Tape #330 - Health Risks of Pesticides

MEDIATOR: ...from English to Spanish, if you do, let me know and we can definitely make those arrangements.

Our first speaker today is going to be Shelly Davis. Ms. Davis is the Co-executive Director of Farm Worker Justice Funds Incorporated. She’s worked in pesticide issues for 10 years, and she’s also an attorney. And so, Ms. Davis, if you’d like to come up?

MS. DAVIS: Good afternoon, and welcome everybody from all over the world. This is quite an honor to be here and speak.

The Farmer for Justice Fund is a national advocacy group for migrant and seasonal farm workers around the United States. And we work to improve living and working conditions for farm workers. Today, I want to focus on the half effects of pesticide exposure from the point of view of the farm worker community. So, what I’d like to do is briefly give you some sense of how these issues affect farm workers, who farm workers are, the kinds of health effects they face, and the way in which the United States government has regulated pesticides and how well that has worked out. So, I know that’s kind of a big chunk, but we’ll see how far we can get.

To start, I think it’s helpful to just give a few incidence to give you an idea of how pesticide problems arise for farm workers. The first incident occurred in September of 1996, in Bakersfield, California. A crew of 21 farm workers were picking grapes when a crop duster, which was aiming at a cotton field, adjacent to where the workers were working, missed its target and sprayed these workers with three pesticides. All of which were serious neurotoxin, in other words, they affect the nervous system. Two of the pesticides were classified as toxicity category 1, and that is the most highly acutely toxic pesticide. In other words, the kind that have the greatest effect immediately. The second, the third pesticide was chlopirophos, which is also called Laura’s Beneders Ban, and in toxicity category 2, organophosphate, in other words a moderately toxic pesticide, but one which has been associated with birth defects. Three of the women in that crew were pregnant.

Second incident. This occurred in November of 1989. A different kind of exposure. Two crews of about 89 workers altogether, were directed to enter a field to tie cauliflower. And the field had been sprayed the night before with phosodrome, also known as mevanphos, which is again, highly acutely toxic. Toxicity category 1 pesticide. The workers should have been kept out of that field for 48 hours, but they were put back in after about 12. After a couple of hours of work, workers began feeling nauseous and vomiting and began being carried out, literally, to area hospitals and clinics. Over the course of the day, more than 70 workers were taken to area hospitals. But work in that field did not end until 5:00 p.m.. In other words, the workers that we left standing stayed the whole day. As a result of that incident, 4 workers were hospitalized in intensive care. And subsequently one of the women workers had a miscarriage and another had a child with birth defects.

The third incident. This involved a tobacco worker in North Caroline in July of 1995. This worker came from Mexico under a program called the H to A program, in which the United States allows, says workers to come from Mexico for a temporary time period to do agricultural work. And this worker was an indigenous person in Mexico. In other words, Spanish was his second language. And he only spoke a little bit of Spanish and no English. According to his co-workers, a tractor was applying pesticides about 40 yards ahead of the crew. And this worker, Rinaldo Edenandez, became violently ill and dizzy and disoriented and he didn’t know where he was. And his co-workers had a lot of difficulty convincing him that he should stop work and go to see a doctor. But the grower agreed to take him to the doctor, and they set off in the growers truck. On the way to the hospital, the grower stopped at his house for a few minutes, and when he came back out, he said that Rinaldo was walking down the road and refused to get in the truck. So the grower went back to work, and that was last he thought about it, at the end of the day when the other workers came back, Rinaldo was not in the labor camp. And he was not found for another 3 months. When his body was found, about 12 feet off the road, right near the growers house. That was a tragedy that didn’t need to happen. It didn’t have to happen for at least 3 reasons. First, the incident itself was obviously preventable, having a tractor spray right in front of workers is a pretty obvious mistake. Second of all, he should have been taken directly to the hospital. And I think that again shows a lack of understanding of the seriousness of these chemicals. And the third thing that went wrong here was really the fault of the state. And that is that they were not able to fully investigate this incident because the state of North Carolina did not have any investigators who could speak Spanish, and therefore, none of them could interview the other crew members. That case remains unresolved.

So what do these incidences point up? A couple of quick things, and then we’ll sort of get into it, one is that I think that in general this exposure occurs in the ordinary course of doing the work. And it usually occurs because of a mistake, because people are in a hurry, the time pressures of work. It occurs because people don’t realize that these chemicals are dangerous and it’s safety is really important and has to be taken seriously.

Okay. Who are farm workers in the United States? There are about 2.5 million hired farm workers in the United States, about 20% of whom are women, about 100,000 of whom are children. Farm workers here are predominately Hispanic, many of them come from the Republic of Mexico. Of the 20% that are not Hispanic, they include African Americans, Jamaican, Haitians, Southeast Asians, and other nationalities. Farm workers are overwhelmingly poor. They earn an average of $6,500 a year, and that means that even when both parents work, and even when the older children work, many remain below the poverty level. About 60% of all farm worker families live below the poverty line. Agriculture in the United States is the third, is one of the three most dangerous occupations. If farm workers lack access to health care, it’s estimated that about 24% have private insurance, about 20% get the federally funded Medicaid Medical Insurance, and about 17% are seen in federally funded clinics. Cope math means that a significant number of farm workers lack access to routine health care. Farm workers are also not covered by a lot of federal labor laws. As a result, about half don’t have the minimum wage coverage and about half are not covered by the occupational health and safety act which only applies to employers of 11 or more workers. Farm workers also lack much formal education. They have a median educational rate of about eighth grade and many do not speak or read English. So, that gives you an idea of the population.

