After years of activists criticizing the methodology used to regulate pesticides - Risk Assessment and Cost/Benefit Analysis (RA/CBA) - this bill seeks to resolve some of its flaws. Key provisions would improve how RA/CBA sets the allowable amounts of pesticide residues in food (called "tolerances"), including:

• using a health-only standard of 1 in a million people being harmed (vs. health and environmental data now being overridden by manufacturer arguments of necessity);

• saying tolerances must consider all, including children (vs. current standards based on a healthy young white male); and

• calculating all exposure routes together, as well as all pesticides of a class (vs. the current myth that we're exposed to only one pesticide at a time).

Even in the cases when an exception is allowed in setting a tolerance, it's only allowed such that 2 in a million are estimated as being harmed - and the consumer must be notified of the exception at the grocery store.

While this clearly takes aim at a number of RA/CBA's key flaws, there are some major ones still outstanding - such as RA/CBA largely ignoring the so-called "inert" ingredients in formulas (which can often be more toxic than the tested main ingredient) and ignoring the reality of drift (thus setting standards to protect the worker but not the neighbor).

Nevertheless, when implemented, these changes could cause a notable reduction in the pesticides allowed in our food (and also hopefully the amounts sprayed into our shared environment - especially in ag areas like Sonoma County). Charles Benbrook, a Washington expert on this subject, estimates that just from the children provision, 80% of existing tolerances will be adjusted downward, many by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. (If you want to know the high amounts of multiple pesticides now in your (non-organic) food - to better protect yourself and your family - check out the excellent book, Diet for a Poisoned Planet, by David Steinman.)

THE NEGATIVES

So then - why would any activist oppose this bill? For two key reasons:

1. These RA/CBA improvements were traded for Delaney

   The Delaney Clause is an FDA law prohibiting any carcinogens in processed food - not some "acceptable" level where an "acceptable" number of people are harmed, but zero. Usually considered for FDA-domain items (like additives, food coloring, etc.), it's never been applied to EPA-regulated pesticides. But when NRDC sued, saying it should be, the judge agreed and directed the EPA to do so.

   This started the battle for Delaney, with the pesticide industry against it (preferring the "small" amounts allowed under RA/CBA and concerned about the sudden loss of many pesticide tools) and activists for it (wanting to keep the first time that the scientific principle "there's no safe level of a carcinogen" was actually in law). With this bill, pesticide activists lost the battle for Delaney.

2. Many activists feel RA/CBA is fundamentally and unredeemably flawed and should be thrown out

   While the pesticide/ag industry says it's important to allow some pesticides in food because toxic pesticides are important farming tools, opponents point to the many commercial crops grown successfully without them. They object to the fact that RA/CBA overtly and intentionally knows that a certain number of people will be harmed and killed by these broadly-distributed poisons - without the harmed peoples' permission or any compensation. They feel that's simply unethical - killing for profit. (And it's not a small number being harmed. For instance, the conservative National Academy of Sciences estimates that pesticides cause 2.1% of U.S. cancer deaths each year, or about 10,000 people!)

   And these activists feel RA/CBA can never be fixed, because its premise is fundamentally flawed - that the exposures are so wide-scale that there's no way to adequately quantify and measure every possible set of total exposures and human responses. So too many assumptions are made, leaving room for polluters to manipulate data and ask for yet another decade for more studies, wasting precious time while the deaths, the ruined lives and ecosystems, get increasingly worse. No, these activists say, let's just leave behind the failed experiment of these toxins behind and use the many viable healthy ways to control pests and grow our food.
   

   DELANEY VS. RISK ASSESSMENT
   

   And this goes to the heart of the tradeoff of this bill - trading the unapplied ideal of Delaney's purity (that the pesticide industry says is impossible and unrealistic) for continuing refinements of the flawed and harmful (but they say "realistic") RA/CBA.

   Certainly, I'd have preferred Delaney and and hope for it in the long term. But it seems its immediate implementation and the resulting sudden loss of so many "tools" was just too big a jolt for the ag industry, and it's likely Delaney would've never actually been allowed to be implemented in the first place.
   

   THE KEY IS IMPLEMENTATION
   

   So, though a compromise, at least this bill goes in the right direction. And it could possibly even support positive changes - if it's actually implemented, as intended and in a timely manner.

   But that's a big "if" - the ag industry tends to strongly resist real change. There are many ways this bill's positive intent could be derailed - insufficient EPA funding; saying decades of tests are needed before acting; no improvements to the inadequate system for testing pesticides in food; etc. These problems have kept RA/CBA from meeting its promises in the past, and they'll surely surface again.

   HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT POSITIVE CHANGE

   That's where you come in. Write: Clinton and your Congresspeople . Insist this Act be implemented in a timely manner and consistent with its intent. If industry says that's impossible, then say that we should protect the community's well-being and go to a standard that can be easily calculated and immediately implemented - like Delaney.

   And request plenty of funding for developing, implementing, and educating users about the many effective and economical alternatives to pesticides, for there we find our true path to a healthy future for us all.

   In the meantime, to really protect yourself, don't wait for the mainstream to wake up to pesticides' proven harm - buy organic!

   To our health!

   For more information on this and other pesticide issues, or to connect with local people working on these issues, contact me at: 6984 McKinley St., Sebastopol CA 95472 or (707) 829-2999.

   (c) Patricia Dines, 1996

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