"Zero Risk", Kansas Farmer, September 1996. [Version of "Beyond Zero Risk" focuses on the possible impacts of H.R. 1627 on herbicides found in Midwestern drinking water].
The much-hated, “zero-risk” Delaney Clause pesticide issue was put to rest with the signing of the new Food Quality Protection Act by President Clinton in August. While everyone is jumping up and down with joy at having escaped the zero-risk cancer standard, which would have eliminated many pesticides, a rude awakening lurks in the fine print of the new law. In reality, the new standard is more strict than Delaney, at least the way EPA was interpreting it -- one in a million chances of additional cancer cases from all crop uses of a pesticide. And the new standard -- a reasonable certainty of no harm -- applies to all pesticides, not only cancer-causing ones.
The ticking time bomb of zero risk finally led to unanimous passage in both the House and Senate within four working days of initial subcommittee markup of the controversial legislation that had been bottled up for three years in Congress. (Ten years, if one goes back to the first congressional efforts to incorporate recommendations of the 1987 “Delaney paradox” report into legislation.) Now the Food Quality Protection Act is the law and farmers and other must adjust. Policy analyst Charles Benbrook recently prepared appraisal of the implications of the passage of H.R. 1627 for agriculture and Farmer- Stockman has obtained a copy.
Benbrook was the executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences when it published “Regulating Pesticides in Food -- The Delaney Paradox” in 1987. He now operates Benbrook Consulting Services, based in Washington D.C. In 1993, he wrote, “Challenge and Change: A Progressive Approach to Pesticide Regulation in California,” for the California Environmental Protection Agency’s (CalEPA) Department of Pesticide Regulation. He is also the author of a new book on IPM, “Pest Management at the Crossroads” which was recently published by Consumers Union.
Benbrook says many of the news releases circulating about the Delaney reform “make it sound like this is a great relaxation of regulatory pressure on pesticides.” That’s far from the case, based on his review of the bill: “In a nutshell, this means a majority of pesticide tolerances are finally going to be adjusted downward to more assuredly safe levels, as a series of scientific experts and commissions have been recommending since the Mrak Commission in 1969. Based on substantial past analyses done on the provisions in the bill, I estimate that about two-thirds of existing tolerances on the books will be affected, and about one-half of these will be affected significantly, i.e. lowered more than 10-fold,” he warns.
According to Jonathan Tolman, an environmental policy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Food Quality Protection Act requires the federal EPA to take into account the cumulative effects of pesticides that have a common mechanism of toxicity. “This new common-mechanism factor is going to be an especially big problem for two of the largest pesticide groups, the organophosphates and carbamates, which include some of the most commonly used insecticides,” he recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “For example, nearly 70 percent of the insecticides used to produce Washington apples would be affected.”
EPA Review of tolerances. A “Schedule For Review” is set forth in the bill that requires EPA to review and adjust tolerances as needed to meet the bills basic “reasonable certainty of no harm to children” safety standard. It requires: * [That] 33 percent of such tolerances and exemptions (from the requirement for a tolerance) are reviewed within three years of the date of enactment. * [That] 66 percent are reviewed within six years. * [That] 100 percent be reviewed with 10 years to the date of enactment.
“This means that most of the major food use insecticides and fungicides important to agriculture will be assessed and adjusted downward in the next three years,” says Benbrook. “This places a premium on decisive action now to assure that states are ready to participate in tolerance triage,” he adds.
“The bill is going to force a sort of triage among pesticide manufacturers, who must choose which tolerances and uses to keep, and which to abandon. Especially for organophosphate and carbamate insecticides, the bill is going to force major changes, since all these pesticides are going to be regulated, in effect, as one (because all or most work to inhibit cholinesterase function in the brain).”
The common-mechanism provision of the bill calls for EPA to regulate exposure to toxicologically similar active ingredients as if the products were one active ingredient. “This means, for example, that in finalizing the atrazine, cyanazine and simazine special review, EPA will almost certainly take into account the presence of all these chemicals and their metabolites in drinking water,” Benbrook says. “ ‘Reasonable certainty of no harm’ levels for each will be set taking into account exposure to them all. Likewise for the same reason, the herbicides alachlor and acetochlor.” Past EPA risk assessments of each of these herbicides show cancer risks well over one in one million. For some non-nursing infants and children, the final triazine risk assessment is likely to show risks between 10 and as high as 100 in one million, he says. “Facing these numbers, it is hard to imagine EPA allowing uses of these products to continue at present levels,” Benbrook concludes.
