Poison Spring

by E. G. Vallianatos

  11 Editorial, “Ignoring Science on Clean Air,” New York Times, January 17, 2006.

  12 Fred A. Wilcox, Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), xiv.

  13 “New DDT Report Confirms Data Supporting 1972 Ban, Finds Situation Improving,” EPA press release, August 11, 1975.

  14 Jim Sibbison, “Revolving Door at the EPA,” The Nation, November 6, 1989.

  15 In the case of waste management alone, the revolving door between waste management businesses and the EPA hurts “millions of people who live near the toxic waste dumps.” See Sibbison, “Revolving Door at the EPA,” The Nation, November 6, 1989. More on Thomas’s conflict of interest can be found at the Center for Responsive Politics website: www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/02/monsanto.html.

  16 John Quarles, Cleaning Up America: An Insider’s View of the Environmental Protection Agency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), xi.

  17 Douglas Campt, director, Registration Division, OPP, “Final Review of the April 1981 Florida Statewide Pesticide Use Report,” memorandum to Edwin Johnson, director, OPP, EPA, August 14, 1981.

  18 See the April 26, 2007, report of the Center for Public Integrity: http://www.publicintegrity.org/2007/04/26/5622/methodology.

  19 The ecological idea at the heart of integrated pest management has been so strong that IPM is still studied in government, industry, and land grant universities. Like its sister, organic farming, IPM tried to wake up people to the ecological predicament of our earth. Its career at the EPA was limited but important in setting a few people on the right course. Now organic farming leads the way.

  20 See http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/ipm.htm.

  21 U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Federal Regulation and Regulatory Reform, House Document No. 95–134 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), 145.

  22 See http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/ipm.htm.

  23 Congressman John Moss to Congressman Hartley O. Staggers, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives (Washington, DC, December 1978).

  24 The term “use” was all about counting the amounts of pesticides sprayed by farmers and lawn owners. In time, understandably, even this name became a target for criticism from the environmental community, so the EPA changed the name to something that sounded more scientific: “Economic and Biological Analysis Division.”

  25 See http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/regulating/?laws/fqpa/backgrnd.htm.

  26 One of the most pernicious strategies industry has devised to delay regulation is simply to bury the EPA in paperwork. The scheme leads industries to dump “so much irrelevant data to EPA, and with such frequency, that new assessments become mired in never-ending controversy,” Rena Steinzor, a law professor at the University of Maryland and president of the Center for Progressive Reform, testified before the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. This practice makes chemical assessments endless and incomplete and, in time, obsolete for regulatory purposes. “The more important a public health program, the more likely it is to be the subject of relentless, intemperate, and unjustified attacks [by the industry and its congressional and White House allies],” Steinzor said. See Rena Steinzor, Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, “EPA’s IRIS Program: Evaluating the Science and Process Behind Chemical and Risk Assessment,” Washington, DC, July 14, 2011.

  27 These compounds led to a bizarre and nearly tragic example of skewed thinking at the agency. In 1974–75, Leonard R. Axelrod, a senior EPA official, working closely with Wayland Hayes, a biochemistry professor at Vanderbilt University, almost managed to have ETU and the EBDC fungicides tested on patients in a gynecological-obstetrics hospital in Mexico City. Axelrod was ready to fund such testing with $100,000 of EPA money. In a July 1, 1977, letter to Senator Warren G. Magnuson, Barbara Blum, deputy administrator of EPA, blamed Axelrod, who died in 1975, for “lack of good judgment.”

  28 Given this level of disconnect, even the EPA’s Christmas party that year was fraught. At the party, I bumped into a chemist who had become distraught over threats he had received from his section head: write approvingly of a set of studies done by a private industry contractor, he was warned, or be fired. The chemist told me the work done by the contractor was “garbage.” The company had so badly messed up the data that he had had to overhaul the reviews himself. Yet when he saw the final report, his own work had been typed right in as if it were the company’s own work. The chemist was well aware, just as I was, that he could not change the corrupt practices he had witnessed. It wasn’t just the company that was doing bad work, after all, it was our colleagues as well. When he complained to his supervisors about this utterly unacceptable practice—and about the systematic covering up of the company’s shoddy work—his supervisors did nothing. Instead, from 1998 to 2005, they actually gave the same company contracts totaling tens of millions of dollars.

