Whitewash
Page 15
Other chemicals used on island test fields include the herbicides atrazine and paraquat, both big sellers for agrochemical giant Syngenta. Studies have linked atrazine to endocrine disruption, miscarriage, birth defects, and cancer, and it has been banned in the European Union since 2003. And even though Switzerland-based Syngenta has been the largest producer of paraquat, the chemical is banned in that country because of links to Parkinson’s disease, other neurological disorders, and cancer. Both are still allowed in the United States, though regulators have acknowledged the potential risks. Another pesticide used on the islands is methomyl, introduced by DuPont in 1968, which has similarly been shown to be problematic for humans and animals. The EPA has restricted its use because of the dangers. In fact, at least seven heavily used pesticides on the islands are so dangerous that their use is supposed to be tightly restricted per EPA requirements. More than 906,000 pounds of these RUPs was sold statewide in 2014, according to state data.4 The state does not collect similar data on general use pesticides, such as glyphosate.
For residents of the Hawaiian Islands, the combination of chemicals has formed what many fear is a toxic soup poisoning their piece of paradise. And sadly, there is some evidence their fears could be well-founded. Alongside the climbing chemical use have come a range of reported health problems, including suspected poisoning episodes from spraying of pesticides near schools and homes and unusual rates of birth defects, cancers, and illnesses reported by medical practitioners. One group of doctors told lawmakers in 2013 that they were seeing more miscarriages than usual, abnormally high rates of very severe gout in otherwise healthy people, high rates of patients with respiratory problems, hormonal changes in patients causing excessive facial and body hair on women, recurring nosebleeds in children, and patients reporting a persistent metallic taste in their mouth. That physicians’ group, from the island of Kauai, cited statistics that they said showed birth defects occurring at ten times the national rate. In a July 2013 letter to lawmakers, the doctors wrote:
We have no direct evidence of a specific correlation between these unique variances in the health of some of our patients with the current or past agricultural practices but we do have a high level of suspicion that a strong correlation exists between the two.
… We all share a deep concern for the health of our patients and the concern of what may be happening to our community by being exposed to this unique cocktail of experimental and restricted use pesticides on an almost daily basis.5
The fears are most pronounced on Kauai, the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands and affectionately known by its population of roughly 68,000 as the “Garden Isle” for its fertile soil and lush beauty. Kauai boasts emerald valleys, tropical rain forests, cascading waterfalls, and jagged cliffs thousands of feet high. But in recent years, the west side of the island has become known primarily for the intensive agrochemical industry presence there. BASF, Syngenta, DuPont, and Dow have made the land their own, testing an array of new crops and dousing them with a variety of chemicals, including RUPs such as chlorpyrifos and the less restricted glyphosate.
Some residents now call the west side of Kauai the “poison valley” and say they must constantly clean their houses of reddish dust and keep windows closed to avoid toxic vapors and chemical odors that waft through neighborhoods on brisk island breezes. Several residents of the town of Waimea sued DuPont over the chemical use and the impact on their homes. A jury awarded the residents $500,000 in 2015, finding that DuPont failed to follow good management practices on its fields.
On the other side of Waimea, the fears have focused on work by Syngenta that involves the spraying of pesticides in an area that abuts a middle school, a health clinic, and a veteran’s hospital. Students at the school were evacuated twice, in 2006 and 2008, and taken to hospitals with flu-like symptoms that many townspeople blamed on the agro-chemical companies and their pesticide use. Syngenta contended the odors were caused by stinkweed, not pesticides. A government probe was unable to provide definitive answers as to what harmed the school-children but did find traces of chlorpyrifos and the insecticide bifenthrin in air samples at the middle school.6 Bifenthrin is another RUP and is deemed by the EPA to be a possible human carcinogen.
Another alarm bell rang when ten Syngenta employees were rushed to a local hospital on Kauai in January 2016 after walking onto a field too soon after it had been sprayed with chlorpyrifos. Company management blamed the workers, saying they had strayed into a field where they were not scheduled to work. But the EPA sued Syngenta’s Hawaii operation for failing to notify the workers of the danger and ordered the company to pay a fine of $4.9 million.
As signs of harm have mounted, worried Kauai residents have pushed to learn exactly how much of the agrochemicals are being used and where. One analysis of government pesticide databases and data from the Hawaii Department of Agriculture released in 2014 showed that the agrochemical industry was applying pesticides at higher rates on Kauai than the application rates on most U.S. farms. That report described the west side of Kauai as “one of the most toxic chemical environments in all of American agriculture.”7 Worried residents have asked for buffer zones between the pesticide spraying and schools and homes, but the pesticide companies disputed the findings of excessive pesticide use and have opposed any efforts that might limit their work.
For longtime Kauai doctor Lee Evslin, addressing the pesticide concerns on the island, where he and his wife have lived for more than thirty-five years and raised four children, has become, in his words, “an important battle.”
