The document discusses the usage, dangers, and regulation of pesticides, highlighting their role in agriculture and the associated health risks, particularly to children. It outlines various types of pesticides, the Food Quality Protection Act, and provides guidance on minimizing pesticide risks through integrated pest management. Specific cases, such as the toxicity of aldicarb and glyphosate, are also examined to illustrate the potential dangers and regulatory challenges surrounding pesticide use.

1. Pesticide Safety
Draft 8 3 2017

2. Pesticides
Pesticides are used to control various pests and
disease carriers, such as mosquitoes, ticks, rats
and mice. Pesticides are used in agriculture to
control weeds, insect infestation and diseases.
Highly hazardous pesticides may have acute
and/or chronic toxic effects, and pose
particular risk to children. Their widespread use
has caused health problems and fatalities in
many parts of the world, often as a result of
occupational exposure and accidental or
intentional poisonings.
Environmental contamination can result in
human exposure through consumption of
residues of pesticides in food and drinking
water.

3. Types of Pesticides
Types of pesticides include:
Algaecides to kill and/or slowing the growth of algae.
Antimicrobials to control germs and microbes such as
bacteria and viruses.
Disinfectants to control germs and microbes such as
bacteria and viruses.
Fungicides to control fungal problems like molds, mildew,
and rust.
Herbicides to kill or inhibit the growth of unwanted plants,
also known as weeds.
Insecticides to control insects.
Insect Growth Regulators to disrupt the growth and
reproduction of insects.
Rodenticides to kills rodents like mice, rats, and gophers.
Wood Preservatives to make wood resistant to insects,
fungus and other pests.

4. Food Quality Protection Act
The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) was passed unanimously by
Congress and then signed into law by President Clinton on August 3,
1996. The FQPA requires that the EPA:
make a safety finding when setting tolerances, i.e., that the
pesticide can be used with “a reasonable certainty of no harm;”
use this new safety standard to reassess, over a 10-year period, all
pesticide tolerances that were in place when the FQPA was
signed;
consider the special susceptibility of children to pesticides by using
an additional tenfold (10X) safety factor when setting and
reassessing tolerances unless adequate data are available to
support a different factor;
consider aggregate risk from exposure to a pesticide from multiple
sources (food, water, residential and other non-occupational
sources) when assessing tolerances; and
consider cumulative exposure to pesticides that have common
mechanisms of toxicity.

5. Pesticide Risks
The risk of a pesticide depends on two things, exposure
(how much?) and toxicity (how poisonous?):
The exposure is the amount you get in or on your
body, or the amount that is released into the
environment.
The toxicity of a pesticide is measure of how
poisonous it is to people or the environment.
Even products that are low in toxicity can be hazardous
if the exposure is high enough.
Most pesticides will have either the word CAUTION,
WARNING, or DANGER on the label, and that signal
word reflects the toxicity of the product:
CAUTION represents the lower toxicity products
WARNING indicates medium toxicity products
DANGER stands for the highest toxicity products

6. Minimizing Pesticide Risks
Adopt an Integrated Pest Management
(IPM) approach: prevention,
sanitation and exclusion, and utilizing
pesticides only as a last resort when
other options have failed.
Choose the product lowest in toxicity.
Choose products with formulations least
likely to lead to exposure.
Use PPE to reduce your exposure.
Use the appropriate amount of pesticide
for your job.
Avoid allowing children, pets, or
sensitive people in treatment areas.

7. Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a
combination of common sense and
scientific principles. It's a way of thinking
about pest management that values:
Using knowledge about the pest's habits,
life cycle, needs and dislikes;
Using the least toxic methods first, up to
and including pesticides;
Monitoring the pest's activity and
adjusting methods over time;
Tolerating harmless pests; and
Setting a threshold to decide when it's
time to act.

8. Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
These actions are important parts of any IPM
endeavor:
Identify the pest in the most specific terms
possible.
Learn about the pest's biology (habits, life cycle,
needs and dislikes).
Take steps to exclude the pest from the area, if
possible.
Try to remove the pest's food, water and shelter.
Determine the pest's travel patterns and find their
home-base.
Identify all of your control options (the "tools in the
toolbox") before acting.

9. Aldicarb
In 2010 the EPA targeted aldicarb, known for
causing the worst outbreak of pesticide
poisoning in North America, to be phased out
of use in all world markets by 2015.
“Aldicarb no longer meets our rigorous food
safety standards and may pose unacceptable
dietary risks, especially to infants and young
children,” the EPA said.
For infants, consumption of aldicarb residue –
mostly in potatoes, citrus and water – can
reach 800 percent higher than the EPA’s level
of concern for health effects, while children
between the ages of one and five can ingest
300 percent more than the level of concern.

10. Aldicarb
On the Fourth of July in 1985, three people who had
eaten watermelon in Oakland, Calif., rapidly became
ill with symptoms that included vomiting, diarrhea,
muscle twitches and abnormally slow heart rates. At
the same time, people in Oregon were falling ill, too,
and tests of watermelons found extremely high levels
of aldicarb, which was illegal to use on all melons.
California ordered an immediate ban on watermelon
sales, which meant huge quantities had to be
destroyed in fields and at stores at the height of the
season.
How aldicarb got into watermelons remains unknown,
but experts suspected that some melon farmers used
low levels of it intentionally and illegally and that
some also might have flowed off nearby cotton fields.

11. Aldicarb
That summer, a total of 1,350 cases of aldicarb
poisoning from watermelon were reported in
California, plus another 692 cases in eight
other states and Canada, according to a report
by the CDC.
Seventeen people were hospitalized. Six deaths
and two stillbirths were reported in people
who fell ill, but the pesticide was not listed as
the cause of death in coroner reports.
“The system is designed to leave things like this
on the market as long as possible. It’s innocent
until proven guilty. It’s really unconscionable
that it takes literally decades to do this.”

12. Roundup (Glyphosate)
Roundup is a weed killer manufactured by Monsanto
and widely used on crops in the U.S. and around
the world.
Monsanto reengineered the DNA of corn, soybeans,
and other crops for the primary purpose of making
them resistant to Roundup.
Farmers spray the chemical on crops grown from
Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds. The weeds die,
harvests expand, and expensive, laborious tillage is
no longer necessary.
The EPA classified glyphosate, the main ingredient in
Roundup, as noncarcinogenic to humans in 1991.
In December 2016, the EPA convened a panel to peer
review their health assessment of glyphosate, as
required for each pesticide every 15 years.

13. Roundup (Glyphosate)
The EPA paper on glyphosate dismissed as invalid
any study that suggested the chemical could
cause cancer, and their report of the peer
review process downplayed concerns raised by
the experts on the panel.
Trump’s EPA - led by Administrator Scott Pruitt,
the former Oklahoma attorney general who
sued the EPA more than a dozen times to stop
environmental regulations - and the courts will
now decide glyphosate’s designation.
With no glyphosate, farmers would have to resort
to using more-toxic chemicals for weed
control, or revert to grueling tillage by hand.
“Getting rid of glyphosate would have a major
impact on farmers and their bottom lines. It’s
not like there’s a risk-free scenario here.”

14. Vulcan (Chlorpyrifos)
On the Fourth of July in 1985, three people who had
eaten watermelon in Oakland, Calif., rapidly became
ill with symptoms that included vomiting, diarrhea,
muscle twitches and abnormally slow heart rates. At
the same time, people in Oregon were falling ill, too,
and tests of watermelons found extremely high levels
of aldicarb, which was illegal to use on all melons.
California ordered an immediate ban on watermelon
sales, which meant huge quantities had to be
destroyed in fields and at stores at the height of the
season.
How aldicarb got into watermelons remains unknown,
but experts suspected that some melon farmers used
low levels of it intentionally and illegally and that
some also might have flowed off nearby cotton fields.