But, since our subject is pesticides, let’s turn to that more directly now. In the United States, more than a billion pounds of pesticides are applied each year. The EPA estimates that tens of thousands of farm workers are occupationally poisoned by pesticides each year. The USDA of world statistics find that farm workers have the highest rate of chemical related illness of any occupational group. Of a rate of 5.5 per thousand workers. Only test states in the United States keep workers of pesticide incidence on a systematic basis, that’s California and Washington State. In 1995 California recorded about 1600 pesticide incidents, about 659 of which were found to be possible, probable, or definite related to pesticides involving farm workers. The state of Washington annually has about 300 such incidents.

So, one of the first problems we face in terms of farm workers and pesticide exposure, is that since only 2 states keep statistics, we really don’t know how many farm workers are affected by pesticides each year. And in the United States, that’s kind of unusual because we keep statistics about everything and we pride ourselves on knowing the numbers, how much, what, when, where. But there are a couple of important reasons why we don’t know how many farm workers are affected by pesticides each year. The first and most obvious is that nobody’s counting. There is no national pesticide incident reporting system. The second problem is that even the systems that do exist in California and Washington, only document acute poisoning. In other words, symptoms that occur immediately. It’s state-of-the-art of science and law makes it very difficult now to link up birth defects or cancer, or other long time or chronic effects with pesticide exposure. Another problem is that farm workers, as I said, lack access to medical care. So, they’re frequently even when they are ill, they do not see a doctor. Either because they don’t have one or they can’t there because they have no transportation, or they just can’t get off of work in order to go. Another problem is that medical providers are inter trained in pesticides. And since pesticide symptoms, mirror the symptoms of many common ailments, very frequently medical providers don’t recognize the symptoms as pesticide exposure. And, of course, if they don’t recognize or diagnose them, they don’t report them. One final reason, that is also extremely important to keep in mind in the farm worker context, is that farm workers are often afraid to say that the symptoms they are experiencing are related to pesticide exposure. And that’s because they’re afraid that if they make that connection, they will loose their job. And this fear of relatione is pervasive from coast to coast in this country.

What are the kinds of health effects related to pesticide exposure? When a category has basically in two kinds of effects, acute or immediate kinds of effects, and chronic a more long terms effects. Types of acute effects they range from such things as blurred vision, dermatitis, slowed heart rate, and even to coma and death. On the side of chronic effects, they can include kidney or liver damage, birth defects or cancer. So the effects can be quite serious. In terms of cancer, the EPA has identified more than 90 pesticides as possible or suspected carcinogens. In terms of epidemiological studies, and I have an article about this in the back, which you all should try to get hold of, very few epidemiological studies have been done concerning farm workers, pesticides and cancer. However, the studies that have been done show that farm workers, like farm operators, suffer from excess rates of certain kinds of cancers. For example, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, melanoma, cancers of the stomach, testes, prostrate and brain. For female farm workers there is an excess of cervical cancer. And farm worker children have shown up in cancer clusters in various communities. And in terms of childhood cancer, leukemia and brain cancer have been associated with pesticide exposure. Remember a pesticides that were also linked to developmental problems, birth defects and reproductive problems. And again, not enough has been done to study these issues, but there are some studies that are worth noting. One was done in Minnesota, which showed that, which compared birth defects in counties that have high use of pesticides to counties such as St. Paul, Minneapolis, St. Paul, where there is low pesticide use, relatively. And they found that in the high pesticide use counties the rate of birth defects was 40 per thousand live births, whereas in the Twin Cities it was a little of 18 per thousand live births. So, again, a significant difference. A California case control study showed a significant association between limb reductions, in other words, children born without limbs or with abnormally small limbs and high pesticide exposure. And in a Nebraska study, similarly showed several birth defects were significantly greater in counties of high pesticide usage. And in this way, these studies, I think, highlight the fact that many of the problems facing farm workers will also face the problems of farm operators and their families. So, in that sense, we’re all in this together. And it’s a problem that we all need to solve.

From the farm worker perspective, there are basically two ways in which pesticides pose problems. First, some products are simply too dangerous. They’re a hazard danger, should prevent them from being used. And the second is that certain work practices are dangerous, and those practices should be prevented. Now, for the farm worker community, these are basically poor, poorly educated people. For them to have an organized voice in protecting themselves from the hazards of pesticides, in an ideal world, they would all belong to unions, or some other organization that would speak for them and protect them from loosing their jobs and make sure that work practices were safe. But, unfortunately, less than 1% of farm workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements in the United States. Now, as I just said, employers also have a responsibility here, and because farm operators face the same kinds of hazards that their workers do, they should take a special interest in these hazards, and in the particular chemicals. And make sure that the chemicals they use are safe. But I think in fairness many farm operators don’t know and lack access to this information. So the truth is for many of us, the responsibility really rests with the government. And in the United States, that’s really the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. They have to make sure that the products are safe and that unsafe practices are illegal. But I think that the record of the last several decades has shown the government has not done an adequate job in either of these respects.

