Jennifer Sass, Ph.D.

What volume of pesticides is used in the U.S. in agriculture?

Well, it’s hard to get exact numbers, because the EPA has not publicly-released updated numbers. There’s something around two billion pounds of pesticides used agriculturally even year in the U.S.

How much is used on corn crops?

Well, there’s around two billion pounds used in the U.S. Approximately 30%, a pretty good chunk of this, is used on corn crops.

Talk about the exposure near agricultural areas might get, through the water.

Sure. The water, our waterways, our lakes, streams, and rivers even the slews that are beside farm fields, are really vulnerable to runoff. So, every time it rains, all of the pesticides from the fields end up in the waterways. And in fact, the U.S. Geological Survey has told us very recently than over 90% of the streams sampled had at least one pesticide that was able to be detected in them.

Why should Americans be concerned about pesticides?

Well, the problem is that when pesticides are used in agriculture, they serve a specific function. But the problem is, they don’t stay there. Some of them end up in our food. Much of them end up in our waterways, our lakes and our streams, and eventually the places that we get our drinking water from.

Not only are pesticides that are used on farm fields washed into the waterways with rains, but they’re even volatilized up into the atmosphere, so that we breathe them in the air. And they even come down in measurable amounts in rain.

To what degree are you aware of residues on food?

The U.S. EPA is very aware that some of these pesticides used on farm fields end up in the crops, and even end up in the food that comes to our table. They do assessments to calculate what they consider to be “allowable levels,” or tolerances, on these different food crops. So, in other words, the law allows a certain amount of pesticide that it considers to be safe in all of our foods.

What is the problem with pesticides?

Well, with pesticides used responsibly and used in limited amounts, they serve an important function for agriculture. The problem is, they’re designed intentionally to harm things. They’re designed to harm weeds, for instance, some kinds of plants, but when washed into the waterways, they’ll kill a lot of good plants and even algae and other important biota that are important for the aquatic systems.

At the same time, other ones are designed to kill insects, for instance. Those ones also harm humans. We know that, because many of the ones used even today, such as the organophosphate pesticides, were designed as wartime-era chemicals intentionally designed to hurt humans.

What kinds of health problems come to mind?

Well, we know from studies done by the National Institutes of Health and other premier research institutes those pesticides that are designed to harm insect and plant life, also cause a number of diseases in humans. These range from asthmas and wheezing, all the way to specific kinds of cancers and other health harms.

In addition, they seem to be particularly harmful to young children, or even pre-birth or newborns.

What kind of problems?

Some of the very specific concerns that have been demonstrated in scientific reports are that some of the pesticides, in particular the organophosphate pesticides, which were designed as neurological agents, for example, the wartime chemical [cicerone], also cause neurological harm in humans.

And this is of particular importance when the brain is developing. So, during pre-birth and early childhood states, when the children’s nervous system, including the brain, is most vulnerable, is growing and changing and learning and acquiring memory, it’s a very vulnerable time. And these pesticides have been shown to interfere with that process, even to the point of causing permanent or long-term damage.

Talk about the Central Valley.

Well, California’s Central Valley is really a very productive area for agriculture, and the problem with that is that there are a lot of pesticides and agriculture chemicals that are used in that area. They’re used to such a high degree, that it’s one of the real hotspots for water detections and water pollution. We can even find pesticides in those waterways that have been banned by the EPA, but they continue to persist and still show up in our waterways, and even in the water that’s used for drinking water.

Talk about the weight of organophosphates used in the Central Valley.

In the California’s Central Valley, they use approximately 60 million pounds of organophosphate pesticides each year. The organophosphates were designed as wartime chemical agents. They are some of the most toxic pesticides still allowed on the market today.

Talk about the risks of mixes of pesticides.

Yeah. One of the main concerns is that we sort of think about these toxic pesticides one at a time, and we even think about the fact that in some ways, they’re only a bit in our water, a little bit in our food. But if you think that although one at a time it might be a little bit, the truth is that there are a lot of different agriculture chemicals in our water and on our food.

