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More is Not Better: Bad Pesticides Amendment to Gut the Clean Water Act

2011-10-06T17:06:22Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

Lobsters are dying off in the Long Island Sound, as reported in today's local Connecticut news. The local lobster fishers attribute the late-season die-off to New York's use of a pesticide to kill mosquitos in their storm sewer catch basins. No thanks to Hurricane Irene, the pesticide washed into the Sound and is now killing off the lobsters.

At the exact same time, 250 miles south in Washington, D.C., some Senators are working to ensure that this problem gets worse.

These Senators are taking advantage of a broadly supported bill to get their dirty, anti-public health amendments to the floor. Just today, Senator Roberts offered an amendment to Senator Reid’s popular China currency bill. Roberts’ amendment seeks to eliminate all Clean Water Act protections of our rivers, lakes, and streams against pesticide pollution.

Sound familiar? It should. This amendment is a copy of the bill that the Senate Agriculture committee quietly voted on a few months ago (S. 718).

And just like the bill, this amendment is a bad idea. It’s bad for public health, it’s bad for our water, it’s bad for the environment.

The Clean Water Act requires entities that are polluting our waters to obtain permits (either from EPA or from their state government). But Roberts’ amendment would eliminate that requirement for any pesticides that are discharged directly into or near waters. The premise of this amendment is that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) is already protecting us from dangerous pesticides. This premise could not be more wrong.

Even the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) identified serious flaws in how pesticides are registered under FIFRA. Relying solely on the FIFRA registration process to protect our environment from pesticides discharged into waters not only jeopardizes our water bodies and public health, it also jeopardizes threatened and endangered species. FIFRA was not designed to specifically protect our waterbodies from all the pesticides that we’re spraying into them. That’s what the Clean Water Act was designed to do: protect our waterbodies from dangerous pollutants.

Don’t let a few disgruntled Senators gut these Clean Water Act protections. Our waterbodies are already contaminated enough with pesticides. Let’s start cleaning them up and keep them that way. Our senators must oppose Roberts’ amendment and any other version of the bills (H.R. 872 and S. 718).

Check out our factsheet here.

Read the whole NMFS biological opinion here.

We Want Hex Chrome Out of Our Drinking Water. Drinking Water Utilites Aren't So Sure.

2011-10-03T18:12:12Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

Nod if you think your drinking water utility should focus on providing you with clean and safe tap water. Now nod if you think your drinking water utility shouldn’t delay efforts to keep cancer causing chemicals out of your tap water.

Still nodding? Too bad, because it looks like your drinking water utility doesn’t agree with you.

Hexavalent chromium (commonly referred to as “hex chrome” or “chromium-6”) is the chemical made famous in Julia Roberts’ movie about Erin Brockovich and her battle against PG&E. It has long been a known carcinogen if you breathe it. Now, the science shows that it also causes cancer if you eat it or drink it. This is a problem for the drinking water utilities because hex chrome is a widespread drinking water contaminant. Currently, there is no drinking water standard for hex chrome – only for total chromium, which consists of both carcinogenic hex chrome and much less toxic trivalent chrome (also called chromium-3).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is poised to finalize its latest assessment of hex chrome, showing that it is a potent carcinogen. The chemical industry wants EPA to wait for the results of industry-sponsored studies before finalizing the assessment. In fact, although it has not been completed, industry spokesmen already claim that the results will help industry make its case against EPA’s assessment. And, the wait for these data could be at least a year, maybe more.

If EPA does finalize its current assessment, it will probably also set a tap water standard for hex chrome. So the drinking water utilities' trade associations have jumped into this fight by siding with the chemical industry. They too want to stall the EPA’s assessment to give the chromium industry time to defend its chemical. Maybe they believe that if EPA weakens its assessment, then it won’t set a standard for drinking water.

California recently set a public health goal for hex chrome in drinking water that is 5000 times more protective than EPA’s current standard for total chromium. If EPA establishes a specific standard for hex chrome, utilities may have to upgrade their treatment facilities. Right now, existing treatment processes such as conventional treatment may be effective in removing trivalent chromium, but not hex chrome.

