=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #324
—February 10, 1993—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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MS. BROWNER MEETS MR. DELANEY
President Clinton’s new chief of EPA [U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency] got off to a rocky start last week. During an
interview with NEW YORK TIMES reporter Keith Schneider, EPA’s
Carol Browner said something that Schneider interpreted as
follows: “The Administrator of the [U.S.] Environmental
Protection Agency said today that she would ask Congress to relax
a law that prohibits trace amounts in food of chemicals that
cause cancer in animals.”[1] The next day Browner’s office denied
she had said any such thing.[2] But key environmentalists weren’t
buying her denials.[3] It is clear that this is shaping up as a
major fight between the Clinton administration and its friends
in the environmental community.
At issue is the “Delaney clause,” which Congress inserted into
section 409 of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1958.
The Delaney clause (named after its author, Congressman James
Delaney, D-N.Y.) flatly prohibits FDA approval of any food
additive found to cause cancer in humans or animals. FDA (U.S.
Food and Drug Administration) has legal authority to approve or
disapprove food additives. EPA has responsibility for approval of
pesticides.[4] A federal appeals court in July 1992 ruled that,
if EPA finds residues of cancer-causing pesticides in processed
food like ketchup or canned soup, this violates the Delaney
clause.[5] There are only two possible solutions: weaken the
Delaney clause or ban the pesticides.
The Delaney clause has created problems for the food chemicals
industry, and for regulatory officials, for 35 years. The trouble
began on November 6, 1959 –right before Thanksgiving–when a
federal official announced that residues of a pesticide called
amitrole (then thought to cause cancer in rats) had been found in
cranberries and recommended that the public stop buying
cranberries.[6] As a result, amitrole was phased out during the
1960s.
A month after the cranberry scare, federal officials learned that
a chemical called DES (diethylstilbestrol) had been shown to
cause cancer in laboratory animals. At that time, DES was widely
used as an additive in chicken feed, and DES residues were
measurable in chickens sold in grocery stores. Officials banned
DES from chickens and the DES story faded from the newspapers
(only to reappear later). DES was still allowed as a feed
additive for beef and sheep because residues had not been
measured in those animals. (It turned out later that residues
were not found in beef because FDA had stopped sampling beef to
avoid getting themselves squeezed between the beef industry and
the Delaney clause.)[7]
DES-in-chickens and amitrole-on-cranberries faded from view in
1960, but the cranberry scare of Thanksgiving 1959 left an
indelible residue of suspicion and worry in the public mind.
The early 1960s was a time when the pesticide industry was
gearing up in a big way. Even after the development of enormously
wasteful 4000-pound automobiles with 450-horsepower engines, sale
of petroleum products was still disappointing, so oil companies
were looking for new ways to use up petroleum. Pesticides (and
later plastics) solved this problem. (Still today pesticides are
a $5.7 billion-per-year business.)
With politically powerful oil companies pushing pesticides (using
the Department of Agriculture’s [USDA] network of Experiment
Stations and Cooperative Extension Agents as a sales force)
regulatory officials found themselves in a bind. The Delaney
clause is quite clear: if a chemical causes cancer in animals or
humans, none of it–zero–can legally remain in processed food.
Squeezed between the pesticide industry and the Delaney clause,
FDA and USDA jointly asked the National Academy of Sciences to
examine the “zero tolerance” provisions of the Delaney clause. In
1965 the National Academy concluded that the concept of zero
residues and zero tolerance were scientifically and
administratively untenable and should be abandoned.[8] They
argued that improved measuring techniques allowed the detection
of very small quantities of chemical residues, so zero would not
usually be found. (Of course zero would be found if the toxic
chemicals were banned entirely, but the Academy did not discuss
that politically-incorrect alternative.)