And even, as I said, in our air, and coming down in our rain. You can really picture in a sea of agriculture chemicals all the time. The problem is that the EPA doesn’t consider this in its assessments. They have progressed to start considering groups or classes of chemicals together that act by the same toxic mechanism. So, for instance, there are about 20-odd organophosphate pesticides, and the EPA has considered them as a group.

And they’ve started to regulate them with the understanding that we’re exposed to multiple ones of these at the same time, which is true. But what they haven’t considered in their assessments is that we’re also exposed multiple different triazine chemicals, multiple different [carbonate] chemicals, and other types of chemicals as well. So, we’re not just exposed to two, or three, or even ten at a time, but really much more.

Is there an increased possible toxicity when they mix?

The truth is that we don’t know very much about how these mixtures act in our body when they’re all together, but if we think of it like pharmaceutical drugs, when we go to our doctor, the package will always say, “Don’t take this drug if you have these health complications, or if you’re taking these other drugs.” Nothing on the pesticide package says, “Don’t eat this in your food if you’re exposed to 25 other pesticide chemicals.”

We don’t have those kinds of warnings. The EPA does not consider those kinds of scenarios in its regulation. And we don’t have a lot of science on the mixtures. What we do know from some data and science is that when we are exposed to mixtures, they’re far more toxic to our bodies, possibly because we’re simply overloaded.

How many different kinds of pesticides are being used?

In agriculture, I don’t have a good number. It, of course, would be crop-dependent. It would also be season-dependent, which means, pest pressure-dependent.

In Safeway or Albertson’s, what kind of range of chemicals are involved?

It would be several dozen, for sure. You can purchase that many, almost, in the Home and Garden section.

Talk about water in the Corn Belt.

Yeah, the U.S. Geological Survey has tested our streams and our lakes, and even groundwater, that are used for drinking water. And they’ve shown that over 90% of it has detectable levels of pesticides, one or more in most cases.

Most of these are actually in the Corn Belt. So, we know that corn is one of the most chemical-intensive crops grown in the U.S. And what this leads to is, some of our highest levels of pesticides in the water near cornfields, and even in the entire Midwest region. And almost 10% of these pesticide levels are actually higher in the water than what EPA knows is safe for aquatic organisms, and even for humans, in many cases.

Talk about the degree to which it’s been used with corn.

Atrazine is an herbicide. It kills weeds. It’s a broad-spectrum herbicide. That’s why farmers like it. It kills almost all the weeds they want to kill. So, it’s one of our most prevalent agriculture pesticides in the U.S. It’s used at about 60 to 80 million pounds per year, and almost over 80% of this is used on corn crops. There’s a little bit on sugar cane, and some on [sorghum].

Does the upswing in growth of corn raise concerns with regards to atrazine in your mind?

Yeah. Because corn is one of the most chemical-intensive crops in the U.S., and because corn is being used now as biofuel stock to create energy, it creates a lot of concern that if we continue to farm corn in the same way that we do, we’re going to massively increase our pesticide use, and that’s going to cause much more problems for our waterways, our aquatic environments, and human health.

What are the health problems associated with atrazine?

There’s been a number of health problems that have been associated with atrazine in the scientific literature. Most obviously are the effects of atrazine on aquatic organisms, such as frogs and amphibians, because they are actually birthed and grow in an aquatic environment. So, they’re surrounded by atrazine for most of their early-growth period.

And what scientists have shown in numerous laboratories is that at levels that are commonly found in the waterways, in streams, atrazine can actually turn male amphibians into females. It actually creates males that have eggs in their testes.

Other problems for humans?

The scientific data that has been observed between atrazine exposure and human health has been somewhat equivocal. There have been some studies that have shown an association between atrazine exposure at normal environmental levels, and men with poor sperm quality. This includes both low sperm counts and poor health of sperm. There have also been a number of cancer studies that have suggested that atrazine is associated with certain kinds of cancers, particularly leukemias and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas. That’s my favorite cancer type. It’s got the strongest data.

