benefits outweigh the hazards.

Second, the regulatory process has never been able to cope with the huge number of products used as pesticides, so that many of the pesticides in use today do not meet the requirements of the law.

Fifty Years of Legislation

Our national pesticide law, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) was enacted in 1947 as a product reliability law designed to assure farmers that pesticides would actually perform their intended function and that they were not acutely toxic.2,3 Put another way, the law was not intended to protect human or environmental health.

In 1972, FIFRA amendments, for the first time, required chronic toxicity and environmental concerns to be included in registration. In addition to registering new products, EPA was to "reregister" the 50,000 products that were already on the market.4,5 Reregistration involves bringing all health and safety testing up to current standards.

As of September 1999, 381 of the 612 active ingredients requiring reregistration were still being supported by pesticide manufacturers. Of these 381, only 198 had completed the reregistration process. EPA now estimates that the reregistration process will take until 2006.6

In 1996, Congress passed new pesticide legislation, the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), that contained amendments to both FIFRA and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). FQPA requires an additional safety factor to account for the special susceptibility of children unless "reliable data"7 suggest a different factor will be "safe for infants and children."8

Problems with Testing

Important Tests Are Waived: EPA can waive all chronic toxicity tests for nonagricultural pesticides. Your child can roll around in your neighborhood park, for example, on grass treated with a pesticide that will never be tested for chronic toxicity.

Pesticide Products Are Not Fully Tested: Almost all pesticide products are composed of "active" ingredient(s), whose identity must be listed on the label, and a number of "inert" ingredients, most of whose identities manufacturers claim are trade secrets. Most chronic toxicity testing required for EPA registration is done on the active ingredient only.9

Tests Look at "Average" Individuals: Some important parts of the human population (sensitive individuals,10 children, 11 and the elderly, for example) are more susceptible than the average person to pesticides’ adverse effects. However, most pesticide tests are done with uniform strains of laboratory animal rather than particularly sensitive individuals. For example, children consume more food and water (for their size), and eat different kinds of food than do adults. This means that they can be exposed to more pesticides in their diet.12

Tests Ignore Synergy: For decades, scientists have known that combinations of chemicals can be more potent than when acting alone. These are called synergistic effects. However, current EPA registration procedure still do not require testing for possible synergistic effects.

Regulatory Loopholes: FIFRA specifies several alternative registration processes that allow a pesticide to bypass most of FIFRA’s standard registration requirements. These alternative registrations are both widely and routinely used.

The Bottom Line

Pesticide regulation has not been protective of human health or the environment.

Pesticides are registered for use while important health and safety data are still being generated.

Pesticides may continue to be used after evidence of their hazards is given to EPA.

Pesticides may be registered through alternative processes that bypass important tests.

Pesticides may never be required to be tested for certain kinds of hazards.

The only true resolution to these problems will come when the money now being spent to register and regulate pesticides is spent to promote the prevention of pest problems and the implementation of alternatives to pesticide use.

The above points are covered in the in-depth version of the article Pesticide Registration: No Guarantee of Safety, from Journal of Pesticide Reform (Vol. 17, No. 2), which can be found in full at Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides.

References

1. 40 CFR §156.10(a)(5)(ix).

2. U.S. General Accounting Office. 1986. Pesticides: EPA’s formidable task to assess and regulate their risks. Washington, D.C. (April.)

3. Bosso, C.J. 1987. Pesticides and politics: The USDA/Tim McCabe

4. U.S. General Accounting Office. 1986. Pesticides: EPA’s formidable task to assess and regulate their risks. Washington, D.C. (April.)

5. Bosso, C.J. 1987. Pesticides and politics: The USDA/Tim McCabe

6. U.S. EPA. 2000. Pesticide reregistration performance measures and goals. Fed. Reg.

65:37375-37383, June 14.

7. Bosso, C.J. 1987. Pesticides and politics: The USDA/Tim McCabe

8. Bosso, C.J. 1987. Pesticides and politics: The USDA/Tim McCabe

9. U.S. EPA. 1987. Inert ingredients in pesticide products; Policy statement. Fed. Reg. 52(77): 13305. (April 22.)

10. Ashford, N.A. and C.S. Miller. 1991. Chemical exposures: Low levels and high stakes. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

11. National Research Council. Commission on Life Sciences. Committee on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. 1993. Pesticides in the diets of infants and small children. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

12. National Research Council. Commission on Life Sciences. Committee on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. 1993. Pesticides in the diets of infants and small children. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

(This appendix is copied from: http://www.checnet.org/healthehouse/education/articles-detail.asp?Main_ID=272 )