First, let me just briefly talk about the safety of the products. For the first 5 decades of major usage of pesticides, since World War II, pesticides have been regulated in the United States under a law called the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act or FIFRA. This law is really aimed at being a chemical registration act in providing ethnicity and good instructions on use. It really wasn’t aimed at half and health prevention. And one that is pretty obvious in the law, is that the word man only appears as part of the definition of the word environment. And of course the word woman does not appear at all. In this law, pesticides were allowed on the market unless you could prove that they cause an unreasonable risk of adverse affects. Unintelligible....determined that used the term because this law remains in affect on a cost benefit basis and what that really means is that you have to show that the cost or the harmful health affects outweigh the benefits or the number of crops you could grow using that chemical. The problem with that standard even though it appears very even handed is that it is far easier to show benefit than cost and that is because there are many people employed in this country to count up how many crops of this kind or that kind are grown and which chemicals they used. But, showing the health affects side is very difficult. First of all we can’t just spray a bunch of pesticides and see how many of them get cancer. So instead we rely mostly on animal studies and this is a very complicated process and not an easy way to show a direct correlation to the hazards to human health. Also [pesticides under this law are regulated one at a time as if the human body were only exposed to a single pesticide in its lifetime. The combination of these factors made it such that even though dozens have been identified as carcinogens and for causing birth defects and other reproductive harm only about half a dozen pesticides have been banned under this law in its fifty year history. So its proved a very ineffective way to protect the public. IN 1996 congress passed a new law called the Food Quality Protection Act, and this law changes the way pesticides are regulated in a number of important ways. First of all for the most part it scrapped this cost benefit analysis and instead it placed a standard of reasonable certainty of no harm In other words you had to determine... the EPA has to determine whether a [pesticide will cause injury to people’s health and that makes a lot of sense. The second thing that this law did is that it said there are a lot of ways in which people are exposed to pesticides. Pesticides are on foods, its in the air, its in the water we drink, we use it in the home and garden and many other ways. And so all of these exposures have to be combined to figure out the effect of these chemicals. But another even more innovative thing that the law said is that a lot of pesticide work in the same way. In other words they cause harm or have a common mechanism of toxicity. In sort of a paradigm of that is sort of the class of organaphosphates which are a kind of chemical class that affects the nervous system of people and insects. So the law said we had to think about the effect together of all pesticides that have this same mechanism of harm. And in the final thing that it did, which was even more innovative was that it said we have to go an extra mile to protect infants and children because they have a special susceptibility to the chemicals because they are much more affected at much lower doses by these chemicals. And also they may eat disproportionate amounts of particular foods, like for example apples so that they will have greater exposure to particular pesticides that would adults. So the law says the EPA in figuring out whether a chemical meets this reasonable standard of no harm can add an extra margin of safety, when necessary to protect infants and children. This new law which took affect in August of 1996 is just really now beginning to be utilized at I’ll allow my friends at the EPA to talk more about it. But from our perspective this is really the first time that we have a legal mechanism which at least is geared towards protecting human health. And so I’m particularly surprised that many in the food growing and processing community have launched a campaign to derail and delay this new law from taking affect. Because really this is the first time that we can have any reasonable certainty that the products that are on the market are protective of health.

The final thing I want to talk about is the side of protecting workers from unsafe work practices. In 1992 the EPA issued a regulation called the Worker Protection Standard. An this new law set some basic minimum protections for farm workers. For the first time it required that farm workers receive some basic training about pesticide safety. It established some routine quarantine periods known as re-entry intervals to keep workers out of the field for a particular time period. It required that water be available and that signs be posted stating the name of the pesticide and when it was safe to reenter a field. Those regulations took affect in 1995 and unfortunately they are still honored in the breach. And I think again its because there is a lack of understanding about the need for these protections. In hearings that were held in the summer of 1996 growers complained about many of these protections. For example they complained that providing decontamination water in the field was too expensive. Now what is decontamination water? It is of course water and water is not all that expensive. From our friends at the Occupational Health and Safety Administration we know that it costs approximately 29 cents per day per worker to provide water in the fields. But water is necessary far beyond this minimal cost. And that is because studies show that a substantial amount of pesticide illness and injury can be prevented if people quickly wash off after they have been exposed to pesticides. Another item that came under great criticism from growers was the claim that it was very burdensome to post the name of the pesticide they applied and to post fields when workers had to be kept out for 48 hours or more. But again the employers lost sight of the basic requirements and need for these provisions. In terms of knowing the name of the pesticide this is one of the most basic things that any worker exposed to a chemical needs. And that is because if someone is injured the treating medical personnel must know the name of the chemical in order to provide the proper treatment. So knowing the name is actually quite valuable. And of course having warning signs that come up when workers need to stay out of the fields and go down when it is safe to reenter is a critical way of keeping workers informed so that they aren’t injured. Because we know that the best way to prevent injury is to prevent exposure.

The final thing I want to say is that the states which have been authorized to enforce the provisions have also fallen down on the job. One other item that I brought today and put in the back the room is a report that we did on the state of Florida and their efforts to enforce these basic worker protection standards. We looked at 46 incidents in which it was alleged that workers were injured by pesticide exposure. In 41 of those cases the State Department of Agriculture found violations of the law but in only two instances did they issue any fine. Although there were numerous instances in which workers were exposed to pesticides and the state so found and the workers subsequently became ill with symptoms that were consistent with pesticide exposure the State systematically refused to find any connection between the exposure and the illness. Now why is that a problem? From our perspective that’s critical information because its the only way we can show that either products or particular practices pose great dangers to farm workers. So what does this all leave us? I think it comes down to two things. First of all there is a lot of far out there. Fear on the worker’s part of loosing their job and fear on the employer’s part that pesticide regulation will just ... is not only a headache, but it will cause them liability and they will end up in some big law suit somewhere. The problem with being driven by these fears is that we impede the process of finding out which products are dangerous and actually providing a safe place for all of us to work. The second thing is, the law and the way the government has enforced the law have put pesticides first and people’s health second. It’s time to reverse that paradigm and be sure that people in this country and around the world are protected from these dangers. Thank you.