The cancer data is really under attack by the industry. And the problem is, they say that the mechanism is different. They have a whole mechanistic thing. But the non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas are in eight different studies. And it’s by the NCI. It’s not exactly a small little backwards lab.

The problem is that to tease it out from the rest of the chemicals, they’re getting statistical significant data – this is not overwhelming stuff, but it’s the strongest.

Can you speak to any problems in blood or breast milk?

Yeah, well, we don’t have the strongest data linking a lot of these pesticides with specific health effects. We do have plenty of overwhelming data to show that there are broad health effects that are associated with exposures to pesticides. And the more pesticides we’re exposed to, the worse the outcomes.

And one of the things that the federal government has shown in its surveys of people’s blood and urine is that almost everyone in the U.S. has measurable levels of pesticide in their blood and urine. So, we know that we’re all exposed.

There is some on breast milk and organophosphates, but it’s not all U.S. studies. It’s not real tight. The organophosphates aren’t that soluble, so the things like the organochlorines are much more in breast milk.

Talk about atrazine.

Yeah, the European Union has actually issued a ban on atrazine, and that’s because they have a rule in Europe that if you can’t keep it out of the drinking water, you can’t keep using it. So, in a sense, Europe didn’t need proof of harm before they took it off the market. They needed proof that it would stay out of the drinking water, and it wasn’t staying out of the drinking water. So, the European Union finally said, no more atrazine.

And that’s across the entire European Union. The funny thing is that in the same week that that was announced in Europe, the United States announced continued use with no restrictions.

Is atrazine manufactured here?

Well, they have an office here, in Greensboro, North Carolina. I don’t actually know where it’s fabricated, completely. I don’t know if it’s completely formulated in Switzerland. Syngenta is a Swiss-based company. Well, I know it’s manufactured here, in fact, because of the [Singy Real] thing. So, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing. [Singy Real], Louisiana has a manufacturing plant.

The EPA is supposed to protect us from these problems.  Why are the tolerance levels set by the EPA not sufficient to protect us, as you say?

Well, there’s the way that the US EPA regulates agriculture chemicals, essentially has a bit of a split process.  When it comes to food, the EPA has to regulate it so that it’s safe.  In other words, it actually allows toxic chemicals on our food but at a level that it determines to be safe or safely tolerated by humans.  That’s for food and drinking water.

For aquatic organisms, for wildlife, for lakes and streams and rivers, the EPA has a different criteria, and that is that it has regulate it so as to be safe, except where a company or a grower makes the argument that it would be, that it needs it for economic reasons.  So there’s actually an economic negotiation, or what they call cost-benefit negotiation.

For example, if they determine that a particular agriculture chemical is not safe on a particular crop because it occurs at too high levels, but that crop argues that it would lose money if it wasn’t allowed to use this chemical, EPA may accept that argument and allow even what it knows to be unsafe levels on crops, and those unsafe levels end up harming people who live near the fields, people who work in the fields, people whose families live near these fields, schools and playgrounds that are located near those areas, and that’s okay with the EPA.  In other words, that’s the best the EPA can do under the existing law.

Now for food and drinking water, there’s a higher standard.  It really does have to be safe.  The problem is there’s a negotiation that goes on.  So there’s scientific information that feeds into the process, but at some point it becomes a negotiation between the governments, between the chemical manufacturers, and between the growers’ groups and users, all arguing on behalf of their own needs.  And sometimes, for example in the case of atrazine, these negotiations have taken place behind closed doors, without the public present, and without public interest groups in part, in the negotiations.

It took me 4 years to figure out this process.

That’s why corn is such a good negotiator.  Little crops like almonds are always losing.  Like the small crops, what they call the specialty crops, just don’t have big lobbyists in D.C., so even though almonds are just as yummy as CORN, in fact, the almond people never seems to get what they want.  And the chemical companies themselves will negotiate, if EPA says how much chemical they’re going to tolerate or allow, the chemical companies will choose where they’re going to cut back their sales and where the sales are just too profitable to cut back.  So they’ll actually make negotiations that aren’t necessarily the best for the environment, the best for wildlife, or even best for human health.  But it might just be the economic tradeoff that is the most advantageous for the company.