Why are the drinking water utilities aligning themselves with the industry polluters who don't want to clean up the highly hazardous hexavalent form of chromium?

Whenever I go to drinking water meetings, I hear this saying that the only person who can kill an entire town is the guy in charge of the drinking water. It’s usually said to show that drinking water utilities take their responsibility to protect public health seriously. But in the case of hex chrome, the utilities appear to have lost their focus. Rather than siding with us and with public health, they are cozying up to the industry that wants to keep polluting our drinking water with this dangerous chemical. It’s time to remind our drinking water utilities that they should be protecting us, not the chemical industry.

* * *

Read the letter we sent to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson today to stay on schedule with finalizing their assessment.

My colleague Jen Sass has a great blog on this issue too. Check it out here.

Learn more about Hexavalent Chromium here.

Big Court Win For Public Health: Pesticide Dichlorvos Is Bad For Children's Health

2011-09-19T21:56:07Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

After a long fight, the end is near for one of the nastiest pesticides still on the market: dichlorvos. This chemical was developed from nerve warfare agents after World War II, and has been used in the United States to kill insects in homes, restaurants, theaters, and farm buildings since 1948. If that sounds like a bad idea, it is. Dichlorvos interferes with the human nervous system and can cause severe problems, ranging from vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, and muscle twitching to seizures, loss of consciousness, and death.

The EPA, whose job it is to ensure pesticide safety, has expressed serious concerns about dichlorvos for decades, but never took the steps necessary to protect the public. NRDC petitioned EPA to ban the chemical in 2006, but EPA denied our request. To justify keeping dichlorvos on the market, EPA relied on a human experiment, paid for by the chemical’s manufacturer, in which six white male volunteers were paid to ingest the pesticide for three weeks to see what happened.

There was one big problem with this (apart from the deplorable nature of paying human guinea pigs to drink a neurotoxic pesticide): the study was conducted on adult males only, and therefore couldn’t provide any information on how harmful this pesticide is for infants and children. Children are not just “little adults” – their brains and bodies are still developing, and children can be permanently damaged by exposure to pesticides at levels that wouldn’t harm adults. As a result, Congress directed EPA to include a “safety factor” of ten when determining the safe level of children’s exposure to a pesticide, unless other information proves that the pesticide is safe. In other words, EPA must assume that children are ten times more sensitive to pesticide exposure than adults.

In approving dichlorvos, EPA not only relied on this unethical human study, it refused to apply the children’s safety factor Congress required. So we sued. And last Friday, we won. In a 34-page decision, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York held that EPA unlawfully abandoned the children’s safety factor and explicitly rejected EPA’s use of the industry human study. The court sent the matter back to the agency to explain how such a study could prove safety for children. This is a huge win for children’s health.

What’s next? We think EPA needs to quickly take dichlorvos off store shelves. Decades of research – and EPA’s own findings – show that this chemical is unsafe, especially for kids. And there are lots of new and safer pesticides that have come on the market since this dinosaur was first approved back in the 1940s. After a long and sordid history, one of the worst pesticides still around finally looks to be on the way out. Good Riddance.

Dirty little secrets: Neither antibacterial soaps nor the FDA help us.

2011-08-21T16:52:55Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

This just in from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: “Keep waiting.”

I was on the FDA website the other day, and it seems the FDA has quietly made a small change to a webpage that has big implications for all of us. In a 37-year history of delays, FDA is again delaying protecting us from potentially unsafe chemicals in antibacterial soaps.

Back in April, 2010, FDA announced that it was studying the safety of triclosan (the chemical used in antibacterial soaps). It promised to communicate its findings to the public in spring, 2011. But with no public announcement, FDA recently edited the page to say that it would communicate its findings in the winter, 2012. Check it out for yourself: here’s a link to the page as it appeared when we filed our lawsuit this past summer and here’s a link to the webpage from today.

