Winter 1994 (v6n1)
James C. Robinson, Rachel A. Morello-Frosch, David S. Albright,
Amy D. Kyle and William
S. Pease
California Policy Seminar,
University of California, Berkeley, CA. 1993
This report was researched
and written by the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at
the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. It is the first part of a project
designed to assess the environmental health impacts associated with pesticide
use in California. This report focuses on pesticide-related illnesses
for agricultural workers. Future reports will focus on how pesticides
affect community health and California's ecosystem. The goal of this project
is to identify high-risk pesticides and pesticide use patterns. Information
that ranks various pesticides on the basis of their impacts on worker
health, community health and the ecosystem can then help inform policies
that develop improved risk management and prevention strategies, including
the development of nontoxic alternatives.
Pesticides pose significant
health risks to the people who harvest our food. Although California leads
the nation in its regulatory program to protect agricultural workers,
effective use of these controls has been severely limited. Each year,
the application of over 160 million pounds of pesticides in California
has led to approximately 1,000 cases of acute occupational illnesses and
contributed to chronic health concerns such as cancer, adverse reproductive
outcomes, respiratory and neurological diseases. Farmworkers frequently
lack the training to understand the risks they face or to act effectively
in the political sphere to affect changes in the system. The farm economy
perpetuates worker risks through its seasonal nature, its reliance on
farm labor contractors and the fact that it is now exempt from much of
the social legislation that protects worker' interests in other employment
sectors.
Recognizing the ineffectiveness
of the traditional regulatory approach, this report suggests that a fundamentally
new strategy is needed with three basic components: a new risk assessment
approach that will identify the most hazardous pesticides using available
data on farmworker risks, community health risks and risks to the ecosystem;
a new risk management approach that focuses attention on
high priority problems and enforces controls; and most importantly, a
new risk prevention approach that promotes the reduction of chemical
use and substitutes less toxic alternatives. The report suggests that
new pesticide policy must make a paradigm shift "from 'safe use'
to a socially and environmentally 'sustainable' agriculture."
Risk Assessment: Setting Health-Based Priorities
As a first step to setting
priorities for intervention, the report brings together data on volume
use, worker poisonings, and acute and chronic toxicity for 70 high-profile
pesticides in California. For each pesticide, the report provides a ranking
based on several risk attributes including: worker poisonings, acute toxicity,
chronic toxicity and cancer potency. One clear result from this analysis
is that, for some pesticides, the rankings are not consistent among the
various categories; pesticides listed as 'high-risk under one attribute,
are low on the list for another attribute. The ranking also reveals that
acute toxicity, a common measure of health risk, is not always the best
predictor of high human illness burdens. Finally, volume of use was not
highly correlated with toxicity or illness measures.
Based on the deficiencies
apparent in single attribute rankings, the report goes on to organize
available illness data by principal crops and by occupational activities
associated with exposures. This helps focus regulatory attention on the
most important problems. For example, the report examines data on six
California agricultural commodities that ranked high in reported illnesses
between 1984-90: grapes, oranges, cotton, almonds, lettuce and tomatoes.
Each crop had a different pattern of pesticide use and illnesses. The
analyses helped point to problems in regulatory controls. The report shows
that workers in every job category can be exposed to daily doses
of pesticides that significantly exceed levels determined to be safe.
Recent legislation has generally
selected only a few attributes as the priority-setting mechanisms for
targeting pesticide use reduction; for example, based on percentage of
pounds applied, on laboratory measures of acute toxicity, on food residue
levels or on cancer risks. This report suggests that each of these approaches
alone suffer from limitations; but together, they provide a reasonable
assessment of a range of pesticide-related health problems and can be
used to establish a more informed pesticide policy.
Risk Management: Reforming the Regulatory Framework
The report reviews the state
and federal government's efforts to control farmworker exposure to toxic
chemicals through four major strategies: pesticide use controls, safe
work practices, worker education and training, and compensation. Although
each offers some benefits, they also suffer from limitations. Safe work
practices, for example, are "woefully under enforced"; worker
education and training programs have only been modestly beneficial. The
compensation system has also been difficult to implement. Farmworkers
who are transient, undocumented and do not speak English, are reluctant
to file for compensation. Further, their chances of overcoming a legal
defense by the agricultural or insurance industries are very small. This
shows up in the statistics: "In agriculture, on-the-job death benefits
average $600 per worker, while accidental deaths in all other industries
average over $39,000. For workers in agriculture, the average compensation
for accidental injuries is less than $6, while workers in other industries
receive over $230."
The report encourages several
efforts to reform the regulatory system including: 1) the acceleration
of the state and federal registration process to bring the most hazardous
pesticides under certification and labeling requirements; 2) the wider
application of reentry intervals, hazard communication and mandatory training
to cover all major sources of farmworker illnesses; and 3) targeted and
strengthened enforcement of pesticide-related and other worker protections.
Risk Prevention: Transition to a Sustainable Agriculture
According to the report,
prevention of hazardous exposures by eliminating use of a toxic pesticide
has never been a major goal for the regulatory system. There has been
more focus on risk mitigation than on risk prevention. The traditional
risk assessment and risk management system, along with farmers, are caught
in the pesticide treadmill. The only solution to getting off of this treadmill
is to move towards a completely new paradigm that emphasizes the reduction
of pesticide use and the substitution of less toxic alternatives. For
public policy makers and regulatory agencies, this requires developing
broad incentives that simultaneously discourage the use of toxic pesticides
and encourage the use of alternative farming practices. The report suggests
that the foundation of this approach would be a steep sales tax on pesticides
adjusted according to the risks posed by particular pesticides. Revenues
from the proposed tax would fund a range of socially desirable activities
including farmworker protections and research into nontoxic production
practices. Currently, "research on the institutional and social constraints
limiting the adoption and diffusion of alternative methods is particularly
underfunded." Funds from a risk-based pesticide fee could not only
support university based research efforts on alternative agricultural
practices, but could help finance positive incentives to farmers to switch
to alternative methods, i.e. provide crop insurance, develop marketing
programs and facilitate the distribution of information through the Extension
Service and other organizations. Finally, resources should be devoted
to ensuring that occupational health and safety of agricultural workers
is taken into account during the development of alternative pest control
methods.
Preventing Pesticide-Related
Illness in California Agriculture is available for $12.00 from: California
Policy Seminar, 2020 Milvia Street, Suite 412, Berkeley, CA 94704. Tel.
(510) 642-5514
(GWF.014)
Contributed by Gail
Feenstra
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