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ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH BACKGROUND REPORT
October 1995
Vol. 1., No. 1
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Background information for science, health,
and environmental reporters
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SO MANY PESTICIDES, SO LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
The Source:
Joel Grossman, “Dangers of Household Pesticides,” ENVIRONMENTAL
HEALTH PERSPECTIVES, Vol. 103, No. 6 (June 1995). ENVIRONMENTAL
HEALTH PERSPECTIVES is a U.S. government publication, from the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in
Research Triangle, North Carolina; editors: Gary E. R. Hook, and
George W. Lucier; phone: (919) 541-3406.
For a mailed copy of this source document, phone (410) 263-1584
and leave your name, affiliation, daytime phone number, and U.S.
Postal Service address.
Salient Facts from the Source:
About 85 percent of American homes maintain an average inventory
of 3 to 4 pesticide products, including pest strips, bait boxes,
bug bombs, flea collars, pesticidal pet shampoos, aerosols,
granules, liquids and dusts. About 70 million households make
more than 4 billion pesticide applications per year, an average
of 57 applications per household per year. According to the
National Home and Garden Pesticide Use Survey by U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), almost 39 percent of
households use insecticides because they have a major insect
problem. However, 37 percent of all U.S. households treat for
insects even when there is not a major problem.
A 1994 study of pesticide labels published in the JOURNAL OF THE
AMERICAN OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION found that it requires an
11th-grade cognitive reading level to understand a pesticide
label, which means that 40 to 50 percent of the general
population cannot read and understand the directions on a
pesticide product label, even if all members of the public had
the necessary 20/30 visual acuity to read the fine print.
Nationwide in 1993, 140,000 pesticide exposures, 93 percent of
which involved home use, were reported to poison control
centers. About 25 percent of these exposures involved pesticide
poisoning symptoms. Over half of all reported exposures involved
children under age 6.
According to toxicologist William Pease of the University of
California-Berkeley School of Public Health, indoor use of
pesticide products in the home is the main source of exposure
for children. Furthermore, Pease says exposures from household
use exceed those from pesticide residues in food.
There are over 20,000 different household pesticide products
containing over 300 active ingredients and up to 1700 inert
ingredients. Household pesticides may contain more than 99
percent inert ingredients. Active ingredients are the
ingredients that are listed on the product label and are
regulated by law. Inert ingredients are not listed on the label
and are not regulated.
Section 2m of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide
Act (FIFRA) — the nation’s pesticide control law — states,
“The term ‘inert ingredient’ means an ingredient which is not
active.” In actual practice, pesticide manufacturers decide what
to call inert and what to designate as an active ingredient
subject to EPA regulation. This has produced a situation where
ingredients considered active and regulated by the EPA in some
pesticide products are unregulated, inert ingredients, missing
from the label of other pesticide products.
In 1991, the Inspector General of the EPA issued a report on
inerts in household pesticides ÕU.S. EPA Office of the Inspector
General, Inert Ingredients of Pesticides (audit report No.
E1EPF1-05-0117-1100378, September 27, 1991)å. The report
identified 4 categories of inerts:
includes dextrose, ethanol, fish meal, lard, olive oil, water,
and wintergreen oil.
petroleum hydrocarbons, toluene, xylene, and methyl bromide.
carcinogenicity, adverse reproductive effects, neurotoxicity, or
other chronic effects, or birth defects in laboratory animals or
humans. Examples: aniline, asbestos, benzene, carbon disulfide,
chloroform, formaldehyde, hexachlorophene, lead, cadmium, and
mercury oleate.
Inspector General says, “EPA knows little or nothing about the
adverse effects of most of these inert ingredients. Some data
may exist for the inert ingredients of unknown toxicity, but EPA
has not yet evaluated the data to determine the effects.”
Examples include barium sulfate; epoxy resin; styrene acrylic
copolymer; sodium nitrite; thymol; lithium chloride;
naphthalene; polyethylene terphthalate; D & C Red #37;
malathion; kerosene; coal tar; asphalt; Freon 114; and sulfuric
acid. Gathering information about the health effects of these
inerts presently has low priority at EPA, receiving less than 1
percent of the Office of Pesticide Programs budget. Furthermore,
EPA has no specific procedures or timeframes for ensuring that
these inerts are reviewed, according to the EPA Office of
Inspector General. “Until these reviews are completed, users
are unaware of potentially toxic inert ingredients contained in
certain pesticide products. The use of these pesticide products
may be jeopardizing human health and the environment,” the EPA
Office of Inspector General states.
By law, inert ingredients are not listed on pesticide product
labels. Only “active” ingredients are listed on labels.