No explanation of why it needs the extra year and a half. No update on what it’s done so far. Nothing.

Mounting evidence shows that antibacterial soaps containing the chemicals triclosan and triclocarban are neither safe nor effective. In lawyer speak, that is a death sentence for any product awaiting FDA approval. But for the past 37 years, FDA has done nothing to protect us from these products. Neither pressure from a U.S. Congressman nor a lawsuit by NRDC has been enough to push the FDA. And now FDA is giving itself another extension. We’re taking note – and so has the New York Times.

Now, citizens are trying to pick up where the FDA left off. A citizen suit was filed last September against Dial under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Practices Act.

We’ve all seen them. Ads for antibacterial soaps scream “Stop the spread of bacteria!” “Protect your family!” Bottles of antibacterial soap on the store shelf are stamped with “Kills 99.9% of germs!” And it seems obvious. Why not buy the soap that gives us an added layer of protection from the scary bugs that are attacking us every day?

Why not? Because, behind all those scary ads and pretty packaging, they are hiding a little secret: we don’t actually need them.

Antibacterial soaps are no better than regular soap. Scientific studies have shown that. The FDA has admitted that.

Even more important, the very chemicals that make those soaps “antibacterial” might actually be hurting us. Laboratory studies have shown that both triclosan and triclocarban can interfere with hormones, especially those most important for proper growth and reproduction.

If that isn’t enough, triclosan and triclocarban have also been tied to contributing to antibiotic resistance (that is, the rise of superbugs). The problem of antibiotic resistance means that when doctors prescribe an antibiotic to treat an infection, there is a growing chance that it won’t work. This is bad news for everyone.

How many more lawsuits is it going to take before FDA figures it out? FDA, stop covering up your delays, and start acting now. Get these products off our shelves. Protect us. Protect our families.

GAO Report Confirms That Politics, Not Science, Drove Bush EPA Decision Not To Regulate Rocket Fuel in Drinking Water

2011-07-13T18:58:27Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

Five months ago, we heralded the Obama Administration’s decision to regulate perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, in drinking water. Up until then, perchlorate had been contaminating drinking water all around the country without any sign of relief. The science about the negative health effects associated with exposure to perchlorate – especially for pregnant women and infants – was disturbing. As my colleague Dr. Gina Solomon explained to Congress:

Perchlorate is a powerful inhibitor of the normal uptake of iodine into the thyroid gland,as well as normal transport of iodine across the placenta and into the lactating mammary gland. Inhibition of iodine uptake can cause decreased production of thyroid hormones.

In the developing fetus and infant, adequate levels of thyroid hormones are necessary for normal brain development. Subtle alterations of thyroid hormones during pregnancy – even within the normal range – have been associated with decreased intellectual and learning capacity in childhood.

Despite this concern, NRDC research showed that the Bush Administration was working tirelessly to foreclose EPA’s ability to regulate perchlorate in drinking water.

Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, published a report (available here) that confirms that the process used by the Bush era EPA to decide not to regulate perchlorate was “atypical,” as shown by a string of highly unusual steps leading up to its decision not to regulate perchlorate.

First, in a reversal of agency procedure, rather than rely on EPA staff with relevant expertise to handle the analysis, the EPA Office of Water Assistant Administrator directed his staff to draft its decision to not regulate perchlorate based on what was “agreed to” by a workgroup consisting of senior officials from agencies outside of EPA, including the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Second, EPA avoided scientific input from its own Integrated Risk Information System, which it had for all other regulatory decisions on drinking water.

Third, EPA mischaracterized important scientific findings to support the “agreed-upon” decision of the work group. In fact, EPA scientists said that the Agency’s failure to present certain information was a “serious omission” and that the use of the scientific results in the determination was “seriously flawed and misleading.”

Finally, OMB’s role in editing the wording of EPA’s regulatory determination downplayed the health risks from perchlorate exposure.

