Thirdly, concerning Section 17. Imports and Exports, subsection (a). I believe if these pesticides are not in accordance with this Act they should not be allowed to manufacture these chemicals for foreign countries. Probably these chemicals were banned because of environmental risks. Why should we sell pesticides harmful to the environment to other nations. I believe this subsection should be struck out of this bill.

Also I believe the phrase "essential" should be left in the bill. Why should chemicals be manufactured if they are not necessary or essential? We already have too many chemicals on the market.

Concerning Section 10. Protection of Trade Secrets and Other Information, subsection (b). This garbage about trade secrets. I believe every chemical added in the pesticide should be made available to the public. The public should always know what goes into their products they are using.

Last the public and environmental groups should be allowed to appeal the decisions of the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. This public right should not be denied.

I read where the Nixon Administration favored this bill. It seems they should be more concerned with environmental aspects and possible complications with this bill.

I would like to thank you for your prompt reply. I appreciate you sending the copy of the House Bill 10729.

Thanks so much for your cooperation and time. I appreciated your concern. I hope you will vote against the bill unless it is amended. I really think this would be a very good bill except for the factors I have previously mentioned. Thanks so much.

Sincerely yours,

JOHN EDWARD LAWSON. WALKINSHAW AIRCRAFT,

Argusville, N. Dak., February 28, 1972.

MILTON R. YOUNG,
U.S. Senator,

Washington, D.C.

DEAR SIR: I would like to express my thoughts on the pesticide law, that is to be enacted. I don't really know what's in it but from what I've heard it must be something fierce.

From the propaganda we've been exposed to for the past several years those folks that have been advocating the banning of our pesticides have convinced me that the big lie, if it's told often enough, loud enough, and long enough, people will believe it for what ever their reasons.

Having been in the application end of this thing for 25 seasons, it's been hard to take, to think we've been doing all this damage, it was hard to believe. In my case I've tried to keep an open mind and it appears to me the evidence is gradually surfacing that we've been doing a pretty good job on the whole.

The way it looks to me these anti-pesticide people will make some kind of a wild charge based on God knows what and our true scientists being trained to speak from proven facts based on research are always behind in that it takes 2 or 3 years to research one of these things and come up with the facts and by the time the facts are in on one, these folks are on to something else. I've been zeroed in on a few times because of my occupation and have quit trying to argue with some of these people and have come up with a stock comeback, which is this. You folks would sacrifice 50 million people to bring back one sabre tooth tiger or turn all into a bunch of garbage eaters. This usually turns them away, if it doesn't I tell them all right you have your way, I'll quit flying and go back to farming our half section and instead of selling you $12,000 or so a year of good high quality products by using modern techniques and chemical, we will go to the old way and sell you $30,000 worth of garbage. If this doesn't stop them, I walk away as it's no use to argue.

I mention the above only to try to make a point. I don't think the urban people realize what severe restrictions on the use of pesticides and fertilizer would

mean.

The corn blight should have been a warning to people and caused them to face up to the reality of the slim margin on which we all live. I remember 10 or 15 years ago when we paid $30 a hundred for potatoes imported from Spain to serve our crew. The quality of which wouldn't be on the market ordinarily. I will admit that I'm sensitive on this subject after a quarter of a century

at it, but being more or less of a trigger man inthat we are the last people to handle these things, we try to be careful what we shoot at.

My operation has covered somewhere around 1,500,000 acres since we've been at it, but being more or less of a trigger man in that we are the last people to airplanes fly or our Big A ground sprayers work. I've personally checked many thousands of these acres before and after we've sprayed them and anyone that would have been with me could easily see the folly of some of this propaganda. One of the biggest changes that has taken place is the tremendous increase in the cost of the new chemicals. Farmers are being hurt by this and when you think of one or two or three trips across a barley or wheat field at $2-$5 an acre, it's not hard to understand this. There is no more room that I can see for the farmer to bear additional and increased costs to production in this country today and somehow new costs are going to have to be shared.

It seems to me it's not right for something as basic as food to have costs increased by unnecessary restrictive legislation and bureaucratic red tape. When the consequences at this time are, something of a question.

From what I've been able to pick up the last year or so on the results of pesticides and fertilizer use, it doesn't look like the culprit it has been painted to be. Restrictive legislation at this time looks to me like it would have a tendency to hamstring production and not do anyone any good.

