Good News on Pesticides

Members of Congress rarely see such longtime adversaries as pesticide makers and environmentalists march arm-in-arm up Capitol Hill to support tougher laws. But as the chief negotiator for the trade association of 92 agricultural chemical companies said the other day, it has just happened after long and arduous talks and it is a victory for the safety of both farmers and consumers.

For well over a decade environmentalists have tried to strengthen the basic federal law that regulates pesticides--the Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide and Fungicide Act. Albert Meyerhoff, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says that the law’s most serious defect is its inability to ensure that the government has valid scientific data addressing the potential health hazards of using more than 2.5 billion pounds of pesticides annually on farms and in homes.

The draft legislation unveiled last week would set deadlines for testing pesticides that farmers started using before today’s standards went into effect. Manufacturers have agreed to pay fees to help the Environmental Protection Agency complete the work, although agency officials question whether, even with streamlined procedures, testing can be completed as quickly as the bill would require. The measure, scheduled for House hearings March 19 and 20, also would ban pesticides registered under false or invalid data, ensure that people who live near pesticide plants have access to information about those chemicals, and tighten regulation of so-called inert ingredients of pesticides, some of which may cause health problems.

Environmentalists say that the chemical industry chose to negotiate rather than continue opposing changes in the law in part because they were able to hold up a chemical-patent bill that the manufacturers wanted. The industry says that it’s because the environmentalists finally coalesced into one group with which negotiations were possible. Bad publicity over the Bhopal, India, disaster in 1984 and poisoning of California watermelons last summer pushed matters along.

Whatever the reasons, the path that these groups have chosen to walk is still not free of obstacles. There may be an amendment attempting to preempt state regulation of pesticides, which would work against California’s best interests because this state has been more cautious about pesticides than the federal government has. There is also no agreement on protecting farm workers. But one of the biggest hurdles has been overcome.