All told, industry and its allies in the Bush Administration were able to prevent EPA from getting perchlorate out of our drinking for far too long. The Obama EPA made the right decision to regulate perchlorate, but now it must finish its work and set a health-protective level for drinking water. We cannot allow politics to delay any more protecting us and especially our children from this dangerous contaminant.

Letting Pesticide Sprayers Ignore the Clean Water Act

2011-06-21T19:05:19Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

As feared, today the Senate Agriculture Committee sided with the pesticide industry and against our health and the health of our waters by eliminating all Clean Water Act protections of our rivers, lakes and streams against pesticide pollution. To add insult to injury, the Committee made this damaging decision without a single hearing or public conversation. Not only have the members scoffed at our health and our environment, they have done so without letting democracy play itself out in the light of day.

The problem of pesticides contaminating our waters is not theoretical. Even with limited data, we know that pesticides already pollute more than 1,000 of our waterways. And yet the members of the Senate Agriculture Committee voted today to make the problem worse, not better. These chemicals are designed to kill things, and yet the Committee chose to let people put them into our waters without any Clean Water Act Protections.

EPA has already finished the permit to make sure that people who spray pesticides directly into water follow the Clean Water Act. (Check out the permit here.) That permit will go into effect on October 31 of this year. But if this bill passes, that permit is moot. Thanks to the Agriculture Committee, what should have been our last summer of having to swim in pesticide-infested waters could soon become a lifetime of pesticide contaminated swimming holes with no end in sight.

Senate Agriculture Committee Poised to Choose Pesticide Industry Interests Over Clean Water Act Protections

2011-06-20T18:03:29Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

Like many people, Sue Eisenfeld once assumed that the government would protect her and her family from dangerous pesticides, in large part because of the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). But that was before last year when she sprayed her house to get rid of fleas. Today, as she battles severe autoimmune reactions caused by the pesticide spraying, she has learned the hard way that FIFRA is woefully inadequate.

But now, the Senate Agriculture Committee wants to stake all of our waters and our health on their mistaken belief that FIFRA is strong enough. The Committee plans to pass H.R. 872 without a hearing and with a voice vote as early as tomorrow.

As I’ve mentioned many times, this bill is bad for our health and bad for our environment. It will create a loophole in the Clean Water Act that will allow pesticides sprayed by irrigation control districts and other groups to legally ignore the Clean Water Act requirements before putting these poisons in our waters. In other words, the spraying of toxic chemicals into the rivers that we fish in, the lakes that we swim in, and the streams that provide our drinking water would not need to comply with the only statute that was created to protect our waterbodies and us.

FIFRA has not protected our waters or our health in the past. The Committee wants us to believe that FIFRA will sufficiently protect our waterbodies and our health now? I bet that we would all prefer to have the strong Clean Water Act protect us from pesticides that are dumped into our water before we take our families swimming or fishing or give them a glass of water to drink. Unfortunately, the Senate Agriculture Committee doesn’t want us to have that luxury.

Can you guess what these states all have in common?

2011-05-23T15:33:10Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

What do Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New York, Indiana and Georgia all have in common?

Answer: Every state has at least one waterbody that is impaired by pesticides and at least one senator on the Senate Agriculture Committee – the same committee that is considering gutting the Clean Water Act in favor of the pesticide industry .

What’s the big deal? Consider this.

The River Raisin in Dundee, Michigan, just 20 miles north of Toledo, empties into Lake Erie. From the Michiganders that I know, you don’t mess with Lake Erie. But here is a river running into Lake Erie that is so contaminated with pesticides that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has listed it as impaired, meaning it has chronic or recurring monitored violations of water quality criteria for certain pesticides.

Michigan isn’t alone. The Arkansas River that runs through Wichita, Kansas is also impaired by pesticide contamination. So is the Schuykill River in Pennsylvania, Cedar Lake in Iowa, and Back River in Brunswick, Georgia.

