SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 2006 words

HEADLINE: Toughest decisions still to come in pesticide review Congress wanted the rules updated, but politics slowing process

BYLINE: Peter Eisler

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:
WASHINGTON -- The vote in Congress was nearly unanimous. It was
time, lawmakers agreed, to rewrite the law on pesticide use and
apply new science to an old question: Are the chemicals used by
farmers making children sick?


Three years later, the government's search for answers is moving
at a crawl.


The 1996 legislation ordered the Environmental Protection Agency
to build a new margin of safety into the legal limits on 10,000
pesticide uses. Old restrictions, based on the risks an adult
would face from residues on food and other exposures, were to
be scrapped for tougher limits based on risks to children, who
are more susceptible to pesticide-related ills.


The EPA aimed to have new limits by the start of this month for
uses of the riskiest pesticides. Those include suspected carcinogens
and neurotoxins derived decades ago from chemical warfare agents.
But the agency is less than halfway through that job. And most
of the EPA's toughest decisions pertaining to widely used pesticides
that the agency sees as "the greatest risk to public health"
are still sitting on its to-do list.


"Dealing with . . . the riskiest has proven to be more difficult
than we originally thought," says EPA Administrator Carol Browner.
"We are making a set of very tough, science-based decisions."


The problems go beyond scientific hurdles.


A USA TODAY review of the EPA's record on reassessing pesticide
limits finds the agency mired in a regulatory battle fraught with
lawsuits, lobbying and legislative pressure. Policy papers and
health studies that were supposed to guide the reassessment effort
are bogged down in politicized scientific debates. Proposed rule
changes are slowed by technical challenges, some engineered by
former EPA officials now working as consultants for pesticide
concerns.


The EPA's problems implementing a seemingly straightforward congressional
mandate illustrate a tenet of policy-making. Passing a law is
just a start; the challenge often is writing regulations needed
to make it work.


In this case, the stakes are particularly high.


Environmentalists and food safety advocates say the EPA's inaction
in restricting use of potentially dangerous chemicals leaves consumers,
particularly children, at a higher risk for everything from cancers
to nervous disorders. Safer alternatives exist, they say, but
won't be embraced unless required.


Farmers and pesticide manufacturers say that many of the pesticides
in EPA's sights have been used for decades and that the agency
has scant scientific evidence to justify further restrictions.
New limits could leave crops vulnerable to pests, they say, leading
to food shortages.


"Congress gave the EPA way more than it could chew," says David
Shetlar, an entomologist and associate professor at Ohio State
University, "and everything ground to a halt."


Mandated review a daunting task

From the start, the pesticide debate has been framed as an issue
of protecting children.


Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act in 1996 with just
one dissenting vote after a National Academy of Sciences study
suggested that young children get substantially more exposure
than adults to pesticide-treated foods. Because the chemicals
can have a disproportionate effect on young brains and bodies,
the study recommended that a higher margin of safety be built
into federal pesticide limits.


Congress' legislation ordered the EPA to adopt new pesticide rules
that would limit public exposure to as little as one-tenth the
level deemed safe for adults. The new limits must account for
all exposures: household bug killers, gardening sprays, traces
in drinking water, as well as food residues.


In all, the EPA has until 2006 to reassess 9,700 pesticide limits,
each covering a specific chemical's use on a specific crop. The
agency was supposed to give priority to pesticide uses considered
to be the riskiest and had set a goal of completing work on most
by Aug. 3 this year.


President Clinton called the new law "the peace of mind act"
and signed it at a ceremony attended by environmentalists, food
safety advocates and officials from the agricultural and chemical
industries. "Parents will know that the fruits, grains and vegetables
their children eat are safe," Clinton said.


Three years later, the EPA has provided little reassurance.


USA TODAY reviewed legal filings, EPA reports and correspondence
and outside reviews of the agency's pesticide reassessment effort.


Key findings:


-- The agency has set new limits on less than 40% of the 5,500
or so pesticide uses that are supposed to get priority attention
because they pose the greatest risk to public health. And among
the 2,200 of those high-risk uses that the EPA has reassessed,
half involved applications that are no longer in use, so the agency
simply had to wipe the limits for those uses off its books.


-- Of 26 "white papers" the EPA has drafted to help set the
scientific criteria for re-evaluating pesticides, not one has
been finalized. Seventeen have been released in draft form for
public comment. Nine others have yet to reach that stage.


-- The EPA has yet to launch a screening and testing program
to determine whether some pesticides may disrupt people's endocrine
systems, causing hormonal disorders including damage to reproductive
glands. Three years ago, the agency was given until Aug. 3, 1999,
to have the endocrine disrupter study up and running.


EPA officials acknowledge that the agency's pesticide reassessment
program hasn't moved as quickly or smoothly as the law envisioned.
But they say they are making steady progress, with a firm schedule
in place to finish reviewing the riskiest pesticide uses by the
end of 2000.


"What's really noteworthy here is that for the first time ever
(the government is) agreeing that there should be cancellations
of particular uses, particularly on food products that our children
eat," Browner says. The type of sweeping review needed to make
those decisions, says Browner, is something "that has never,
ever been done before." But stakeholders on both sides of the
pesticide debate are far from satisfied.