  Chapter 2: Pest Control: A Matter of Merchandising

  1 Letter from Jarzabek to the EPA, July 2, 1980.

  2 Letter that Attorney Catherine Alexander, the victim’s lawyer, wrote to EPA, April 6, 1983.

  3 William Roessler, “Pesticides Strategy” memorandum to Director, Program Development, U.S. EPA, Office of Pesticide Programs, December 20, 1974. See also Adrian Gross, Chief, Toxicology Branch, Hazard Evaluation Division, Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances, “Intentionally Added Ingredients re Registration Standards” (memorandum to Edwin L. Johnson, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs, March 27, 1980); John McCann, Acting Chief, Chemical and Biological Investigations Branch, “Comments on Handling Mixture in Registration Standards Documents” (memorandum to James G. Touhey, Director, Benefits and Field Studies Division, OPP, August 25, 1980); Kenneth Bailey [pharmacologist, OPP], “Inerts” (undated draft note to Janet [Auerbach]); Kenneth Bailey, “Proposed Plan to Regulate Intentionally Added Inert Ingredients” (Drafts: April 1981 and March 1982); Jeff [Kempter, OPP, handwritten note to] Janet [Auerbach], Ann [Lindsey], “Inerts Policy Paper” (July 7, 1981); Ann Dizard, [Special Pesticides and Review Division, OPP], “Inert Ingredients” (March 10, 1982); Amy Rispin, [OPP], “Inerts” (October 16, 1984). All these notes, memoranda, and papers are similar, indeed repeating the same issues and concerns, all hoping for a regulatory review, which is yet to come.

  4 Elizabeth May from Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada, sent a letter to Congressman Toby Moffett in early 1977 in which she described the work of John Crocker. See also an article by John Crocker: John F. S. Crocker et al., “Reye’s syndrome: A clinical review,” Canadian Medical Association Journal (February 15, 1981) 124 (4): 375–82, 425.

  5 I have seen no evidence that Crocker’s studies were flawed. Crocker is a member of the National Reye’s Syndrome Foundation Scientific Advisory Board.

  6 In theory, registered pesticides are not intended to foul enzymes of the liver. Synergists are. But a synergist like piperonyl butoxide is an inert. And we know what they (pesticides and synergists) do from their studied effects on insects. In the case I cite, it’s the combination of pyrethrins and piperonil butoxide.

  7 David Pimentel, “Environmental and Economic Costs of the Application of Pesticides Primarily in the United States,” Environment, Development and Sustainability (2005) 7: 229–52.

  8 A. D. Pickett, ‘‘A Critique on Insect Chemical Control Methods,” Canadian Entomologist 81 (March 1949): 67–76.

  9 The story of Mexican cotton can be found in a 1971 report by University of California scientist P. L. Adkisson, “Agricultural Chemicals—Harmony or Discord,” published by the University of California, Berkeley, 1971.

  10 Maurie Semel, “History of the Colorado Potato Beetle in New York: Control and Development of Resistance to Insecticides on Long Island,
” Long Island Horticultural Research Laboratory, Riverhead, New York, February 4, 1980.

  11 R. L. Doutt and Ray F. Smith, “The Pesticide Syndrome—Diagnosis and Suggested Prophylaxis,” in Biological Control, edited by C. B. Huffaker (New York: Plenum, 1974), 3–5.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Christopher J. Bosso, Pesticides and Politics (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), 63–64, 70, 106.

  14 Van den Bosch’s academic credentials were solid. His University of California, Berkeley and Riverside, colleagues—all distinguished scientists in using biology for the control of pests—praised him as “one of the foremost experts in the field of biological control.” They also agreed that in agriculture and development, “making a fast buck still overrides all other considerations.” Robert van den Bosch, The Pesticide Conspiracy (first published in 1978; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 27, 59. See also Rosmarie von Rumker, “Farmer’s Pesticide Use Decisions and Attitudes on Alternative Crop Protection Methods” (Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Pesticide Programs, 1974).

  15 Quoted in Van den Bosch, Pesticide Conspiracy, vii–xvi.

  16 McGregor’s “Insect Pollination of Cultivated Plants” is a masterpiece of science and practical farming that will never become obsolete. His knowledge of bees, farmers, and pesticide drug pushers was impeccable and intimate. Yet he spoke to the wind. S. E. McGregor, “The Bee Poisoning Problem in Arizona and Its National Significance,” American Bee Journal, April 1978, pp. 235–36.