Right now, there is some hope for these and hundreds of other similar waterbodies across the country. The US EPA has drafted a permit covering pesticides that are applied into water bodies for mosquito, weed and algae, animal pests in water, and forest canopy pest control (often called “aquatic pesticides”). The permit requires applicators to monitor the area they’re spraying to make sure they’re not killing non-target plants and animals; they have to consider the use of non-pesticide alternatives; and they have to keep certain records about their spraying activities. These are neither burdensome nor onerous, and are things we want pesticides applicators to do.

However, the pesticide makers want Congress to stop EPA and the states from requiring applicators to do any of these things. In fact, the Senators on the Agriculture Committee are considering eliminating all federal regulation over pesticides sprayed into waterbodies - including Senators representing states that have waterbodies already impaired by pesticides.

Most states do not issue their own permits for aquatic pesticides, and so EPA’s permit would be used in these states. H.R. 872 would exempt applicators in those states from having to do things like considering non-chemical means of treating pests and using best management practices when spraying. And the few state permits that do exist now could also be on the chopping block. With one big sweep, S. 718 would wipe all pesticide permit programs off the books. Both scenarios will mean more pesticide-contaminated waters for all of us.

Check out this map to see how your state’s waterbodies stack up.

Go to this EPA site to find out whether pesticides are impairing your local waterbody.

Two important things to remember when you’re looking at this data.

The only way we get this information is if the states go out and look for it. A state like Florida may appear to have no pesticide impaired waters, but unless the state agency actually tests the water for pesticides, they aren’t going to know they have a problem. So Texans, South Carolinians and others should ask their state agencies whether they are looking for pesticides in their water, and if they aren’t, ask them why not.
A state can only find a pesticide that it tests for. In other words, even if a waterbody is listed as impaired by a pesticide other than an aquatic pesticide, you should still be concerned, because the state may not have tested for aquatic pesticides. But more importantly, regardless of the exact pesticide causing the impairment, application of pesticides of any kind would only add to the toxic load in that contaminated water body.

Let’s keep our clean waters free of pesticides and let’s clean up the contaminated ones. We all prefer fishing, birding, kayaking, and swimming in toxin-free rivers, lakes and streams, don't we?

Pesticide industry bill would axe Clean Water Act protections

2011-05-11T15:35:51Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

David Bianco’s rose farm in Selma, Oregon sits next to a private forest whose owners plan to conduct aerial spraying of herbicides. Lake Selmac, a popular recreational lake and campground, sits just half a mile from the forest. David, along with some of his fellow residents of McMullen Creek, have been fighting to stop the planned spraying. He’s raised concerns about the impact the herbicide might have on his roses, the impact it has on his father-in-law’s health, and the impact it might have on Lake Selmac.

Photo: Jeremy McWilliams

He has a right to be concerned. Pesticides are, by design, poisons made to kills things. Many of our waterways are already impaired by pesticide contamination. And now, if special interests have their way, people like David and his neighbors will lose a critical tool to keep pesticides out of their local waterways. The Senate is poised to pass a bill that would completely remove Clean Water Act protection of our waters from pesticide contamination.

Let me repeat that: the Senate is poised to pass a bill that would completely remove Clean Water Act protection of our waters from pesticide contamination. This is madness. How could this happen?

Thanks to disingenuous catchphrases and a cleverly selected bill name, the pesticide manufacturers were able to convince many in the House of Representatives to vote for H.R. 872, and now the Senate is all that stands between this bill and the President’s desk. Unfortunately, the true effect of the so-called “Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2011,” which should more appropriately be called the “Reducing Environmental Protections Act of 2011,” can’t be wrapped into quick sound bites. These special interests used the complexity of this issue to turn Congressmen who typically work to protect the public health into conspirators in exposing our waterways and our bodies to more pesticides.

The same efforts are now underway to quietly usher this terrible bill through the Senate. But with just a bit of education, we’re hoping that our lawmakers will see through the smoke and mirrors and oppose this bill. Here’s a quick primer on what the pesticide industry isn’t saying about the laws.