What generally escapes most folks it seems to me, are three factors which made today's production and abundance possible. They are modern farm implements, varieties, and chemicals, including fertilizers. These three things are so completely dependent upon one another that take away one and you have nothing or very little left.

The new high producing varieties have been developed to take advantage of fertilizer and chemical and implements. I doubt if very many of the crop varieties now in use could be successfully grown otherwise. A simple solution to the problem but beyond our present technology would be synthetic genes for plant breeding, and we could quit worrying about disease, insects, etc.

When it comes to the use of chemicals there are many factors involved but one of the big ones, if not the big one, is timing. This is usually what keeps mole hills from becoming mountains. The reason I mention this is that overly restrictive legislation, bureaucratic bungling and red tape can seriously interfere here. In our work, weather conditions and timing are critical and when these are in our favor, we are generally home free.

I don't see how an Irishman could be against protecting crops. Some fungicide on the potatoes of their ancestors would have kept millions of them from starving. We contend with potato blight quite often and it's very simple to cope with and control.

As far as the balance of nature myth is concerned it was in existence in this country when the white man first landed here. The country at that time supported something around a million people from figures I've seen. And if I've read my history right, they would fight over hunting grounds, this should be a lesson in itself. The states should at least be able to regulate the applicators and with the great variances of conditions in this country, should be in a better position to do it than the federal government. Take for instance our State, California, and Florida, as far as conditions are concerned it's almost like different countries.

In closing, like I said at the start, I wanted to express my thinking and opinion on this.

Yours very truly,

WARREN V. WALKINSHAW.

TUSKEGEE, ALA., February 29, 1972.

DEAR SENATOR ALLEN: I learned fairly by accident that you are chairing hearings on March 7 and 8 regarding agricultural chemicals, upon whose results the committee and Senate may act. This is to express concern over proposals subject to your hearings:

(1) There is no special provision for citizen participation in hearings on chemicals. The advice and opinions of citizens should be actively sought.

(2) The present law is rewritten to exclude citizens from the judicial review process. This is an extremely undesirable feature on constitutional grounds. as the citizens should be able to have the power to bring about careful review of government activities, especially through such expert groups as the Environmental Defense Fund.

(3) The proposed law provides for keeping information on chemicals confidential. Nothing not associated with national defense should be kept from the people, especially if we have to live with it.

(4) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would have the burden of proof that a chemical is dangerous rather than the company having to show that a chemical is safe. I urge the latter consideration be deemed the legal basis of the law. If otherwise, EPA should have final say so on release of a chemical. In addition, EPA should be funded sufficiently to where it has the technical staff and facilities to test claims of manufacturers. The time limit on release by EPA should be proportional to staff and facilities, with understanding that a maximum adequate time be allowed to run truly scientific and thorough tests.

(5) The companies can slant information submitted to EPA without informing the latter, EPA again must do its own research. The companies should be required by law to release all characteristics of a chemical as determined by their tests. If not, the suggestions I list in No. 4 above should be repeated.

(6) The proposed law exempts Federal agencies from its provisions. This is a dangerous tenet, as government agencies are among the most active users of agricultural chemicals.

All of the abovementioned characteristics of the bill you will be reviewing strongly smack of a move toward government in spite of the people, rather than for the people.

I would urge that EPA have much to say in drafting a bill regarding agricultural chemicals. Not only would I feel safer in the sense of future functioning, but from the tone of the bill you will be reviewing, I would feel safer constitutionally as well.

This letter is presented to you both as my representative in the Senate and for the public record of hearings you are chairing on March 7 and 8. Thank you very much for your consideration. Sincerely,

J. S. RAMSEY.

STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS H. MILBY, BERKELEY, CALIF.

My name is Thomas H. Milby, M.D. My occupation is Chief, Bureau of Occupational Health and Environmental Epidemiology, California Department of Public Health. My office address is 2151 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California. For nearly ten years, I have been directly involved in research and recommendations concerning pesticides safety, particularly as regards agricultural workers who may be exposed to potentially toxic residues in the course of their employment. For six years, I have been Project Director of a federally-funded pesticide study within the California Department of Public Health. In 1969, I served on the Mrak Commission which reported to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare on pesticides and their relationship to environmental health. I am an advisor to the California Director of Agriculture on pesticide safety. I have written and published extensively in this area. Currently, I am Chairman of the Task Group on Occupational Exposure to Pesticides of the Federal Working Group on Pest Management.