Evslin was never one to seek out political involvement. He was content to spend his life as a physician with a specialty in caring for children. He first used his medical expertise to establish a neonatal intensive care unit on Guam before moving in 1979 to Kauai, where he built a career that included a private pediatric practice and a fifteen-year stint as administrator of a local hospital. But the rising concerns, and the tactics chosen by the pesticide companies to protect their work on the islands, have left him “appalled” and active in efforts to rein in the pesticide use.8
Evslin’s outrage came after he spent fifteen months working with several other doctors and scientists on a joint fact-finding group formed by the state and local governments to gather data on the pesticide concerns. The group was called upon by government leaders to determine “if agricultural pesticide usage on Kaua‘i is as dangerous and damaging as critics asserted or as safe and innocuous as the biotechnology companies claimed.”9 (Two representatives from the agrochemical industry—one from Dow and one from DuPont—resigned from the fact-finding group after the draft report was issued. The two complained the report was biased and not based on facts.)
That group’s final report, issued in May 2016, found that the big seed companies applied an estimated 36,240 pounds, or 18.1 tons, of RUPs over a twenty-month period from December 2013 to July 2015. The group also found that the rate of RUP use on the island was generally higher than that on mainland farms, up to three times higher. The group said there was not enough information to conclude whether pesticide use by the seed companies played a role in health problems of Kauai residents, however. The group said more research and data were needed to draw firm conclusions about a causal relationship.10 A separate report by the state found the incidence of cancer on Kauai was generally the same or even lower than for the state overall, and there are conflicting findings on the reports of other diseases as well.
But even without definitive causation evidence of human health problems tied to the pesticide use, Evslin came away more convinced than ever that the pervasiveness of the agrochemicals lays a dangerous path for the future of the island. “It is wrong what they are doing,” he said of the pesticide industry’s reluctance to make changes that might address concerns.
Evslin has specific worries about glyphosate, given the growing evidence of its ties to cancer and its common and widespread use, which leaves residues in food, water, air, and our bodies. “We all have a
level of glyphosate in our bodies at all times,” he said. “I can’t imagine we were designed to have constant low levels of glyphosate in our bodies. Clearly, glyphosate in our food is not a good thing. The more I get involved in this, the more angry I become.”
Many Kauai residents also are angry, and the island has become a political and legal battleground between those who want to rein in the pesticide companies and the industry and its allies who are determined to defend their work, which translates to economic gains for the state through lease income, taxes, and jobs.
The citizen uprising, as some describe it, reached a fever pitch in 2013 with efforts to force restrictions on the seed and chemical companies. A ten-page ordinance introduced in June of that year by Kauai County Council member Gary Hooser was seen as a first, though imperfect, step to try to get a handle on the pesticide use. The measure, House Bill 2491, required companies to disclose their pesticide use and the types of genetically engineered crops they were growing; set a 500-foot pesticide-free buffer zone around schools, hospitals, neighborhoods, and bodies of water; and called for a temporary moratorium on the experimental use and commercial production of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) until the county could conduct a health and environmental assessment. It also prohibited open-air testing of experimental pesticides and GMO crops.
By August 2013, the bill had become sharply divisive, drawing large crowds to public meetings and pitting people who worried about pesticide-related health and environmental problems against others who worried the restrictions might drive the agrochemical companies off the island, hurting the economy and triggering job losses. An estimated 4,000 island residents staged a march in support of the bill that September before a county council vote, but the bill was watered down in committee meetings, stripped of all but the buffer zones, the assessment, and the disclosure requirements for GMO and pesticide use. Prohibitions on open-air testing of experimental pesticides and crops fell away, and the temporary moratorium was also dropped from the bill.
The full council approved the revised bill, then known as Ordinance 960, only to have it vetoed by Kauai‘s mayor, Bernard Carvalho, who agreed with a pesticide industry argument that it was the state’s role to regulate pesticides and GMOs, not the island’s, which operates under a county government. The county council disagreed and overrode the mayor’s veto in November 2013, but its victory was short-lived because less than two months later Syngenta, DuPont, and a company affiliated with Dow called Agrigenetics sued to block the new law from taking effect. A federal judge agreed with the agrochemical companies in August 2014, saying the county didn’t have the authority to regulate the companies’ actions. But the residents of Kauai would not stop pressing for action. In October of that year, a group of them reached out for help to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), asking for a public health assessment that would seek to determine if people near the island test fields were in fact being exposed to harmful pesticide levels as suspected and what impact the pesticide use was having on human health. The petition stated the group’s position this way:
Great health concerns exist in the community because of the intense agricultural practices utilizing a large amount and variety of pesticides being used in experimental conditions near some communities. Recent environmental studies have identified the existence of these agro-chemicals both in the air and the open waterways near where people live, work and go to school. In addition, anecdotal evidence indicates that the community may be experiencing some adverse and an abnormally high number of health issues that may be attributable to the chemicals being used.11
Ileana Arias, head of the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), denied the request, saying such an investigation would be “challenging.” She said the ATSDR had reviewed available data on a range of relevant topics and found the data either lacking or indicative of no association between health problems and pesticide residues. She acknowledged there was no information available about the amount of general use pesticides applied, such as glyphosate, and acknowledged that companies appear to be applying one to three times the amounts of RUPs per acre on Kauai than on corn acreage on the U.S. mainland. But even though the data points “suggest Kaua‘i residents might be exposed to more pesticides than U.S. mainland populations,” Arias said if other factors are taken into account, such as weather and varying times and locations of applications, “the opportunity for residents of Kaua‘i west side communities to be exposed to pesticides [is] probably no different from the U.S. mainland.”
