California, compared to the other 49 States, has not only the strongest pesticide safety regulations but, to date, has done the most extensive research in pesticides and their effects on farmworker. For these reasons alone the above-mentioned report is a most significant document.

Important points made in detail in the California report to the EPA included:

(1) * when a researcher finds that the cholinesterase level of a particular occupational group is significantly lower than that of a control group, if society is serious about its commitment to occupational health and safety, equal protection under law, and other professed social values, then it is incumbent upon someone to take steps necessary to eliminate those occupationally-induced differences.

"In the present instance, this would mean that more attention must be given to the question of organophosphate residues on the foliage of such crops as grapes and citrus. 'Safe waiting periods' between application of pesticides and re-entry of workers should be re-examined, across the board, not from the standpoint of protecting consumers of the ultimate products, nor from the standpoint merely of protecting workers against acutely toxic levels of exposures, but from the standpoint of protecting workers against low, cumulative exposure levels." Dr. Thomas Milby, Project Director, underscored this point in his written testimony to Senator Allen's committee. We recommended that this committee study Dr. Milby's testimony:

He said:

1

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 this hand-eye coordination and other neuromuscular functions, so that he is able to pick ten percent 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 older."

Impairment of neuromuscular function is not measurable through cholinesterase tests ... 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.

Other points in the California studies include:

(2) Every piece of evidence examined to date "without exception," points in the same direction: that cholinesterase levels among agricultural workers are lower than those of a matched control group. "It seems clear that this difference must be due to some factor in the environment of the farmworker population, and that this factor is most probably anti-cholinesterase pesticide residues."

(3) Farmworkers are generally unaware of the dangers inherent in their jobs due to pesticides, the nature and extent of how pesticides affect their physical and mental health, and of the medical care and compensation available to them resulting from pesticide "injuries."

1 See p. 397 on hearings before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Agricultural Research and General Legislation of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, pt. II, Mar. 7 and 8, 1972.

(4) Acute symptoms as an indicator of pesticide poisoning constitute an effect so advanced they must be rejected for ethical reasons.

(5) Organophosphates as a class are least amenable to removal by soap and water wash after dermal exposure. Washing at times greater than 1 hour post application either has little or no effect on removing some pesticides and actually increases the extent of absorption after the use of certain other organophosphates.

(6) "Epidemics" of organophosphates poisoning which have broken out periodically among farmworkers occur even when all current regulations governing the use of the pesticide have been followed scrupulously.

(7) In all the cases of testing for safe worker re-entry times, controlled experimentation has pointed toward the necessity for longer rather than shorter re-entry periods.

(8) Although probably half or more of the grape growers in the southern San Joaquin Valley still apply their pesticides in from 100 to 300 gallons of water per acre, there is a strong trend toward concentrate spraying, that is, applications of approximately the same amount of active ingredient but applied in from 25 to 30 gallons of water, per acre. These concentrates result in less loss from plant surfaces in "runoff" and result in increased residues.

(9) Present testing methods for safe worker re-entry times by corporations, like Chemagro Corp., and Niagara Chemical Co., and universities, like University of California, are dangerous and pose a genuine peril to the health of the participating subjects.

All these points, Mr. Chairman, are relevant to the main question of safe worker re-entry times, yet nowhere do we see the slightest mention of the subject by EPA. If they had been doing their job as they should be doing it, EPA would have demanded that safe worker reentry times be one of the essential criteria contained in section 3(c) for registering economic poisons.

Other studies done for the EPA which we would like to make part of the committee's records, underscore this point.

Dr. Keith R. Long, project director of the Iowa Community Pesticides Study, in a report done under contract for the EPA, best summarizes the situation:

People must somehow be made to realize that pesticides are poisons and should be used in response to a specific problem and not for convenience.

There seems to us, Mr. Chairman, to have been a deliberate effort by the EPA and the chemical industry throughout the legislative history of this act to ignore experts like Dr. Long and others and make conditions just as comfortable and just as easy for manufacturers of economic poisons as possible.

You will notice that throughout our testimony we have used the term "economic poisons" because that simply is what they are. The term, however, has been expunged from this act and in its place appears the euphemism "pesticides"; a neat public relations coup by the chemical industry.

Indeed Dr. Philip C. Minter, formerly in the public information office of the Pesticide Program of the U.S. Public Health Service,

writing in a 1967 issue of the trade publication Agricultural Chemicals suggests:

One of the reasons for the present adverse state of public opinion about pesticides has been default on the part of the pesticide chemicals industry. . . Failure to recognize the need for public relations (by the chemical manufacturers) has not only resulted in the present status of public opinion toward pesticides, but it has also resulted in a large number of government regulations being imposed on the use of chemical pesticides. Many of these government regulations .. are quite impractical and make the task of industry a lot more difficult than it would have been if these regulations had never been imposed. This article titled "Pesticides and Public Relations" is available today through the EPA's Chamblee, Ga. office.

Does EPA honestly subscribe to Dr. Minter's apologist views that the whole controversy regarding economic poisons is due to bad public relations by the manufacturers? If it doesn't then it should immediately and completely disassociate itself from these views.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the AAP feels there still is an opportunity for the drafting of a strong piece of pesticide control legislation by the Congress providing, of course, that agencies like EPA will come forth with factual and unbiased information which shows that they value the life and health of farmworkers at least, if not more so, as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Thank you.

Senator HART. Mr. Krebs, if Mrs. Kantor does not object, before having her testimony let me raise a couple of questions based on your statement.

Your statement is a disturbing one. You say that there were tests that two companies did involving ethion and Guthion, and these were done in 1970.

Then an analysis of these tests by the California Public Health Department showed that the workers participating in the experiments had blood enzyme levels, "depressed by absolute amounts in a proportion which by accepted medical standards represented a potential hazard to their health."