Thank you Miss Davis. Our next speaker is going to be Marcia Mulky. She’s the US EPA Director Office of Pesticides Programs here in Washington DC.

And uh.. Toby Jones who works for the California Environmental Protection Agency came with me today and gives the perspective of working with pesticides at the state level. And California has a particularly comprehensive and extensive pesticide regulatory scheme, comparable to that of many nations of the world. In fact well advanced of that of many nations of the world. And so she is also available to help answer your questions and give you another perspective. You know if you stop and think about it at all its not surprising that anytime we talk about pesticides there is a place for talking about health issues associated with pesticides. Because pesticides are designed to kill or to alter the body or to repel or to other wise animals, mostly insects and limitoads and things like that and plants. So that we are dealing with a category of things which for good and sound reasons are designed to do damage to living things, naturally creates a situation where we need to be cautious and mindful and attentive to the possibility that it would do harm to us living things as well as things in the environment that are not pests. That are highly desirable to all of us. And that’s of course the reason that every pesticide product sold in America has to be registered with the Environmental Protection Agency. There’s not, I don’t know of any other class of products where every single one of the m has to have a government license. Nuclear materials is you know a little bit else out there where it can’t move in commerce without a government license but that’s pretty rare and that is because of the sort of, if you like, inherent nature. And one of the things that has happened in recent years that is very exciting is that industry is beginning to identify products, some which have biological origins which are able to do those kinds of things in much more benign ways. But we’re not there yet an there’s still and awful lot of products that work very well precisely because they do the kinds of things that we don’t want done to our bodies. And therein lies the roll of public health protection that we try to fill. And that all starts with extremely thorough studies of pesticides. And we are still struggling in to be sure that all the existing pesticides receive the kind of thorough study that the brand new ones all now require, and to be sure that we look at the results of those studies and understand fully the nature of the toxic properties of these pesticides. Shelly already mentioned something about the nature of all this work that every pesticide, every pesticide newly marketed and we’re catching up all the old ones. In test animals are studied by inhalation, by dermal exposure, by eating the pesticide. They are studied for short periods of time, for longer periods of time, over multiple generations of the test animals and they are analyzed for everything from acute affects like death and other kinds of things like rashes and those kinds of things like rashes and those kind of things and for chronic affects for cancers, for birth defects, in these animals.