She also said existing cancer data did not warrant concern, nor did existing research on birth defects. Only a few published articles supported an association between pesticide exposure and an increased rate of birth defects, including those of concern on Kauai, and many of those studies were “not very robust” and had “significant limitations.” Arias summed up her decision this way:
ATSDR is not able to demonstrate scientifically whether people near agricultural fields in Kaua‘i west side communities are being exposed to pesticides at levels of health concern. Accordingly, ATSDR will not conduct any [additional] public health assessment activities specifically about the pesticide use on the crop fields at Kaua‘i, Hawaii.
The agency did say it would work with the Hawaii Department of Health to “provide the local professional healthcare community with an opportunity to learn more about environmental contaminants and their potential health impacts.”12
Even as the Kauai effort was floundering, a burgeoning citizens’ movement was mounting on the island of Maui to try to reign in Monsanto and Dow, which both had research farms on the island. Monsanto at the time was employing about 365 people on 3,000 acres it owned or leased within Maui County, while a Dow unit had about 100 workers on about 420 acres. Concerned Maui County residents had taken photos and submitted evidence to state regulators that they said showed glyphosate being sprayed frequently in areas near schoolchildren and along commonly traveled public roads and pathways.
Shortly after the law in Kauai was overturned, voters in Maui approved a moratorium on the cultivation of genetically engineered crops until scientific studies were conducted on their safety and benefits. But one week after the measure passed, in November 2014, Monsanto and Dow filed suit to block the law and invalidate the voter-approved measure. Again, the companies found victory through the courts. “If effective, the referendum will have significant negative consequences for the local economy, Hawaii agriculture and our business on the island,” Monsanto said in a statement issued when the lawsuit was filed.13
Residents of the Big Island of Hawaii had a similar experience, pursuing an ordinance in 2013 that would restrict the seed companies’ ability to operate, only to see the effort fail in the face of corporate opposition. Mark Phillipson, an executive of the Swiss seed and agro-chemical company Syngenta, explained why being able to work on the Hawaiian Islands is so important to the industry: “Almost any corn seed sold in the U.S. touches Hawaii somewhere,” he told the New York Times.14
The companies have seen strong support from many who say the seed business is vital to the economy, contributing more than $200 million and thousands of jobs. The Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, which acts as a trade association for the seed and chemical companies, disputes that there is any credible statistical health information to support claims of birth defects and other health problems tied to the pesticide use.
Nevertheless, people are still scared—both about pesticide use generally and about glyphosate in particular. On the main island, the Hawaii State Senate held a hearing in March 2014 to examine glyphosate use and possible dangers. The prevalence of the pesticide was underscored by a study conducted by the state’s health and agriculture departments, with help from the U.S. Geological Survey. The study sampled seven streambed sites around the state and found glyphosate residues in every one. Atrazine was also commonly found statewide. In all, researchers found that surface water samples collected from
twenty-four sites around the islands showed at least one pesticide in every location.15
A year later, in 2015, the Hawaii County Council took up a bill to ban the spraying of glyphosate and other pesticides on government grounds. The bill’s sponsor, Kohala council member Margaret Wille, said that concerns about Roundup needed to be addressed. The bill’s goal was to “decrease the exposure of humans, birds, animals, beneficial insects and aquatic life to toxic herbicides in public places, roadways and waterways.” Such a measure was needed because of “more and more evidence that cumulative exposure to toxic herbicides, including those containing glyphosate, is harmful to people as well as to land and water ecosystems.”16
As might be expected, Wille’s proposed ordinance was fiercely resisted by public officials and industry supporters, who argued that giving up Roundup would be too expensive and was unnecessary. Wille pulled the bill when she realized it appeared doomed, but she continued pushing for support and reintroduced it in 2016. Still, the bill failed to advance amid stiff opposition from industry representatives and public officials.
Fighting the various measures turned into a multimillion-dollar effort for Monsanto and other agrochemical industry players as they poured money into litigation and into lobbying lawmakers and the public. The industry spent approximately $8 million on just one campaign—trying to stop the Maui County GMO moratorium ballot initiative, marking the highest amount ever expended on a Hawaii election issue.17 Throughout the state, the industry flexed its muscle with radio and television ads, television infomercials, mailers, and Internet campaigns to oppose restrictions on its island activities. Industry-friendly scientists such as Kevin Folta also traveled to Hawaii to make presentations about the safety of the agrochemical industry activities.