Herbicide availability will likely be impacted by H.R. 1627, especially those active ingredients that are commonly found in drinking water. “The bill specifically mandates that EPA include exposure through water in setting tolerances in food. If water routes of exposure “use up” a pesticide’s allowable exposure, food tolerances will have to be set at zero and the pesticide’s registrations will be cancelled,” Benbrook confirms. How will pesticide companies act to save their most profitable labels and uses? Benbrook suggests three alternatives: * Seek voluntary cancellation of all uses of their most toxic compounds (likely to impact about a dozen insecticides). This will be done to save their exposure allotment (be it organophosphate/carbamate or a herbicide’s allowable water routes of exposure) for their most profitable products within their existing product line. * Drop high-dietary-exposure uses with low acreage (like those needed for many minor use crops). * Change the way products are formulated and applied in order to drive down residue levels post-harvest so that a given label, as revised, uses up very little of an active ingredient's total allowed exposure.
What are the best possible strategies given these likely actions by pesticide companies? “There are ways to use many organophosphates/ carbamates today that will result in extremely infrequent and very low residues, and which could survive under this bill,” assures Benbrook. “The question is who is going to do the work needed to convince the companies and the EPA of this fact,” he asks. “I see a major role for growers, processors and the pesticide industry to obtain new section 24(c) registrations coupled with geographically limited tolerances,” Benbrook responds to his own question. Other ideas include changing formulations, pre-harvest intervals, maximum rates of application, standard post-harvest food handling practices among others.
He goes on to explain that the bill gives major new authority to preserve minor uses and reward companies developing biopesticides, “but both will again depend upon a strong scientific case coming from the state in shaping data requirements, establishing review provisions and decision- criteria, and taking on responsibility for monitoring exposure episodes and enforcing labels. “Indeed, the bill envisions a day when many specialized products get registered first in states (and perhaps largely by states), after EPA assesses and approves tolerance petitions,” Benbrook says. Weed management systems in the Midwest and other bulk-commodity producing states are entering an unstable period, Benbrook fears. He lists these concerns: * EPA is now aware of 270 weed species resistant to herbicides (both multiple and cross-resistance) -- more than double the number of known resistant weed species just a decade ago. * Resistance to low-dose sulfonylurea herbicides will likely mushroom if farmers keep using them the way they have been. * The emergence of Roundup-resistant weeds in Australia casts an ominous shadow over nearly all the just released herbicide tolerant plant varieties. * Low dose products are causing phytotoxicity and carryover problems with increasing frequency in parts of the Midwest. While these products lower the risks faced by the general public, they may pose an increasing economic risk for farmers.
“Both farmers and EPA need to work toward integrated weed management (IWM) systems that are not so unilaterally reliant on herbicides,” asserts Benbrook. “This way farmers can begin to slow the spread of resistance, lower herbicide levels in drinking water and keep weed levels below economic thresholds. If progress is made toward such IWM systems, EPA might be persuaded to leave many of today’s older, high-risk herbicides on the market, although with major label changes.” He highlights these impacts in summing up H.R. 1627’s importance:
* First, “The ‘reasonable certainty of no harm’ standard for infants and children and the vulnerable will become, I predict, the health standard adopted over the next decade or so in other federal environmental and public health laws, as well as in legislation in progressive, public-health minded states.”
A key issue here, he explains, is whether the (EPA) administrator may adjust exposure estimates for the percent of crop acres treated. The bill allows such adjustments only in the case of evaluating chronic exposure and risk, and only if EPA has accurate data on pesticide use and “finds that the exposure estimate does not understate exposure for any significant population group.” “Other states may want to adopt California's pesticide use reporting system,” Benbrook says.
* Second, “EPA will probably decide to proceed with lowering the tolerances 50-fold on average, rather than ending them altogether. This would mean that over the next three to five years managers will have to shift a major share of their insect pest management burden to biologically- based interventions, what we call biointensive IPM, but that in years when weather or other factors limit the effectiveness of such systems, there would still be products like Lorsban in the (pesticide) toolkit. This works only if the remaining relatively toxic products are all used very judiciously, not as a routine crutch but as an insurance policy,” he says.
* Finally, the bill has enormous international trade ramifications. “[This] is particularly true for high-value agriculture which ships overseas a variety of fruit, vegetable and drink products,” says Benbrook. “EPA will be lowering hundreds of tolerances significantly within a few years to well below current (international) Codex/WHO levels. Some of our trading partners and competitors will no doubt try to challenge these changes as non-tariff trade barriers and the U.S. will have to defend the scientific justification for lowering of tolerances. This debate will be visible on a world wide stage and the U.S. position will prevail.”
While agriculture cheered the demise of the Delaney Clause, pesticide expert Charles Benbrook warns that the new standard of a “reasonable certainty of no harm” will mean that many pesticides will see significantly lower tolerance levels.