Furthermore, government officials are forbidden by law from
revealing the inert ingredients in pesticide products. “Inert
ingredients are confidential information. If we were to
disclose that information we could be prosecuted for it and
imprisoned,” says Louise Mehler, a physician and program director
of California EPA’s Worker Pesticide Illness Surveillance
Program. Mehler says some inert ingredients “are sometimes of
real toxicological significance” whereas they “could also be just
water.” Although inert ingredients are secret by law, it is
widely believed that pesticide companies know their competitors’
inert ingredients. “The chemists here say that since the
invention of the mass spectrometer anybody who wants can really
find out,” says Mehler.
This article stresses that U.S. government evaluation of
pesticides has focused rather narrowly on cancer, and that there
is evidence that pesticide exposures can cause other health
effects besides cancer. Specifically mentioned are damage to the
immune system (including, but not limited to, allergic
reactions) and the central nervous system. For example, John
Bucher, acting chief of the toxicology branch of the National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, is quoted saying,
“We have spent an enormous amount of time in pesticides with
cancer assessments. ÕButå we could be missing the boat on the
potential effects on the immune system.” He goes on to note that
subtle effects on the nervous system are almost never studied:
“We almost never see anything on learning, memory, and potential
psychological effects of exposures,” says Bucher. “You can’t
ask a test animal for the kind of information that you can ask
people. So you can’t adequately study some of these things with
animal models,” he said.
The most sensitive creatures are human fetuses and infants,
according to Dr. Sheila Zahm of the National Cancer Institute.
She recommends that pregnant women should avoid exposure to any
pesticides. The rapidly-growing fetus may be particularly
susceptible to mutagenesis Õgenetic damageå, chromosomal
aberrations, and carcinogenesis, Zahm says. She points out that
infants crawling on carpets may be exposed to lawn chemicals
tracked indoors, and that such chemicals may endure much longer
indoors than they would outdoors exposed to rain and sunlight.
William Pease from Berkeley asks whether some pesticides are
worth the hazards: “Because of the difficulties in controlling
how the end-user uses the product, and knowing that at least
some will become ill, as we are currently seeing adverse effects,
the question in our mind, since there are alternative means of
treating many pests, is if we should even recommend some of
these products when we know there are alternatives.”
Our Interpretation:
This article makes it clear that federal pesticide authorities
have far to go before they have fully evaluated the health
effects of pesticide products currently on the market, and to
which millions of American families, including children, are
exposed routinely and repeatedly each year.
EPA knows little or nothing about the toxic characteristics of
most of the ‘inerts’ that make up the bulk of most household
pesticides. Furthermore, government officials are prohibited
— under penalty of prison sentence — from revealing to the
public what they do know about inert ingredients. Meanwhile,
this enforced secrecy about inerts does not prevent a pesticide
producers’ competitors from learning which inerts are being used.
Only the public is prohibited from learning this information.
Pesticides can affect the immune system, the central nervous
system, and other bodily systems as well, such as the endocrine
(hormone) system and the genes. These important non-cancer
effects of pesticides have hardly been studied by government
health authorities.
So little is known about the health effects of pesticides, and
the “inerts” that are integral to them, that full health risk
assessments for pesticides cannot be completed in any meaningful
sense. At present rates of study, it will take centuries or
longer before sufficient information has been gathered.
Therefore, assurances of safety from most pesticide exposures
cannot be based on sound scientific evidence, but more on
wishful thinking, or guesswork.
Although the purpose of labeling is to allow consumers to protect
themselves, this purpose is not served by present labeling
practices because (a) much of the public hasn’t the skills
necessary to read a pesticide product label; and (b) so-called
‘inert’ ingredients, which may not be inert in the normal sense
of that word, and which can make up more than 99 percent of a
pesticide product, are not listed on the label.
Frankly, it appears that the U.S. government’s current pesticide
program was designed primarily to protect something other than
the health and well being of the public.
For household pests, mechanical control of flying pests (for
example, screens, windows, nest removal, fly paper, and fly
swatters) should be the first line of defense. For crawling
insects, such as roaches, baits and traps work well and can
reduce the need for spraying whole areas.
To our way of thinking, William Pease asked the crucial question:
since non-toxic alternatives exist for controlling many pests,
should government be licensing the use of toxic chemicals for
controlling those pests, knowing that some members of the public
will be needlessly harmed? When non-toxic alternatives exist,
should toxic alternatives receive a stamp of approval from the
government? It is an important ethical question.
Contacts:
Joel Grossman (freelance writer): (310) 394-1233
U.S. EPA Inspector General: (202) 260-3137
Louise Mehler (California state EPA): (916) 445-4190
Sheila Zahm (National Cancer Institute): (301) 496-9093
Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides:
(503) 344-5044
John Bucher (National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences): (919) 541-3211
William Pease (University of California-Berkeley, School of
Public Health): (510) 642-6531
ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH BACKGROUND REPORT is published monthly
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