Poison Spring (36 page)

 
19
   “Make no mistake about it—actions to protect consumers of food products by canceling the registrations of pesticides shown to be carcinogens will not be universally applauded,” Menotti wrote. “On the contrary, interest groups in the agricultural sector—egged on by the USDA—will raise a great fuss, and attempt to persuade the world that our actions are technically unsound and motivated by a passionate desire to eliminate pesticides as tools of agricultural production.” See memo from David Menotti to Jodie Bernstein, September 23, 1977.

 
20
   Aldo Leopold, “The Conservation Ethic,”
Journal of Forestry
31 (1933): 635–37.

 
21
   Aldo Leopold,
A Sand County Almanac
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 185.

 
22
   David L. Coppage and Clayton Bushong, “On the Value of Wild Biotic Resources of the United States Affected by Pesticides” (EPA, Office of Pesticide Programs [early 1980s]).

 
23
   Ibid.

Chapter 1: The EPA Nobody Knows

 
  
1
   Federal pesticides law (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, for example) forbids the use of “ineffective” pesticides. But 30 years ago, the EPA—bowing to pressure from the Reagan administration—ended its review of data on whether pesticides were effective. So a central rule of the pesticide law has effectively been rendered meaningless.

 
  
2
   The 1947 FIFRA introduced the registration and labeling of sprays. After Rachel Carson broke the news in 1962 that pesticides were damaging the natural world, Congress amended FIFRA four times between 1964 and 1996. (The changes in 1996 had to do with the amounts of pesticides entering and staying in food.) FIFRA became the Food Quality Protection Act, which legalized carcinogens in processed food.

 
  
3
   Other statutes fundamental to environmental protection include the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, which enabled the EPA to regulate the treatment, storage, transportation and disposal of hazardous waste; the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability (Superfund) Act of 1980, which allows the EPA to respond promptly to hazardous waste emergencies and clean up the dangerous waste; the Wilderness Act of 1964; the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968; the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969; the Safe Water Drinking Act of 1986; the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act or the Ocean Dumping Act of 1972; the Endangered Species Act of 1973; the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (section 408 of this act authorizes the EPA to set “tolerances” or “legal” amounts of pesticides in the food we eat); the Noise Control Act of 1972; the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982; and the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990.

 
  
4
   Assistant EPA administrators oversee International and Tribal Affairs; Administration and Resources Management; Enforcement and Compliance Assurance; Environmental Information; Air and Radiation; Water; Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention; Research and Development; and Solid Waste and Emergency Response. During my time at EPA there was no Office for Environmental Information, and the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention was known as Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances.

 
  
5
   In contrast to the mission of the EPA of “protecting man and nature” from the ills of industrial civilization, the USDA does not bother with ideals. At least since World War II, it has been a defender of industrial-scale farmers, agribusiness, and corporate America, the very agents that have been subverting the EPA. During the presidency of Richard Nixon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, told the farmers to “get big or get out.” That very unwise advice remains the guiding principle of American farmers.

 
  
6
   The EPA gives its civil service employees tenure and some protection from arbitrary and capricious managers and rules. This certainly helped me survive the ceaseless attacks on and reorganizations of the agency. During the 19 years I served at the EPA headquarters, I lived through the minor and major upheavals that hammered the agency into a more industry-friendly, industry-obedient organization.

 
  
7
   Natasha Singer, “Medical Papers by Ghostwriters Pushed Therapy,”
New York Times
, August 4, 2009; David Gutierrez, “Busted: Wyeth Used Ghostwriters to Place Over 40 ‘Scientific’ Articles in Medical Journals,”
Natural News
, July 8, 2010.

 
  
8
   Exponent has also been paid $1.5 million by the British government to look into the link between maneb-paraquat mixtures and Parkinson’s disease.

 
  
9
   Sheila Kaplan, “Company Pays Government to Challenge Pesticide Research Link to Parkinson’s,”
Investigative Reporting Workshop
(American University School of Communication), February 11, 2011.

 
10
   See http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/poldocs/uspressu/SUaddressRNixon.pdf.

 
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.