The fundamental flaw at the heart of pesticide regulation, according to both books, is the assumption that the use of pesticides brings benefits, and therefore any controls should be based upon a weighing of both risk and benefit. This assumption has clearly worked to give existing pesticides every advantage in the public health debate: It has compelled EPA to give great and often unproved weight to the benefits of pesticides when evaluating risks; it has forced the agency to allow stocks of pesticides to be sold even after new production was banned; it has been used to justify hiding the results of toxicity tests from the public; and it has prevented implementation of an incentive-based policy to encourage the replacement of older and more toxic formulations with newer compounds and methods for pest management. Both Wargo and the Consumers Union (CU) authors conclude flatly that it is time to adopt a health- protective standard for pesticide regulation: "Benefits should not (emphasis in the original) play a role in setting tolerances for pesticide residues in food or limits on pesticides in drinking water. These judgments should be based solely on health considerations," --CU. "Risk Standards should be set to ensure health protection for the entire population of individuals likely to be exposed to pesticides," --Wargo.

Taken together, these books provide a strong argument for such radical revision, Wargo emphasizes the short-lived "benefits" of pesticides, with an eloquent history of the rise and fall of DDT in the failed war on malaria. The Consumers Union authors emphasize the development of alternative methods of pest control in agriculture, integrated pest management and household sanitation (describing innovative methods deployed by the General Accounting Office and the Department of Defense as examples). Wargo also shows how the risks of pesticides fall unequally on our society, with infants and children often at unacknowledged greater risk because they consume more of fewer foods - for instance, infants consume more than 15 times the relative amount of apple juice found in the "average U.S. diet, 10 times the amount of peaches and five times the amount of bananas. Why is this a problem? Apples, bananas and peaches are among the most frequently reported foods with detectable residues of the fungicide benomyl. Benomyl reportedly causes cancer and birth defects in rats.

These two books neatly complement each other. Wargo's is the more narrowly but deeply focused, supplying extensive analyses and careful documentation, along with a helpful index and bibliography. The CU report is very reader-friendly, with numerous pointers to information sources (many available on the Internet) and highly informative examples - a subject index would have been welcome, however.

Although some of the immediacy of the alarms sounded in these two books has been reduced by political response in the past Congress, with the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act and amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act, both authors recognize that more needs to be done. Both call on consumers and the private sector to go beyond the letter of the law to incorporate real changes in attitude and practice. This reviewer notes with some sadness, however, that both books still mostly neglect the group at greatest risk for pesticide exposure and documented toxicity: the farmworkers in our midst, who suffer neglect as they bear the burden of our harvest. It may be hoped that real pesticide reform will finally end the continuing disregard for these workers and their children, even in an era of reform.

Ellen Sibergeld
Epidemiology
University of Maryland Medical School