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July/Aug 2000 issue (#46)
A University of Washington study suggests that pesticides are finding their way into the bodies of pre-school children in agricultural communities at a higher level than previously thought. More than half of the tested children of farm workers who live in Douglas and Chelan counties in Washington state were exposed during the spraying season to pesticide levels that exceeded federal safety levels, according to the researchers, even though the children themselves do not work in the fields.
These levels were estimated from concentrations of pesticide breakdown products in urine, and compared to reference values established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization. Doses were evaluated by assuming that breakdown products were attributable to either azinphos-methyl or phosmet, the two organophosphate pesticides used most frequently in the region.
The study concludes that regulators need to look at exposure standards and determine if they are appropriate, says one of the study authors, Richard Fenske, a professor of environmental health in UW's School of Public Health and Community Medicine. He is also director of UW's Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center.
The EPA is in the midst of setting safety standards, specifically for children, for thousands of uses of chemicals. The pesticides involved in the UW study are organophosphates, a common class of pesticides that the EPA has targeted in its first efforts to implement tighter safety levels under a 1996 law.
--Environment News Service
"Taking Back Our Food, Farms and Playgrounds" is a national conference scheduled for October 6-8 in Redwood City, CA. Sponsored by Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), Pesticide Watch (PW), Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR), the three-day event will address the interlocking issues of pesticide reform, environmental health, genetic engineering, and corporate influence on agriculture.
For information: Pesticide Action Network, 49 Powell St., Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94102; (415) 981-6205, ext. 382; in CA (888) 277-4880; fax (415) 981-2727;http://www.panna.org/octConf.html; ctlee4@panna.org.
One of Britain's largest supermarket chains is switching to organic food at no extra cost to its customers. The Iceland's company says it will buy almost 40 percent of the world's organic vegetables in a $13.5 million decision to replace conventionally grown food in its frozen food line.
Because so much of the food must be imported, angering British farmers, the company has donated $1.5 million to the National Trust, Britain's biggest landowner and charity, to encourage environmentally friendly farming in Britain.
The supermarket chain will spend a further $12 million absorbing the extra costs of buying more expensive organics.
Iceland's said the investment was prompted by a survey suggesting three out of four customers would prefer to buy organic goods if they were cheaper, and that more than four fifths of the British public want pesticides banned from supermarket food.
"At the moment Britain has minimal organic production due to lack of government investment in the organic industry in its formative years," said Malcolm Walker, chairman of Iceland and a member of Greenpeace. "We hope that our investment will help change this."
Demand for organic food has been increasing by 40 percent a year in Britain. But sales are still only about one percent of total food purchases.
At present, only three percent of British agricultural land is organic, and supermarkets are forced to rely on imports from North and South America, Africa and Europe to meet the demand. The National Farmers Union has blamed successive governments for failing to encourage organic food production.
--Environment News Service
The Washington Department of Agriculture said recently that it is okay for the Siemens Power Corporation, a manufacturer of nuclear fuel, to sell 390,000 pounds of ammonium hydroxide to a fertilizer company. The material, which had been used in uranium refining, can be added to fertilizer because it contains nitrogen. The June 24 Seattle Times quoted an ag official as saying "the Siemens industrial by-product meets state waste and radiation standards by a large margin and poses no environmental or health concerns with normal usage." The Washington Toxics Coalition, in its on-going campaign against the use of toxics in fertilizers, states on its website, www.watoxics.org, "We cannot allow further contamination of farmland and further toxic exposures for farmers, farm workers and consumers.... [We are] also calling for standards and labeling for all fertilizers so that farmers and consumers know what fertilizers are made of beyond their beneficial nutrient content." --Renee Kjartan
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