NEWS ANALYSIS : Controversy Over Pesticide Risks Reignited

One of America’s most controversial encounters with a pesticide happened more than six years ago when an environmental group’s report charged that Alar, a chemical used primarily on apples, was a carcinogen and should be banned.

Images of kids eating poisoned fruit gripped the nation’s psyche. The claim received unprecedented media coverage and led to dramatic sales declines for all apples, whether or not treated with Alar.

The fallout brought into question the government’s ability to effectively regulate farm chemicals. And the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have been on the defensive since.

In subsequent years, the severity of the risk posed by Alar has been questioned repeatedly by scientists and other industry representatives who called the original report alarmist.

And when faced with potentially damaging news about pesticide residues, the food industry’s rallying cry has been “Remember Alar.”

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Burned badly once, major trade associations, under pressure from their corporate members, have launched preemptive strikes against any similar-sounding efforts by environmental or consumer groups regardless of merit.

The latest exchange was particularly acrimonious, and the target was the Washington-based Environmental Working Group’s recently published, “Pesticides in Baby Food.”

The release was timed to coincide with Congressional debate on repealing the Delaney Clause, the federal law stating that no cancer-causing chemicals are permitted in processed foods. The group’s report found that 53% of the infant products it purchased had trace residues of pesticides and other farm chemicals such as Iprodione, Thiabendazole and Botran. None of the residues, however, was above the legal levels allowed by the federal government.

Even so, any amount of carcinogens, reproductive toxins or neurotoxins in baby food should be a concern because of infants’ physical vulnerability, the report stated. The authors cited the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) landmark 1993 study that concluded that infants and children may be more susceptible than adults to the long-term health effects of chemicals in foods.

With the NAS report as background, the Environmental Working Group called for stricter regulations for residues in all foods.

“What we are trying to do is point out that--under the current regulatory system--there are no standards that explicitly protect infants from pesticides or combinations of pesticides in food,” said Richard Wiles, vice president for research at the Environmental Working Group.

“And no, children will not get immediately sick from eating baby food; but these products are the best example of why we need to protect children from pesticides in food, water and the environment.”

But even before the ink was dry on “Pesticides in Baby Food,” several Washington-based trade associations had issued press releases condemning the study.

The Grocery Manufacturers of America charged that the Environmental Working Group was “manipulating data to frighten” consumers and “mislead the press.” GMA called the environmentalist group the “last members of the flat-earth society.”

The baby food report “needlessly alarms consumers” and amounts to cynical “scare tactics,” claimed the National Food Processors Assn.

These and other associations strongly emphasized that baby food was “safe” and that allowable pesticide levels--or--residues in food pose no hazards to any age group, including children.

The criticism was effective in tempering media coverage of the baby food report. Yet, lost in the exchange was the lingering issue of whether federal regulations do adequately protect young children from farm chemicals.

The NAS was not prepared to settle the issue either, and its 1993 report called for more studies to determine the exact threat posed to children from pesticide residues.

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But further studies have not been conducted. Federal officials say shrinking budgets have hindered their efforts to obtain better data.

Jim Aidala, with the EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, said critics could rightfully fault the agency for failing to modernize its methods to stay on the cutting edge of risk analysis.

“We would desperately prefer to have more accurate data about the consumption of food by infants and children,” he said. “But the data we do have is from the 1970s (the last time a national food consumption survey was taken).”

Aidala said that the surveys were supposed to be taken every 10 years but that the Reagan Administration limited funding for the project in the 1980s and the prospect of any survey in this decade is dim.

In the meantime, Aidala said, national manufacturers of baby food often use standards for pesticide residues that are more strict than the federal government.

The EPA is also required by law to review the safety of 400 so-called old pesticides by 1997. However, the agency has completed its work on only 100.

While no one will probably forget the Alar controversy, neither is anyone ready to predict that a consensus on what risk pesticides pose to children will be forth coming soon.