In my appearance today, however, I am speaking as a concerned individual rather than as an official representative of the California Department of Public Health on any other agency.

In an attachment, which I am submitting for the printed record, I have listed many proposals for amendments to H.R. 10729, which, in my opinion, are necessary if the Act is to serve its announced purposes. Time does not permit me to dwell on these proposed amendments in this oral presentation. I should like, rather, to discuss a few of the broader policy issues involved, and the extent to which H.R. 10729 comes to grips, or fails to come to grips, with them.

The bill is entitled the "Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1971." References to the environment are, of course, commonplace these days. But a careful reading reveals that H.R. 10729, in fact, deals with environmental concerns vaguely, peripherally, in some vital respects not at all, and in other vital respects retrogressively. It is very well to say that the Act is intended to prevent adverse effects on the environment, but upon closer inspection this intent proves to be hedged with qualifications. It is only substantial adverse effects which are to be avoided, and "substantial" is nowhere defined. Here, as in most other major areas, it is left to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to

invest the terminology with meaning-and the Act requires him, in any determination of adverse effect, to take into account "benefits from the use of the pesticide" (Section 2 (bb)). He is asked to put into the balance, say, a hundred meadow larks, and their songs, and their significance for the human spirit, as against a thousand, or two thousand, or some number of insects and the damage they might do to a field of grain. Who knows how he will weigh these values? One Administrator might well decide one way, another the other. This is supposed to be a society guided by laws, not men, and the men who administer the Environmental Protection Agency need far more guidance than they are given in this Act. It is interesting to compare the language of the Act, as it now stands, with the wording of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which the new Act is designed to supplant. FIFRA was passed in 1947, before words like “ecology" and "environment" entered the popular rhetoric, but in some important respects it was more environmentally oriented than the proposed new Act, which does use the approved rhetoric. Listen to this language from FIFRA, for example. An economic poison is to be considered "misbranded" and therefore proscribed from distribution or sale if when used as directed or in accordance with commonly recognized practice it shall be injurious to living man or other vertebrate animals, or vegetation, except weeds, to which it is applied, or to the person applying such economic poison.

Now, that is a clear and unequivocal statement, which is not obscured by undefined qualifiers like "substantial," or requirements of a Solomon-like weighing of benefit against injury. It was for reasons such as this that several Congressmen, during the deliberations in the House of Representatives, suggested that the new Act, far from speaking adequately to the environmental knowledge and needs of 1972, actually represents a weakening of some of the key concepts of twenty-five years of age.

The new Act seems to me particularly deficient in a field where I happen to have done most of my own research: namely, the health and safety of persons who may be exposed occupationally to potentially hazardous levels of pesticide residues. We are talking now primarily about the class of pesticides known as organic phosphates, as distinguished from DDT and the other chlorinated hydrocarbons. We are talking, also, primarily about the exposure of persons employed in agriculture-either hired laborers, or small farmers who perform their own labor. To the best of my knowledge, present occupational health and safety arrangements are functioning reasonably well to protect persons employed in the manufacture and distribution of organic phosphorus compounds. The proposed Act's considerable emphasis, in Sections 7, 8, 9 and elsewhere, on "production establishments" does not address a clear and present need which is unmet from other sources. The emphasis might better be placed on establishments where there is a need which, in most jurisdictions, is not being met systematically at the present time: namely, farms; and particularly, those which specialize in the growing of tree fruits and other crops which commonly utilize large amounts of organophosphates, and which involve close contact with the foliage during harvesting or other operations.

There are only a few fleeting allusions in the Act to the concept of pesticide toxicity to man, and in these few places the conception is so limited and qualified that it applies scarcely at all to the problem of which I speak. In Section 3(d) (1) (C), for example, it is specified that the Administrator shall classify a pesticide for restricted use if it may cause, "without additional regulatory restrictions. . . injury to the applicator." To be sure, the protection of sprayers is a real problem, and one which is not always met under existing circumstances, but in terms of sheer numbers of persons at risk, the larger problem is safeguarding the health of pickers, thinners, or others who enter the premises after the spraying has been completed but before the material has decomposed to an innocuous state.

