Toxic Free News - Spring 2005

Washington State has implemented a testing program ordered by the WA State Supreme Court to monitor cholinesterase levels in agricultural workers.

Monitoring over the past year showed that one in five farm workers had suffered serious exposure to cholinesterase-inhibiting pesticides. Cholinesterase is a naturally occurring enzyme that is key to normal functioning of the nervous system.

Washington’s farming industry has been unwilling to take any steps to reduce use or exposure to pesticides, while farm worker advocates push to eliminate certain pesticides in Washington State by 2012. Long-term effects of cholinesterase level decrease are still unknown.

Source: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A $7 million dollar EPA study that would measure pesticide exposure in children in Duvall County, Florida, has been put on hold while an additional external, independent review is conducted. The study, called Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study, or CHEERS, is partially funded by the lobbying group for the U.S. chemical industry, American Chemistry Council (ACC).

Duvall County was chosen because of its unusually high levels of pesticide use, with study subjects drawn from clinics serving the lowest income people in the county.

Families would be compensated with cash, clothing and other items, while researchers measure children’s exposure to home and garden pesticides, as well as phthalates from plastics, and brominated biphenyl ethers from flame retardants.

Opponents to the study have pointed out that ACC’s financial contribution is a conflict of interest, and the parameters of the study are unethical. But the chemical industry is eager to overturn the findings of a 1996 study from the National Academy of Sciences, which changed the pesticide tolerance factor for children from the “no observable effect level” to a level ten times higher than the one established for adults’ exposures.

Sources: Environmental Science & Technology Online and IPS-Environment

Hermaphrodism in cricket frogs increased dramatically during the times when contamination from the pesticide DDT and other chlorinated compounds was widespread, according to a study in the March issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

Scientists examined cricket frog specimens that had been collected by museums in Illinois over the past 150 years. They found elevated rates of hermaphrodism ever since polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were first used in the 1930s, with a peak during the period from 1946 to 1959, when PCB and DDT use were both at their highest levels.

The team’s research suggests that a long period of exposure to endocrine disrupting organochlorine contaminants contributed to the precipitous decline in Illinois’ cricket frog population over the past 25 years.

Sources: LA Times, EHP

CA, NY, CT, and MA petitioned the federal government in December to comply with a congressional mandate to reduce the amount of pesticide residue allowed on common fruits and vegetables under the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act. The petition challenges regulatory decisions made by EPA on five pesticides that are widely used on food consumed by children. The pesticides that are the subject of this petition are: alachlor, chlorothalonil, methomyl, metribuzin and thiodicarb.

"The EPA's failure to protect children from poisonous pesticides is unconscionable and unlawful," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Source: New York Attorney General’s Office

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