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Chlorpyrifos faces severe restriction
Environmental campaigners and consumer organisations have welcomed the decision of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restrict the use of the organophosphate chlorpyrifos. The US partial ban extends to most chlorpyrifos-based over-the-counter insect sprays and lawn and garden products, and some agricultural uses. Wayne Brittenden reports.
The ground-breaking EPA ruling in June includes a 10-fold safety factor in its definition of the dose that is reasonably certain to be safe for children. Further, it has lowered the tolerances (or maximum residues limits as they are known elsewhere) in two key food imports popular with children – apples and grapes. The tolerance for tomatoes has been completely eliminated.
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision was made under the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), which Congress passed unanimously in 1996. It requires the EPA to review all pesticide levels to ensure that they are safe for young children.
Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate (OP) originally developed during World War Two specifically to attack the nervous system. Chlorpyrifos poisoning can cause headaches, nausea, dizziness and, in extreme cases, paralysis and even death. There have long been fears that exposure can damage the nervous system and also cause birth defects.
‘This is a completely risky pesticide,’ said Adam Goldberg, a policy analyst with the US Consumers Union. ‘There are plenty of safe, effective alternatives available, so the EPA made the right call getting it out of homes and schools. It should make some of the food that kids eat safer.’
Chlorpyrifos is the most widely used insecticide in the US, with between 15 and 24 million pounds (6.8-10.9 million kg) applied each year. Enthusiasm for the US decision is tempered by disappointment that the EPA is not requiring the recall of products containing chlorpyrifos that are now on the shelf. A five-year phase-out of its use as a termiticide in newly constructed houses is allowed, though considered by consumer groups to be unnecessarily generous. Nevertheless, the US decision reflects the official conclusion that the pesticide is dangerous – a conclusion that the UK and the EU have so far failed to reach.
The UK government’s Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP) has recommended a ban on home-garden use, and as an onion bulb dip, yet government ministers still have not made a final decision (at time of going to press). The ACP argues that there is no evidence for concern about short-term or acute exposures to chlorpyrifos. The pesticide faces a separate on-going assessment in the UK as a member of the nerve poison ‘anticholinesterae review’ (which includes all OPs and carbamates).
ACP Deputy Chairman, Professor Alan Boobis, insisted that safety depended on the duration of exposure and the competence of the individual exposed. ‘While levels of protective equipment can be set for professional operators, this cannot be guaranteed for amateurs’, he said. ‘We would never assume that amateurs would use protective equipment, and therefore we have to be satisfied that any level of exposure to an amateur is deemed safe.’
In contrast to the US position, Professor Boobis said that the levels of chlorpyrifos residues to which consumers are exposed are acceptable.
Sir John Krebs, Chairman of the UK Food Standards Agency said that it had been noted that the ACP had called for further studies to underpin the Acceptable Daily Intake. ‘Industry must be told clearly that unless the results of these studies are available within a year, approval for chlorpyrifos will be withdrawn’, he said. ‘We would expect these new results to be reviewed by the ACP.’
A number of organisations, including Friends of the Earth, have called for the immediate ban of chlorpyrifos in the EU.
Friends of the Earth real food campaigner, Sandra Bell, said that a review could take an unrealistically long time. ‘If the government was really serious about taking a precautionary approach for these pesticides, it would revoke their use first and then carry out the review of safety,’ she told Radio 4’s Farming Today programme. ‘If it can be proved to be safe, then fine, it can be reintroduced. But we don’t think that people should be exposed to it while the government tries to get its data together.’
While the US view is that chlorpyrifos must prove its innocence before the public is exposed to further potential dangers, the UK position is that it should remain on the market until the authorities are convinced beyond any doubt that it is a hazard.
Where the EPA has inadequate data to be reasonably certain that current use of a pesticide is safe, the FQPA requires the addition of an extra 10-fold safety factor in setting permissible exposure limits. There is an on-going review of the more than 9,000 pesticide tolerances on the books, and the law has given the EPA until 2006 to complete the task. The EPA must not only review each individual pesticide use, but also to examine the effects of exposure to more than one pesticide at a time, and exposures from multiple sources.
The US decision stresses the special risk to children, because of its use in apples, peaches, pears, grapes, oranges and tomatoes. Children are also at risk with its non-agricultural formulation, Dursban, which can be found in many household insecticide brands, lawn and garden products and dog and cat flea collars. It is also widely used in schools as well as homes. Disappointingly, the ACP report makes no mention of children.
For the US Consumers Union, the clampdown on chlorpyrifos is seen as a breakthrough towards strong action against all of the organophosphates.
‘This isn’t the end of the road,’ says Adam Goldberg. ‘The EPA also has to address the cumulative risks of all of these pesticides acting in concert.’
Wayne Brittenden is a London-based journalist writing on environmental issues.