They should have been removed immediately from the fields. Then you say that complete analyses were sent to the Georgia office of EPA in December 1970.

I believe that the University of California conducted further tests on these same two pesticides. I am sure you are familiar with those university tests. Could you, for our record, briefly suggest what they show?

Mr. KREBS. Mr. Chairman, concerning those tests, we understand that common medical criteria says that a 20 percent or more depression in cholinesterase levels in plasma and red blood cells constitutes a threat to the health of the farmworker.

Now, in the two companies' tests, the Public Health Department said that there was a significant number who suffered such depressions. We have the exact number in our testimony presented to Senator Allen.

Regarding the University of California tests, it has to be remembered that there are a variety of different ways of measuring how you arrive at this 20 percent, and even the people in the profession have not agreed upon a one tried and true way. At present there are a variety

of ways they measure it. But even in the University of California tests, the percentages were way over 20 percent, no matter what method you used.

As a matter of fact, one of the most accepted methods or probably one of the truest methods, in our view, is to take the worker's exposure level when he comes back into the field and measure that against a control group that is completely away from the pesticides. When we do that with the University of California tests, we find 21 out of the 23 test subjects were registering depressions like 57 percent, percent, 39 percent and 36 percent.

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You know, those are very dramatic increases. As the California report points out, those people should have been removed immediately from the field, but they were not.

Senator HART. For a layman, tell me what happens to a person, whether a farmworker or anyone else, when that 20-percent drop in the level occurred.

Mr. KREBS. Once again, from what we have learned from different studies, organophosphates cause a short circuit of the nervous system, and while we know what happens in the acute stages, you get nausea, and you get sweating, and you have difficulty in breathing and everything, studies are still going on as to the long term effects.

This is the thing that Dr. Milby goes into, the fact that the worker may be losing a little sleep each night, or he may not be eating as much, or his hand-eye coordination may not be as good as it was.

In many cases he himself does not realize it. As Dr. Milby says, he may ascribe it to getting older. He is not conscious of the fact because it has been part of his life, part of his day-to-day working conditions. Senator HART. If I follow you, then, EPA had evidence of adverse effects sometime late in 1970, and then the University of California test that you now describe confirmed the earlier tests that had been performed on the ethion and Guthion properties. That is a correct

statement?

Mr. KREBS. The company tests were included in the 1970 report. The University of California tests were included in the 1971 report, but EPA had both of these reports before they testified before Senator Allen.

Mr. BERMAN. Senator Hart, one or two other points should be made. The reports that EPA has before them establish two things: One, that no one was really following safe testing methods in terms of testing the dangers of pesticides on farmworkers, neither the chemical companies nor the University of California, and they were at the same time establishing that the depression in these values were a potential danger and of possible long-term adverse effects on farmworkers. Not everything was, you know, based on the outbreak of serious poisoning. Yet many are concerned and expressing that to EPA in studies conducted all the way across the country, and EPA had expressed a concern by contracting for the studies. Yet when we get a chance to look at new legislation and build in the professions and the kinds of concerns and problems and deal with some of the problems which EPA has in these studies, EPA says nothing about the studies in their testimony, and endorses the bill. So we have this kind of weak bill which comes out, one that does not deal with the farmworkers, and leaves them without protection.

It is the same story over and over again, and we consider it gross irresponsibility and we don't think that Congress could really deal with this legislation and deal with the farmworkers problem without this information before them, and instead they are sitting piled up

somewhere in EPA's offices.

That is, I think, the kind of theme and information that is contained in our testimony.

Senator HART. Contained in that story, it seems to me is the basis that would indicate that substantial questions as to safety have been developed in the files of the agency, and under the agency's own rule, when there is substantial question as to the safety, cancellation proceedings can be initiated by EPA. Is that not correct?

Mr. KREBS. That is true, Mr. Chairman. When EPA had the opportunity to do this with the results of the company tests, as we point out in our testimony, even when they issued their own summaries of how pesticides should be used, they ignored the results that they got out of the tests, they ignored California's 30-day ban that it imposed on these particular pesticides and went ahead and continued to follow the labels recommendations on zero days and one label and 7 days on the other, and that regulation still continues today, in EPA's own guidelines for the application of these pesticides.

So we think it needs to be stated in law, because if it is left up to the Administrator, the same thing is going to happen.

Senator HART. I would react this way: No matter what the law in its language provides in the future, it would seem to me that under existing language, under their own regulations, EPA is on notice with respect to potential danger in two products, and while I don't know what the result of it is, I would hope that the agency will initiate the cancellation proceedings and will make a final determination whether we write more language into some other bill or not.

There is now, in fact, a clear indication, with respect to these two products, a substantial question as to safety.

Mr. KREBS. There is nothing, however, Mr. Chairman, in the bill. now that requires, except by the wish of the Administrator, reentry time regulations on pesticides as part of the registration process.

Senator HART. But they can be set. Either we can do it, if we think we have the knowledge, and we assign ourselves knowledge sometimes that we don't have, or they can.

You say that the agency has ignored and disregarded its own study, which has shown both the short- and long-term harmful effects on farmworkers of economic poison, even when there was a precise and correct use so far as the label instructions were concerned, and you cite those two products.

Are there studies which have demonstrated substantial lists of farmworkers in the use of the other pesticides, not just these two, even when the label instructions have been followed precisely?

Mr. KREBS. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Probably one of the most dramatic. cases was in 1963, with parathion, which is one of the substitutes now being recommended for DDT.

After its use, workers went back into the field 33 days after application, and there was a mass outbreak of poisonings, where the regulations stated 2 weeks as a safe time for reentry.