Can you talk about this lobbying activity?

The way that the EPA regulates a pesticide, and you can pick any one as an example, it has scientists who do a very good job in fact, or evaluating the data that they’ve been provided on how much chemical is going to end up in our water, how much on our food, and how much will stay on the land, for instance, or go into the air. The problem is that most of that data is provided by the chemical companies.  So, the good news is that the chemical companies are being forced to provide toxicity information on how harmful or how toxic their chemical is, and exposure information on where that chemical might end up or how much people might be exposed to.

The good news is the companies are paying and generating the data.  The bad news is I don’t trust it.  Who would trust the data coming from the chemical registrant or chemical manufacturer?  So then EPA gathers up this data that is provided primarily by the chemical companies.  In addition it looks for any other data that’s available from public sources. Then it does an assessment on how toxic the chemical might be, how much we might be exposed to, and then make say, a risk assessment, it’s called, of how it might be regulating this chemical.  This is done in a fairly public process.  In other words there are opportunities for the public to participate and comment along the way.

Who’s the PUBLIC, though?  Who goes to these long boring meetings in Washington, DC?  Who has time and who’s paid in fact to spend their time?  Well, public interest groups, people like me go to these meetings and argue on behalf of the public interest on where we think the science is and how protective we think the law should be.  But in addition to us, and there’s not many of us there, every chemical company has its representatives, every growers’ group has its representatives, and they all make arguments, economic or otherwise, on behalf of their stakeholders or members.

But they also have fulltime people in Washington so they actually have people who have time to go visiting the offices of EPA staff, they have time to help them with their little math problems along the way, if there’s little bit of data that’s missing they can quickly supply that to the EPA staff, so they end up generating a rather helpful back-and-forth relationship with EPA staff who are in fact tasked with regulating the chemical that these helpful chemical companies are providing information for.

So you end up having what I consider to be a fairly incestuous and unhealthy relationship between the regulators and the regulated community.

Do you ever see these lobbyists interacting with policymakers on a higher level?

One of the things that the lobbyists for the chemical manufacturers do is they interact with the EPA during the regulation of their own products as well as working with friendly members of the Hill and Hill staff to put political pressure on the EPA at critical points.

Every time I go to the EPA to meet with somebody, which isn’t very often, I have to sign in, everybody has to sign in, and I look at the sign-up sheet and I see how many chemical companies have been there before me that morning and it’s there’s always a handful of them, ALWAYS.  So I might get down there every few months, but they’re clearly there everyday.

It sounds like from what you’ve been talking about, even with your favorite lobbyist, you differ on the precautionary principle.  You’ve talked about how Europe has banned atrizine on that basis, can you talk about why the precautionary principle is not part of EPA’s modus operandi?

The precautionary principle is actually basic good public health, and I’m a public health expert.  What we generally believe is you prevent a problem because to treat a problem is much more difficult and invariably some people won’t be treated successfully.  So it’s far less costly and lot healthier to prevent a problem.  And the precautionary principle basically says, if you don’t know something can be used safely or in a safe way, then don’t put it out into the environment where people or wildlife could be exposed.  In other words, if you can do something about it before it becomes a problem, then that’s the best time to act.

It’s basically the way that most of us operate in our lives.  We wear seat belts in the off chance that we might get in a car accident.  We put airbags in even though most of us have never actually needed them to save our lives.  We buy house insurance in case our houses might burn down on the off chance because the consequences of those kinds of tragedies would be so great that it’s worth the small investment, or inconvenience maybe of wearing our seatbelts or our bicycle helmets, to prevent those kinds of dramatic, costly, or catastrophic potential problems later.  So that is essentially good public health and that is the precautionary principle.