At two points-Section 2(q) (2) (D) and Section 25 (c) (2)—the phrase "highly toxic" is employed. This is another of the key concepts which is nowhere defined in the Act. I believe it is an unfortunate choice of words, for it tends to mask the principal problem. The research we have been doing in California for the past several years strongly suggests that the principal pesticide problem among farm workers (and, presumably, among working farmers as well) is not the acute, unmistakable overwhelming poisoning which occurs from massive exposure to an organic phosphate in its "highly toxic" form-from accidental ingestion of the undiluted material, for example.

All our research indicates that the more common problem-in California certainly; and presumably in other states as well-is subtle and slower. Small

amounts of organophosphates may enter the body through the mouth or through the lung, or they may penetrate the intact skin. They gradually inhibit a vital enzyme, known as cholinesterase, until the organism passes over a threshold (which varies from individual to individual) and there is overt interference with normal body functions. Common symptoms include nausea, vomiting, malaise, sweating, diarrhea, and weakness. Since these are the same symptoms which characterize such everyday illnesses as "flu", the individual frequently does not suspect that he is in fact experiencing the effect of cumulative exposure to organophosphate pesticide reidues. He is likely to stay home for a day or two, and the overt symptoms usually disappear, since cholinesterase loss of the magnitude we are discussing here is reversed relatively rapidly.

Our research leads us to suspect, furthermore, that there is probably an even more common form of "adverse effect"-one which is even slower to develop and even subtler in its manifestations. The individual may not feel nauseated, dizzy, etc.; he may not lose any time from work at all. But he may have a little more difficulty getting to sleep at night. His appetite may be a little less hearty than it was. And there may be a gradual impairment of his hand-eye coordination and other neuromuscular functions, so that he is able to pick 10% fewer oranges or peaches, say, than formerly. The affected individual may not notice the difference at all; or, if he notices, will most likely shrug and ascribe it to "getting oder." Impairment of neuromuscular function is not measurable through the cholinesterase test referred to a moment ago, but we in California are working on new methods for directly measuring these kinds of pesticide "poisoning."

In my opinion, these are perhaps the most important "adverse effects on the environment" of pesticides. They may be unspectacular; they do not make headlines. But I suspect they are very widespread among farm workers and working farmers. There is scarcely a hint of them in the Act as presently framed. In the addendum to this statement, which I am submitting for the record, I refer to a number of specific points at which this omission could be corrected, and in most cases suggest amending language.

To cite only one instance: Sec. 3(c) (1) (D) says the Administrator may call for the results of certain tests to be performed by a manufacturer or his agent as a precondition to the registration of a pesticide. As usual, this proviso is watered down almost to the point of disappearance. The tests are not to be made routinely, but only "if requested by the Administrator." And, the Administrator's hands are tied in a truly unique and scientifically untenable manner: in evaluating the test data on a given product, he is forbidden to consider any other data, unless he obtains the manufacturer's permission.

The thrust of the Act should be in precisely the opposite direction. Preliminary research should be mandatory, and the Act itself should specify some of the types of tests which are basic. We know, for example, that some pesticides may cause birth defects; tests of teratogenicity should be routinely required. We know that some pesticides may cause cancer; tests of carcinogenicity should be routinely required. We know that many pesticides may affect the nervous system; there should be tests of oral, dermal, and respiratory toxicity in terms of neuromuscular function. And we know that residues may linger in significant quantities on foliage longer than on the fruit itself; no pesticide should be registered or reregistered until unimpeachable tests have established safe waiting periods for the protection of persons who come into contact with foliage in the course of their employment.

Such forms of information are so fundamental they should be written into the Act. There should, of course, be latitude for the Administrator to require additional forms of information as appropriate.

The absence of any such provisions as the foregoing suggests that H.R. 10729 was prepared with little or no opportunity for certain relevant specialties to be heard. Seventeen public hearings were held between February 10 and March 25, 1971, but I have yet to speak to a consumer, labor, environmental, or public health representative who testified, was aware that the hearings were being held, or was aware until very recently that a fundamental change in this country's pesticide regulatory philosophy was being contemplated. I and my colleagues in California like to believe that we have some competence in the subject, and had something of value to contribute to Congressional deliberations, but we did not learn of the existence of H.R. 10729 until November 1971, seven months after the close of public hearings, and almost literally on the eve of passage of the bill by the House of Representatives.