Now virtually every [pesticide will cause one of those affects at some dose. If you feed enough of it, If you put enough on the skin, if you inhale enough you will get a bad affect. Now not all of them will ever cause a cancer and not all of them will ever cause birth affects but most of the m will cause, I mean you can kill most animals. With most pesticides you can feed enough to kill and you can feed enough o do other things short of killing. So the real reason for testing is not only to learn whether it causes one of those affects but at what dose. How much does it take? Because that’s the key to knowing how toxic it is. Not just what kind of affect it causes but at what dose. And that’s the starting point for figuring out whether its safe to have in the market place notwithstanding the fact that humans will come in contact with it, because humans will. So you start with at what dose, the so called noel, or no observed effect level, the point below which this doesn’t happen, and you set that, that’s the so called safe level for that animal. So you know now how much is okay for that rat or that group of rats. Then you have to figure out how do we get from that to figure out whether it’s safe for humans. Is it enough to say we humans just as long as they don’t get any more than that. The first thing, of course, you’ve got to convert it into a function of body weight because that makes a difference, and so you sort of calculate it as a milligrams per kilogram calculation, and then you say well, I’m not confident in assuming that it’ll happen for all rats the same way it did for these rats. Because maybe we got some sort of vary strong rats, it took more to get them. So, we use what’s called a safety factor. We say, we won’t give it to humans, we won’t let humans get near that dose, we’ll add ten times onto it to take account for the fact that maybe we tested braver rats or stronger rats or more resistant rats. So, that’s the so called intra-species safety factory. But then many of us are not comfortable saying we think humans operate the way rats do. You know, maybe we’re more sensitive. And so, there’s another safety factor, ten times. Now, there’s nothing magic about ten, nobody knows for sure what the right number is, I don’t want to kid you. But this is what has been used by scientist for a long time based upon a fair amount of data that indicates that’s enough. And so, another ten times. So, basically what we see is whatever the dose is too much for animals or is okay for animals, safe for animals, we’ll say 100 times that dose is safe for people. Roughly. And that’s the acceptable dose for human beings. Now, you ask, how do you figure out what dose human beings are getting. Well, that’s not easy either. Because of course we don’t take it in droppers that are measured in kilograms and drink it or pour it on our skin or breath it. We get it because we’re handling the pesticide. We’re working with it, we get it because we’re eating foods with tiny bits of the pesticide on it. But, we eat a lot of different foods, and sometimes we get more than a tiny bit, although never a whole lot from food alone. We also get it in our drinking water, because pesticides wind up in wells and pesticides wind up in reservoirs and those kind of places, because they move in the environment. So, we try to test for all of that, too. We have incredibly detailed tests about how much winds up in food. There’s an amazing amount of studies to figure out sort of the maximum that could wind up in food if you use the maximum amount, all the number of times you’re allowed to use it, as close to harvest as you’re allowed to use it. So we sort of know what’s the worst case winding up in food. And we also have a lot of studies about what’s actually in the marketplace. What happens if you measure products that are actually grown in the real world, instead of under test conditions, and see what levels. So we have a pretty good feel for how much is in food. We know less about how much is in our drinking water, although we know quite a bit, and there’s more and more sampling done and we also have ways of estimating that because we know how the pesticides behaves in the environment. We know how fast it moves and how quickly it breaks down and whether it sticks to soil or stays loose and moves around, and we know how fast it vaporizes, and you put all of that into an elaborate model, and you can do a pretty good job of estimating whether it’s likely to show up and even what levels is likely to show up in water sources. And we know some things about occupational exposures. There’s been quite a lot done to study how much you get if you’re handling it according to the directions. And then, of course, there are certain poison incidents that are not about directions, using according to the directions, which is some of what Shelly was talking about, but we certainly need to know how much you get when you’re following directions, and there’s a fair amount of data on that. And we have less information but some basis to get a handle on how much we get in our homes, if we’re using it for in home pest control, or in our gardens, the same way farmers use it, but for smaller plots. And so that all taken together helps us to figure out whether the amount that humans are getting is set. And it’s not easy to do, it’s very hard to do .... easy to do. And we frankly struggle with it a little bit. And our struggles have been made a little stronger by this major new law that you’ve all heard about. The law focuses on the safety of our food, it’s called the Food Quality Protection Act, but it also brings in these other sources of exposure. There are many people worried that this law is going to cause us to take action involving phantom risks. I’m sure many of you have heard that and have feared that. Those of you who rely on and use pesticides are, for your economic well being are particularly concerned that we not get carried away and take action based upon risks that you think we don’t understand or that we may exaggerate. But there are many others who worry that we will not do what we are required to do to protect public health under this law. And of course, what we’re trying, very hard to do, is to work smart, to implement a law, the law in a way that first and foremost does protect the public health, but does it in a way that is clear and understood by everybody, so that we deal with, get away from the rumors and the fears and deal with reality. That employs sound science that we in fact get it right. And that we work in a way that we try to be aware of the effects we might have on people’s farming and other practices, and try to help develop the tools working with the USDA and others that will allow people to make the kinds of changes that may be required. The law is, makes very good sense. Shelly mentioned the key elements of it that make good sense. You need to take into account all the ways you get exposed to a pesticide, not just one. It’s very hard to quarrel with that. You need to take into account pesticides that operate as if they were the same pesticide from the point of view of the body that have a common mechanism, you need to treat them as if they were the same pesticide for purposes of public health, that certainly makes sense. And the idea of taking a little less chance when it comes to our children, and we all do that every day, in our private lives. And that’s the extra safety factor, that extra 10X that you do if you have, unless you have a reason to think you don’t need it, because you know enough. Maybe you know that pesticides have been studied, and you know the children are not more sensitized, sensitive to it. Children are more sensitive to some pesticides, but not all of them. So, if it’s been studied enough to know the answer to that, then you maybe don’t need that extra 10X. So, that’s sort of the way the law works, and what we’re trying to do to get to the place where we have an extra measure of public health protection. And you know, this law was passed unanimously. That’s very rare in America. And that’s because I think there is a consensus, that the American people want there to be public health protection from pesticides. And the debates is about being sure we do it smart and do it soundly. And we’re trying to do our part to contribute to that. We do want to be able to answer some questions. I think Toby maybe wants to bring the state perspective a little bit to you, and then we’ll try to stay as long as we can, until we’re kicked out of this room, for the next round.

Thank you.