  17 Rosmarie von Rumker, Farmer’s Pesticide Use Decisions and Attitudes on Alternative Crop Production Methods (Report to EPA, July 1974), 137–38. See also Abt Associates study on the dependence of farmers on chemical companies for advice, EPA: Office of Pesticide Programs, 1981.

  18 Metcalf died in 1998. His colleagues at the University of Illinois, where he ended his career, said he was “renowned for alerting the scientific community to the environmental consequences of pesticide abuse” (Entomology Newsletter, 1999; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

  19 Emil M. Mrak, ed., Report of the Secretary’s Commission on Pesticides and Their Relationship to Environmental Health, Parts I and II, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1969), 245.

  20 U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Powerlessness (Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, 91st Congress, First and Second Sessions on Pesticides and the Farmworker, August 1, 1969, Part 6-A, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970), 3024.

  21 See the summer 1987 issue of the Newsletter of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Illinois.

  22 Apicultural Abstracts 805 (1971).

  23 Journal of Economic Entomology 64 (1971).

  24 H. B. Petty, “Soil-insecticide use in Illinois corn fields, 1966–72,” University of Illinois, College of Agriculture, Extension Service, 1974.

  25 Cassandra Stuart, “Development of Resistance in Pest Populations,” http://www.nd.edu/~chem191/e2.html (January 2003).

  26 David Pimentel, “Environmental and Economic Costs of the Application of Pesticides Primarily in the United States,” Environment, Development and Sustainability (2005) 7: 229–52.

  27 George P. Georghiou, “Insecticide resistance and Prospects for Its Management,” Residue Reviews 76 (1980): 131–45.

  28 Nuzrat Yar Khan, “An Assessment of the Hazard of Synthetic Pyrethroid Insecticides to Fish and Fish Habitat,” in IUPAC Pesticide Chemistry: Human Welfare and the Environment, edited by J. Miyamoto et al. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983), 437–50.

  29 Keith R. Solomon, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 42 (1985): 77–85.

  30 “Incremental Risk Assessment for Asana Use on Grasshoppers,” memo from James Ackerman to Rebecca Cool, Pesticides Registration Division of EPA.

  31 Despite a uniform policy of risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, there remained internal doubt about the scientific process within the agency. In the late 1980s, for example, an analyst at the OPP wrote a document in which he questioned everything about decisions at EPA. “What data were used (field trial, FDA monitoring, market basket)? Were data corrected for processing (washing, cooking)? Were actual data or estimates used to make the corrections? How large were the sample sizes used to estimate residues? Are crops large enough that consumption estimates are reliable? If field trial data were used did we factor in storage stability or field recovery and what data did we use to do so? If FDA monitoring data were used do we know that samples are representative of national average residues? What was the basis for the meat/milk exposure estimates and how representative are they? Is the meat/milk exposure confined to a small population? Do infants and children receive a significantly higher proportional exposure and what is it? If processing data are old are the data still representative of current processing procedures? If effect or concern is acute is the sample size large enough to identify likely maximum exposures? Do monitoring data include all metabolites/breakdown products of concern? Do we understand the metabolism adequately?” The writer of these questions—which also included questions about toxic effects, exposure, human and ecological risk, risk assessment, and use and economic impacts of pesticides—might have been teasing his colleagues, never hoping for answers. On the other hand, the questions show the extraordinary difficulty of trying to establish safety in eating food sprayed by toxins, which, in the case of pesticides, nullifies the very effort considering these toxins are created to be biocides. So no matter the questions and the data one collects and analyzes, the result will be toxic. “Looking into the Black Box: Factors Considered in Risk/Benefit Decision-Making,” OPP, late 1980s.

  32 Possible Use of Risk/Benefit Analysis for the Issuing of Tolerances and Food Additives Under Sections 408 and 409 of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; Memorandum from John W. Lyon to Edwin L. Johnson, September 13, 1977; Methodology and Data Sources for Benefit Analyses of Pesticides; Memorandum from Arnold L. Aspelin to Philip Ross, September 29, 1986; “Looking into the Black Box: Factors Considered in Risk/Benefit Decision-Making,” briefing paper [late 1980s]; Sal Biscardi, “On Risk,” Inside the Fishbowl, April 1990 [National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 2050]: Biscardi was a toxicologist with the OPP, EPA.