Now EPA is supposed to be regulating things that way.  They are tasked with protecting human health and the environment.  They are NOT tasked with protecting chemicals, and if you look on their web site and you look at their mission statement, it is to protect human health and the environment.  And they do that to the best of their capacity within the limitations of the legal authorities that they have.  And THAT is their biggest limitation.

So why don’t they employ the precautionary principle?

Almost all of the legal authorities that the EPA has to regulate chemical toxics in our food, air and water rely on proving harm before EPA can take action.  So in order for EPA to regulate or even ban a toxic chemical, it has to first prove that that chemical is harmful, and second prove that people or wildlife are exposed at harmful levels.  And to do that it also has to have extensive detection data of that chemical or toxic material in our environment.  In other words, the burden is on the agencies to prove harm first, and toxic chemicals, under the legal authorities in this country, are given a free pass until [harm] is proven.

It’s the opposite of our legal system, where we essentially assume that these chemicals now are innocent until proven guilty.  And in order to meet the threshold of proof for a toxic chemical or toxic agent, this involves essentially showing dead bodies, cancers, sick people, injured people, and dead wildlife.

Given that there is basically an epidemic of cancers and diseases in this country, why has it been so difficult to prove these chemicals as the culprit?

For science, it’s very easy to prove that toxic pesticides are toxic; by definition they’re designed to do harm.  It’s very easy to prove that people are exposed because we detect it in our air, in our water and on our food.  In fact, we regulate it to allow levels to be in our air, in our water and on our food.  The problem with the EPA legal authorities is to attach a particular blame or a particular disease to one single product so that they can regulate it, well, when in fact we are exposed everyday to a sea of toxics.

The interesting thing about childhood cancers is that childhood cancers are actually one of the cancers that are on the rise.  And we KNOW that’s not normal; we know that children aren’t supposed to be getting cancer.  So while many people will tell you that cancers are going down, in fact what’s going down is our ability to survive cancer.  We’ve gotten better at early detection and treatment of cancer, but in fact many cancer rates are rising.  And public health people like me believe that you should prevent cancer, not treat it after the fact, because any cancer survivor knows there’s a big difference between surviving cancer and never having had it in the first place.

Is the pesticide industry very profitable?  Do you know the dollars involved?

The US Agriculture Chemical Industry, pesticides sold for agriculture in this country total approximately 16 billion dollars a year in this country.  So it’s good business sense to spend a small part of that lobbying and promoting your access to government, your access to regulators, and your ability as a chemical manufacturer to promote as much chemical as you can get to the label rate so that farmers will use as much as possible.

Can you speak about the connection between the Executive Branch and the EPA?

Yeah. The EPA is a regulatory agency and because it’s a regulatory agency it comes under tremendous amount of pressure, it is a target of the regulated community.  It regulates agricultural pesticides so it comes under the target of those chemical companies who want to promote those chemicals.

Because the EPA is a regulatory agency, it comes under a lot of political pressure from chemical industries, chemical manufacturers and others whose products are regulated by EPA. So the chemical industry and chemical manufacturers have a very big interest in having their friends and even themselves put in high positions of power within the regulatory agencies like EPA.  And this happens after every election, it happens routinely and it causes a big problem within the morale of the agency and the people within the EPA who are trying to get good work done.

What people can do as individuals is to make sure the products they buy, as much as possible, are organic, are pesticide and chemical-free.  Not only does that create a healthier food product for you and your family, but also it means you’re encouraging agricultural practices that use less pesticides going out into our environment.  So not only are you getting a cleaner apple or piece of corn, but you’re actually at some point getting cleaner drinking water because that’s where those chemicals end up otherwise.

Do you have any thoughts on the amount of money going into chemicals in agriculture as opposed to the small fraction that is going into healthier alternatives?

Yeah. The Farm Bill has hundreds of billions of dollars, and a very small percentage of that might go to agriculture practices that are either organic or reduced-risk pesticides or more sustainable practices.  So groups like mine and many others are trying to encourage more of that Farm Bill to go towards helping to fund and subsidize more sustainable agriculture practices.

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