TOBY: It’s a pleasure to be here, and Marsha is a tough act to follow. I just wanted to give you a perspective on California’s pesticide regulatory program. Each state has a Pesticide Regulatory Program. California’s is different than most states, because over the years California has invested a considerable of it’s resources in regulated the use, the safe use pesticides. Part of that comes from California’s agricultural economy. It’s a very large part of the state’s economy, it’s very diverse, pesticide use to manage pests has been a part of California agriculture since pesticides have been used. And it was in the mid 1970's that the state said there are issues with using organophosphate insecticides. We have home workers going back into fields who are being poisoned. We have folks applying organophosphate pesticides who are being poisoned. Because these acute toxicants. So, it was in the mid 1970's that the state developed a worker protection program, and that worker protection program was focused in two ways. It was designed to provide protection to those who apply pesticides and designed to protect workers who reenter fields. One of the features of California’s Pesticide Regulatory Program, is having county agricultural commissioners at each of our 50 some off counties who are our local agents in the field. Depending on the relative wealth of each of those counties, those county commissioners may have a small staff of 4 or 5 people, they may have a staff of 200 people. But, part of the state’s program is intended to fund the pesticide regulatory efforts at the local level. One of the aspects of that county based enforcement system is a restrictive materials permit system. If the state identifies a particular issue with a pesticide, that requires closer control of that pesticide, then the user of the pesticide must obtain a permit from the county agricultural commissioner. The commissioner makes a determination about local conditions of use, whether an agricultural food is next to a school, next to a body of water, next to homes, and may disallow the use of a pesticide or may condition the use of the pesticide to provide needed protection for sensitive areas. So, that permitting systems provides us an extra degree of control. We also have a sense of controls on those who apply pesticides for businesses, particularly in their employer workers because prior to the worker protection standard at the federal level, we required training of workers in the safe handling in the safe handling of pesticides, and those who have businesses that employ folks who apply pesticides have to keep records about training, so that we have a way to go back into the records and determine whether or not they are providing that. Another aspect of California’s system for regulating pesticides, which Shelly mentioned, is our illness reporting system. Again, a vintage 1970's process. Every physician in the state of California is required to report pesticide associated illnesses. And that usually takes two forms. Under those who are in a working condition, if it’s a work related illness, it usually falls into the state’s workers compensation program, but even if a person comes into a physician and says, I believe I am ill from a pesticide, that’s reportable. Of course, since the pesticide program doesn’t have authority over physicians, we have to work closely with our State Department of Health Services, who has authority over physicians. And most recently we needed to work with Health Services to go back and remind the state’s physicians of the reporting responsibilities. Because we in the pesticide program rely heavily on that illness reporting systems to identify both problems with the use of pesticides and to identify illegal uses, where we need to take some kind of enforcement action. Back in the mid 1980's, our state legislature got tired of waiting for EPA to re-register all of the older pesticides, and said California will go ahead and collect data that we need to assess health, effects of old pesticides. And these were old pesticides registered prior to the mid 1980's. This was not a happy time either for the chemical company selling pesticides or for us in California, because California was asking for very expensive data to be developed that EPA was not yet asking for. So, we, I would say, got about a 4 year leg up on EPA before Congress amended FIFRA to require an accelerated re-registration of pesticides. But as a consequence, the state has, over the last 10 to 12 years, has collected a large body of health effects data. And we have attempted to prioritize conducting risk assessments on pesticides based on the kinds of adverse effects we identify in those health effects studies. Over time, we have increased our communication with EPA, especially since after 1988 EPA also began to, on an accelerated basis, collecting newer studies on older pesticides. But, as a result of having those health effects studies, we have continued to work away on doing risk assessments. A part of those risk assessments, in addition to health effects studies, themselves, is exposure data, and exposure data is the other half of the equation on assessing risks. As we finish those risk assessments we determine whether or not risk medication measures are needed. And I would say in our experience in doing, both doing worker protection work and in doing risk assessments, that it’s those who apply pesticides who are the most exposed. So most often the measures we have put in place are to protect those who are applying pesticides in some circumstances, our measures are directed to protecting farm workers who reenter fields. Where medication measures cannot be put into place, we go ahead and cancel those pesticides. So, part of that, there’s a struggle of course with trying to identify where medication measures are appropriate and feasible and where they are not having to get rid of those pesticides. Of course, if a particular crop or use of a pesticide, if that’s the only use, then there is a problem with having to manage pests. That, and that is also a part of what we are all faced with, with the implementation of FTPA. One other aspect of California’s program that gives us a real handle on how pesticides are used, is a hundred percent pesticide use reporting system. In 1990, we went from requiring only the reporting of restricted materials, and those materials applied by businesses, to the complete reporting of all pesticide use both in agriculture and in other settings. And home owners are not required to report. So, since 1990 we have developed a very comprehensive data base on how pesticides are used. That particular data base will become important in FTPA because we have a much better snapshot of how pesticides are used, the timing of those uses, and so forth, than most other states. In addition to our pesticide use reporting, we also have a residue monitoring program that is focused on raw commodities. Our program parallels that of FDA, in fact, we have a cooperative working relationship with FDA in the state. We monitor both commodities produced in California and those commodities imported into our major ports, so that 30% of our residue monitoring is on imported commodities into the United States. And in those instances when we identify illegal residues, we work collaboratively with FDA, who has jurisdiction over interstate commerce.

Lastly, let me just touch on, as a result of the nature of California’s program, our work with USEPA, prior to, I think prior to both FTPA and re-registration we would communicate with EPA when we identified problems with pesticides. I think given the, what I will call the crush of re-registration activity in EPA and the short time frame that Congress gave EPA to re-register older chemicals. It became highly desirable for EPA to see if there were aspects of the work we were doing on assessing the health effects of pesticides and other aspects of pesticides to work collaboratively and harmonizing our work efforts. And we continue in that effort. We have not always, not necessarily reached agreement with EPA, and in some cases the state has priorities on certain pesticides then EPA may have on a national basis. So, I think on that note, in order to leave you opportunity to ask questions. I’ll close my comments.

Thank you.

MEDIATOR: Hi, my name is Velma Charshed, and I’m with USDA, and Toby and I work together in California. I’m glad to see you here. In the 80's in the Department of Pesticide Regulation and I also work with (inaudible) so I’m delighted to have them on our panel. So, we welcome, and I’m sorry, I apologize I’m late, we’re trying to rearrange a lot of things, but Dr. Jones, Dr. Mulsky, and Shell Davis, we appreciate your being here. We are taping the session, so if you have questions we would ask that you come to the podium so that you can speak into the Microphone.

PARTICIPANT: If anyone has a question, just come on up to the Microphone, please.

PARTICIPANT: I work with some researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who have been studying since 1990 the interactive effects of pesticides in very low doses in combination on animal systems. I’m wondering where the EPA or any of your agencies stand, Shelly, I’m wondering where your organization, what familiarity your organization has with those issues. And if you could please speak a little bit to those issues of interactive effects of pesticides at very low doses on animal or other biological systems in part as a public health issue. And that includes whether you’ve even heard anything about this research, are aware of it or not. Thank you.