FDA and USDA adopted the Academy’s recommendations–which
accorded well with the wishes of the pesticide industry–and on
April 13, 1966 the two agencies began establishing allowable
levels (called “tolerances”) of cancer-causing pesticides in
certain raw foods. They could do this because of the peculiar
way the 1958 law had been written, or so they thought. Section
408 allowed use of a cost-vs.-benefit calculation to decide
whether cancer-causing residues would be allowed on raw foods,
whereas section 409 (the Delaney clause) absolutely prohibited
any cancer-causing residues in processed foods. Under section
408, officials can weigh the value of abundant cheap food vs. a
few thousand cancer deaths and conclude that a few thousand
deaths have negligible value. The Delaney clause does not allow
any such horse trading: zero tolerances (and therefore zero
deaths) are required by Delaney.
For the next 25 years, officials skirmished with the courts over
the exact way the Delaney clause was supposed to be applied.[9]
Under relentless pressure from the food chemicals industry to
allow more and more poisons into the food supply, regulators in
the mid-1980s asked the National Academy of Sciences to revisit
the Delaney clause. In 1987 the Academy said again that zero
tolerance is unworkable, and they recommended adoption of a
uniform standard that would allow one out of every million
citizens to be killed by each use of each pesticide.
Unfortunately for the food chemicals industry, in issuing its
opinion, the Academy also published its evaluation of the current
risk from some pesticides. The Academy looked at 289 pesticides
and found 53 of them oncogenic (meaning they have the potential
to cause cancer in animals or humans or both). “Unfortunately,”
the Academy said, “the data supporting many of these pesticides
are incomplete.” [10] The Academy could find useful data on only
28 of the 53. The Academy then calculated the total cancer risk
from maximum allowable exposure to those 28 pesticides and showed
that the total risk was 5.8 cancers per 1000 people, or 1.45
million cancers during 70 years. This translates to 20,700
cancers each year from these 28 pesticides. [11]
In October, 1988, EPA announced it was taking the Academy’s
advice and beginning to allow “negligible amounts” of
cancer-causing pesticides in processed foods. [12] The agency
defined “negligible” as causing cancer in one in every million
people exposed for their lifetime (70 years). This led to a court
battle, which EPA lost in July, 1992.
So this is the situation Carol Browner inherited. It is now
crystal clear that the Delaney clause requires EPA to ban many
common pesticides because they are measurable in processed foods
and they can cause cancer in either humans or animals.
The food chemicals industry takes the position that small amounts
of cancer-causing chemicals are no problem. They frame their
argument in terms of “science.” They say the “science” of 1958
was crude. Ms. Browner is clearly sympathetic to this point of
view. She calls the Delaney clause a “scientific anachronism”
meaning it’s scientifically out of date.[1] By this she means
that the modern “science” of risk assessment reveals that the
cancer risk is small and that modern people should willingly
tolerate such small risks. She says, “EPA does not believe that
the pesticides [that would be banned by the Delaney clause] pose
an unreasonable risk to public health, based on available
data.”[2]
If Ms. Browner persists in this view, she will probably be in for
a tough fight. Any relaxation of the Delaney clause would have to
go through powerful committees headed by Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)
and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). Neither man seems sympathetic to
more poisons in the American food supply. The environmental
community is also prepared to fight. Laurie Mott, a senior
scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said
February 4, “We think [people] should be outraged at the
administration, which said it was going to be very concerned and
active about environmental issues–and the first thing we hear
publicly from the administrator of the EPA is that the agency
might consider weakening the Delaney clause.”[3]
Furthermore, the public clearly doesn’t want poisons in its food.
A 1988 national survey by the Food Marketing Institute found that
approximately 75 percent of consumers are “very concerned” about
pesticides in their food–a higher percentage than are worried
about cholesterol, fats, salt, additives, or any other components
of food. [13]
Since pesticide experts are now saying that up to 90% of
pesticides are not necessary (RHWN #240), and since the National
Academy of Sciences has documented examples of successful farms
that use no pesticides at all, [14] the public seems likely to
want to stick with the existing law, which says the only
acceptable risk is zero.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============
[1] Keith Schneider, “E.P.A. Plans to Seek Loosening of a Law on
Food Pesticides,” NEW YORK TIMES February 2, 1993, pgs. 1,
[10.]10.
[10] Wiles, cited above, pg. 51.