  33 Remember that “active ingredients” are a very small amount of the toxic materials going into the making of what we call pesticides. So we can safely assume that consumers of pesticides in California in 1983 used several billion pounds of toxic substances. See California Department of Food and Agriculture, Division of Pest Management, “Report of Pesticides Sold in California for 1983.”

  34 Organic farming, which rejects toxic sprays, is the road back to democratic family farming and good food. But organic farming has a long way to go in becoming more than an agricultural sector that produces a limited amount of food at a price that makes it affordable only for affluent consumers. Overcoming this limitation requires an exponential increase in independent organic farming and a distribution infrastructure to support it. Given the financial and political clout of the industrial food and chemical industries, the organic movement faces colossal odds. See “Region 6 Comparative Risk Project: Overview Report,” November 1990.

  35 Rosmarie von Rumker, Farmer’s Pesticide Use Decisions and Attitudes on Alternate Crop Protection Methods (EPA report, July 1974), 139.

  Chapter 3: The Dioxin Molecule of Death

  1 Jim Weaver letter to William Ruckelshaus (August 11, 1983). EPA, Office of Pesticide Programs, Benefits and Field Studies Division, “Report of Assessment of a Field Investigation of Six-Year Spontaneous Abortion Rates in Three Oregon Areas in Relation to Forest 2,4,5-T Spray Practices” (February 28, 1979).

  2 This dioxin contamination was hardly a mystery. The EPA had known since 1969 that 2,4,5-T was contaminated by TCDD; the agency finally began regulating 2,4,5-T in 1971, but then fiddled around for 22 years before
finally banning the compound in 1993. Dow Chemical challenged the early EPA suspension of 2,4,5-T. The argument focused on the EPA’s inability to reliably measure the amounts of dioxin in the environment. From 1975 to 1977 the EPA did manage to measure dioxin in the environment at levels in the parts per trillion.

  3 Janet Gardner, “Answers at Last?” The Nation, April 11, 1987, pp. 460–62. See also Geoffrey York and Hayley Mick, “Last Ghost of the Vietnam War,” Globe and Mail, July 12, 2008.

  4 “Agent Orange and the Vets,” Washington Post, July 21, 1979, A14.

  5 “Coalition to Study Effect of Agent Orange on G.I.’s,” New York Times, July 17, 1979, A10.

  6 In 1981, Dow Chemical and the EPA asked the presiding administrative law judge for a recess in the cancellation hearings so the company’s lawyers could negotiate a settlement. I suspect that during the secret negotiations between the EPA and Dow Chemical, the chemical giant got the agency to sign on the dotted line. The EPA and Dow Chemical must have agreed that the agency would not regulate 2,4-D, far less ban it as it had 2,4,5-T. (Had researchers found TCDD residue traces at Five Rivers, of course, banning the compound would have been unavoidable.) But the EPA had made up its mind not to regulate 2,4-D even before the conclusion of a study of the disaster at Five Rivers. The cozy arrangement between Dow and the EPA, you might say, had made the Five Rivers “failure” inevitable.

  7 The EPA “forced our branch chief, Jack Griffith, to go to the University of Miami, supposedly to head the EPA’s ‘farmworker epidemiological research,’ ” Vandermer said. “The reason why I escaped that early purge was simple. They thought I was a chemist rather than a biologist. So a clerical error saved my life for two years. But they did not leave me alone.”

  8 June 2, 1980, memorandum from Frank L. Davido, pesticide incident response officer.

  9 John C. Martin, the EPA’s inspector general, investigated the agency’s efforts to deal with the 2,4,5-T problems of the Oregon women in 1978–79. He reported to the EPA deputy administrator, Alvin Alm, that “EPA’s regulatory actions involving cancellation and reregistration of 2,4,5-T and Silvex began in 1979. Extensive delays have resulted from litigation and the administrative hearing process. Over this period of some four years [1979–83], EPA has not completed this [2,4,5-T] regulatory action.” (John C. Martin to Alvin L. Alm, memorandum, “Office of Inspector General’s Review and Inquiry into EPA’s Handling of the Five Rivers Incident,” U.S. EPA, November 22, 1983.)