SPEAKER: Well, I think that the issue that you raise is a very important one. I think one of the great weaknesses of the law is that it doesn’t adequately take into account interaction of pesticides and so frequently that is not going to be a problem that’s going to be flagged in the re-registration process. But, it’s one of the ways in which real life and our laboratory models are not the same. And I think that if, it is really important, when Marsha talked about the careful ways in which pesticides are studied, the things that kept going through my mind were the ways in which real life doesn’t mirror those laboratory studies and this problem of synergy is definitely one of them.

SPEAKER: My lack of knowledge about those studies, does not mean EPA and outset program is not involved or lacks research and development. And if I had to purely guess, I would guess that we are following. I mean any kind of study of what appears to be that scope and significance on pesticides is very likely that we have some awareness of. It is, in fact, true that except for pesticides that operate by a common toxicity amount, that we do not have an institutionalized system approach of looking at the effects of multiple pesticides. Having said that, you know, knowledge is very powerful, and if studies show information that is useable, it is likely that, regulation and law and everything else will catch up to a powerful useable information. So, it’s not like we just say, it’s not our problem. But, I don’t personally have any expertise about that subject. I am aware of general concerns that people have often expressed about both the additive and even the synergistic effect of combining pollutants, not just pesticides, but all kinds of sources of toxins, and it’s not well understood, and not thoroughly studied. So it’s good to know that there’s a significant research effort underway.

SPEAKER: I will just say that Kelly PA went through a workshop just last week on environmental issues. And one of our speakers was Bill Farland from EPA’s office of Research and Development. And I think he focused on that particular issue and was able to describe to folks in California what EPA’s thinking about that is. I think that probably the baseline issue is that interaction of chemicals and synergism sort of hits the limit of where toxicity, the science of toxicology is at this point. Regulation is always trying to keep up with the science, and in this case, we have a science that is only in its infancy. If you think about the kinds of, numbers of animals it takes to study a single chemical, and then you, if you just add one more chemical, just a pair of chemicals, you get, and then if you go beyond a pair of chemicals it gets to be exceedingly complex. So, I think toxicologists and also modelers are wrestling with the very issue of how to assess, the real time exposure that we experience to multiple chemicals.

MEDIATOR: Any more questions?

PARTICIPANT: I have a two, kind of two for question/statement. Under the food quality protection act, I understand that there was to, the EPA was to be publishing brochures regarding pesticides that would be available through grocery stores, and that I have not seen that anywhere. I have asked grocery stores and they look at me like I’m crazy. So, I wondered, I understand this act was passed in August of ‘96, which sounds like, oh my gosh, two years ago, but I understand it does take time to do that kind of thing. My second is a concern. You’re stating that, yes, we need to have an added protection for infants and children. Well, if it’s good for infants and children, why isn’t good for all of us? Such as the elderly. I mean, it’s like your saying, well, you know when you get 21 can drink, vote, and be exposed to as many pesticides as you want to be. So, I think if it’s a good thing for our children, I think it’s a good thing for all of us.

SPEAKER: You’re right. There is a provision in the quality protection act relating to information to be available in grocery stores. And the statute contemplates that be by August of 1998. So, we’re not late, yet. We did publish a proposed brochure. We probably should in the federal register, it was actually, an article was carried about it in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, so it did get some general public attention. We’ve also held some focus groups and other kinds of things to try to see if we’ve hit the mark in terms of useable information. But the statute provides us with the opportunity to set tolerances, under certain circumstances, which are not, when we can’t say there’s a reasonable certainty of no harm, if there’s a compelling enough benefits. It’s just certain matter of circumstances and rather than winging it, I won’t say exactly what they are, but it’s, and if we do that, we are required to list the pesticides where we did that and on what foods in the public markets. And that’s one of the compelling reasons behind the idea of that brochure. We have not done that, yet. We’ve not yet set any of those tolerances. So, if a brochure is issued in August, it will not list any pesticides that have the so-called benefits based tolerance. But, there is a draft. It has been vetted and as of now we’re moving forward to publish, which we hope will provide some useful information. If you are interested in very comprehensive information, the names of the pesticides on food, something about their toxicity, the levels on food, that’s too complex to put on a brochure, but it is available on our web site. And one of the things the brochures does is point people to our web site.

And the second question you ask, is a more difficult one for somebody like me to answer. But consensually a public policy question. Which is sort of how much margin of safety is enough. And if we think we need more children, why don’t we need more for everybody. And, I’ll try a sort of a semi-short answer to that. Remember, I said in remarks we already have what a basically a 100 for margin of safety, for all of us. That is to say you test the animals and you say we’re going to take 10 times less exposure than we would allow the animals because we’re not sure we tested the right animals. And another 10 times because we’re jumping from animals to humans. Put another way, we have 10 times for jumping the animals and humans and another 10 times for all the variability within humans. That’s another way of thinking about the second 10. So, the elderly or the weak or so forth. The additional 10, as I understand it, came out of some studies that were done about the fact that there are some pesticides to which children and fetus’ are sort of super sensitive. That the same dose is more toxic to them than to adults. And it’s that that drove the idea that you needed an extra measure of protection for children. But you can take it away under the law if you know enough about the pesticide to know that they’re not more sensitive to that particular pesticide. And it’s been sufficiently studied. So, that’s a sort of a very sciencey answer to your more fundamental public policy question. The fundamental question you’re asking is how safe is safe enough. And there is, I mean, we’re all very variable in how much risk we tolerate. And I know about myself, I’ll tolerate higher levels of risk in some, I’ll confess right here, I often don’t put on my seat belt because my sides is very uncomfortable, but that’s a stupid, dumb risk kind of thing, but I’d say if it’s lightening, I’m no where near outdoors. I’m scared, you know, so, the amount of risk we take is a very personal kind of thing and when the whole nation makes a choice about how much to take. You know, it’s a little bit different thing, we basically made a choice of this 100 fold safety factors. It’s combination science, public policy choice. That’s probably not a very satisfactory answer, but it’s the best I can do.