The EPA really "has just gotten to the tip of the iceberg in
terms of what they should have done by now," says Ken Cook, president
of the Environmental Working Group. "If you take a close look
at the decisions they have made so far, most have been relatively
meaningless."


"They're open for criticism from all sides," says Tom Stenzel
of the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association. "They're
not meeting their deadlines . . . (and) nobody's interests are
being served."


Review process seems never-ending

It's virtually impossible to find a sick child whose illness can
be pinned clearly to pesticide exposure. Who is to say a child's
cancer is from pesticides? How do you rule out genetic predisposition?
Dietary factors? Air pollution or other environmental factors?


So assessing the risks of various pesticide uses is an enormously
complex task.


The Food Quality Protection Act effectively puts the burden of
proving a chemical's safety on those interested in maintaining
its viability. As a result, pesticide makers and users have asked
the EPA repeatedly to consider more data before making any decisions.


Every policy paper, every study gets embroiled in scientific disputes
-- fights over the EPA's assumptions on everything from children's
dietary habits to the amount of roach killer an average family
is likely to use. And when those assumptions are translated into
proposed rules that would limit particular pesticide uses, the
fights grow even more intense.


It all boils down to one basic question: when should the agency
stop reviewing data and simply make a decision.


Early this month, the EPA concluded months of study by announcing
new restrictions on two widely used pesticides, arguably the most
significant actions to date under the new law. But those actions,
which clamped down on the use of methyl parathion and azinphos
methyl, two chemicals used on everything from apples to wheat,
were far from the most difficult decisions facing the EPA.


Methyl parathion already is banned in nations as diverse as Argentina,
Indonesia and the Philippines. And the new azinphos methyl limits
still allow higher concentrations than farmers generally use.


Still, the actions have drawn sharp criticism from some pesticide
manufacturers and farm groups, many arguing that the EPA had made
its decision before all the evidence was in.


Chemical and agricultural groups, including the American Crop
Protection Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation,
filed a lawsuit in June, charging that the EPA is moving too quickly.


"EPA is using theoretical assumptions and 'worst-case' computer
models to assess the risk of pesticides instead of accurate data
from scientists and farmers," says Jay Vroom of the American
Crop Protection Association. "Safe and effective pesticides may
be lost."


Environmental and food safety groups, including the Natural Resources
Defense Council and Consumers Union, answered this month with
a suit charging the EPA with going too slowly.


"Even major actions against two chemicals . . . can't hide the
fact that the EPA has failed to do its job," says Edward Groth
of Consumers' Union, the organization that publishes Consumer
Reports.


The pesticide industry is turning to some old EPA hands for help
in pressing its case. At least a dozen former EPA officials who
played roles in setting pesticide policy now work as industry
consultants.


"The EPA has become a farm team for the pesticide lobby," says
Mike Casey of the Environmental Working Group, which released
a report on the issue.


But EPA General Counsel Gary Guzy says the fact that some former
EPA officials choose to work for pesticide concerns "has no substantive
impact" on the agency's work.


Instead, he's more concerned that "the lawsuits will divert some
resources from doing our work and . . . getting the substance
of these (pesticide) reviews done as quickly as we would have."


Special interests also in Congress

The courts aren't the only place where the EPA is defending its
pesticide review.


Farm-state lawmakers in Congress are criticizing the agency's
performance, taking up the cause of growers and chemical makers
who say the agency isn't basing decisions on all the available
scientific data.


"If we have sound science and if we have a good process in place,
we can live with the results," says Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif.
"My greatest concern is that is not where we are ending up."


Pombo has introduced the most popular of several bills aimed at
forcing the EPA to slow its pesticide reassessment and allow more
time for farming and pesticide interests to make their case. The
legislation has more than 150 House co-sponsors, and a companion
bill in the Senate is gaining support. The Clinton administration
opposes the legislation, saying it would further slow the reassessment
process.


The legislation reflects the growing discord in Congress over
the EPA's implementation of the Food Quality Protection Act. The
broad agreement that marked the law's initial passage is a distant
memory.


Pesticide manufacturers and agriculture groups smell blood, and
they've stepped up their lobbying efforts in support of Pombo's
bill.


Meanwhile, environmentalists and food safety advocates are frustrated,
wondering aloud how a process that has yielded few meaningful
restrictions to date can be seen as too aggressive. It's been
three years since the bill was signed and there have been major
actions against just two pesticides.


Yet opponents are pressuring members of Congress, says Jacqueline
Hamilton of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and acting
as if the law "means the end of agriculture as we know it."


GRAPHIC: PHOTO, color, Rob Kerr, East Oregonian; PHOTO, b/w, Matt York, AP; PHOTO, b/w, J. Scott Applewhite, AP; Crop duster: Farmers are among those closely watching the progress of EPA's pesticide review. Protecting kids: President Clinton signs bill in 1996 as Andrew Brubaker watches. EPA's Browner

LOAD-DATE: August 30, 1999