SPEAKER: I’d just like a quick shot on the question of safety, because I think really at the heart of it, that’s the question that is of most concern to all of us. I think that, for myself, and I’m not a scientist, I’m an attorney, I know that a lot of smart people spend a lot of time figuring out these tests. But just from my own little common sense view on some of them, I can see ways in which these tests do not accurately mirror the situation that faces all of us and workers in the field. And so, I would say I do have great concerns about the adequacy of these tests. And I think that a lot people do. Frankly, it would be better if we had good epidemiological studies. If we really could just go out there and study, you know, what are the real life effects on real people. That would be better data than how does it effect rats. Because people and rats are not the same. We know that. The problem has been that outside of California, there aren’t good records as to what people have been exposed to, so it’s very difficult to go back and try to find out what did these exposures cause in terms of real life. So, I guess to me, that’s a plea for thinking about all the ways in which we can make this system better. But, when it really does come down to it, I think we’ve got to figure out ways to put health first. That’s the good thing, I think about this new law. That it takes the first step towards doing that. But, for those of you out there who don’t think that any pesticide is safe, I think that’s a reasonable approach. I think that saying that I will only eat organic produce, that is certainly a sensible way of saying, I do not want to take any risks for myself or my children.

PARTICIPANT: I think it’s extremely exciting and encouraging that we’re putting health first in the United States regarding our rules and regulations for any pesticides. Because it’s an international conference, I’d like to just take a global perspective for a moment. There has been some concern that companies within the United States are exporting pesticides to countries around the world, which may not have the rules and regulations that the United States has. I would like for you first to address that issue, and two, if you could provide just a few bullets regarding policies surrounding pesticide regulation in other countries than the United States.

SPEAKER: We do have some limited constraints involving the exports of pesticide. If a pesticide has been canceled, and I believe if it’s not been registered in the United States, there must be notice of that, if it’s exported from the United States. Of course the company can manufacture it somewhere else and we don’t have any effect on it. There are some international negotiations going on now that have reached pretty near conclusion called Prior Informed Consent, which is a, and I’m going to over simplify this considerably, but the idea is that the exporting country would have to provide notice to the importing country about the regulatory status of the chemical and maybe some additional information and that the importing country can refuse it, and the exporting country has to take it back. I mean I basically, am I close enough, Kathleen, you think? That’s basically the idea behind that international negotiation. That’s basically the limits of what the system does to deal with the export and import of pesticides. We have a number of things underway to try to both inform other countries about how we do business, and work with other countries. That’s most advanced with the NAFTA countries. We’re actually trying to harmonize with Canada so that we basically do business at the same time and in the same way and using the same standards. I mean, we obviously haven’t gotten there, but we’re making good progress. And Mexico is involved in that, they don’t have the capacity yet to participate sort of at the same pace and on the same areas. There’s quite a bit involving the OECD, which is the developed countries, that again over simplifies the group. And the EEU and others, so there is some work going on. I think the main power and influence we have over pesticide use internationally is the power and influence that comes from information. And our presence in international bodies has increased dramatically, and the hope is that that carries with it more information flow. But I think it’s fair to say that there is quite a bit variability on what pesticides are used in various countries, and under what conditions, and with what amount of information, and what amount of governmental involvement. And it would not be appropriate to assume that the US model is replicated all over the world.

MEDIATOR: I would say that in the interest of time and courtesy to the other workshops, we’ll have time for one more question. I would hope that these speakers up here today will be available after the session to answer any questions that you have.

PARTICIPANT: I’d just like to talk about developing countries as well, because I think the focus here more has been on the US and the problem in the developing countries, let’s say, out of control. I live in Ecuador, and they did a research, they bought products in the market, none of them is fit for consumption. The amount of pesticides on them is all above the limit. Farmers apply pesticides, for example, in their tomatoes every 2 to 3 days, without protection. It’s normal to be intoxicated. People just see it as an extra day of rest. For man, actually, you’re a good man if you can work with pesticides and it doesn’t affect you. Of course it affects you, but they just say it doesn’t affect me because I’m macho, I’m a man. And actually the companies are promoting the abuse and misuse of products and recently two children died because of the use of a toxic gas which is only to be used by trained personnel for the fumigation of grains, and it’s being used just like that in a house. And the whole family was intoxicated and two children died. But none of that comes out in the open. We don’t know, there are no statistics, and nothing is being done. And the situation, those are just a few examples with everyday we see those, and it’s terrible.

MEDIATOR: Again, we’d like to thank our panel. Dr. Jones, Dr. Mulsky, and Attorney Shelly Davis. And I would like to also thank .............so thank you very much and if you have other questions, I’m quite sure they’ll make themselves available, and thank you for attending this session.