We have two key laws that deal with pesticide contamination in our water. First, there is the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). FIFRA, for the most, is about getting pesticides to market. Under this law, a pesticide manufacturer must apply to EPA to have its product registered, at which point the pesticide can be sold and distributed in the U.S. As part of the application, the manufacturer must submit to EPA results from toxicity and other tests to show that, in general, the pesticide will not cause unreasonable adverse effects on the environment when used according to the label. When EPA decides whether to register a pesticide, it will consider the data submitted by the manufacturer and consider the potential health and environmental impacts. The end product is a label on the product that sets forth the way the pesticide can be legally used. The label is the law.

Then we have the Clean Water Act, which focuses on the use of pesticides that are sprayed directly into or near waterways. If a pesticide applicator—the person or business actually discharging the pesticide—needs to spray a pesticide into or near a water body, the applicator must obtain and comply with a Clean Water Act permit. This permit specifically requires the applicator to take certain actions that can reduce the amount of pesticide that is released into the water body.

The difference between these two protections is important. Under FIFRA, EPA sets forth the maximum amount of pesticide that can be used without causing unreasonable adverse effects on human health and the environment. Under the Clean Water Act, EPA requires certain steps be taken when a pesticide is used with the goal of minimizing the amount of pesticide that goes into our waterways.

FIFRA alone cannot adequately protect waterways from contamination. The requirements under the Clean Water Act permit are different from (and more environmentally protective than) the FIFRA label requirements. For example, EPA’s proposed general permit for pesticides applied directly to water requires applicators to consider other non-chemical methods of controlling pests, prohibits use of any pesticide into a water body that is already impaired by that pesticide (or its by-product), and specifies the types of records that must be kept (among many other things). None of these things is required under FIFRA.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has said that this bill would fix the issue of “duplicative pesticide permitting requirements facing farmers, ranchers and others who use pesticides." But actually, not only are the Clean Water Act protections not duplicative, but the permitting requirements do not apply to farmers or ranchers. The permit at issue here specifically cover four types of spraying in water and at water’s edge: mosquito and other flying insect pest control, weed and algae pest control, animal pest control and forest canopy pest control. Land applications of pesticides are not covered. Only those farmers whose crops grow in water bodies would be covered by these permits; farmers and ranchers’ land applications of pesticides are not covered.

In my earlier post, I mentioned that we have many pesticide-impaired water bodies in the U.S. One commenter noted that the pesticides impairing those streams are not the aquatic pesticides at issue in EPA’s permit and therefore that they do not impact water the way I claim. He’s right – these aren’t the pesticides causing the impairments that we know of. The fact is that our waters are rarely – if ever – tested for the presence of aquatic pesticides; but if they were, we might find even more impaired water bodies. Furthermore, the last thing you want to do to any water body already contaminated with pesticides is to add more pesticides to the mix. One of the major flaws in the FIFRA registration process is that EPA does not look at the effect of different pesticides have on human health and the environment when they are mixed together. In the real world, no pesticide is discharged in a vacuum; the Clean Water Act takes this real world circumstances into account, but FIFRA does not.

The truth is that without these permits and without the Clean Water Act, we could see a growth in rivers, lakes and streams impaired by pesticide contamination. We could see more massive fish kills from improperly applied pesticides seeping into normally pristine water bodies. We could see more pesticides contaminating our drinking water sources. We will have fewer water bodies to fish in, to swim in and to drink from.

When it comes to laws about poisons, don’t we want our decision-makers to base their decisions on reality, and not on catchy sound bites?

Please help stop this sneaky bill. Find your Senators’ phone numbers here. Call them and tell them to oppose the bad pesticides in water bill S.718.

Bad Bill Will Mean More Pesticides in Our Water

2011-03-26T04:48:16Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

When I was growing up, we had a creek (pronounced “crick” where I’m from) running through our backyard that my little sister and I would play in all spring and summer long. We would be soaked head to toe by the end of the day from running through the water, looking for tadpoles and chasing butterflies.

It’s a great memory, and I hope someday my son will have similarly fond memories of playing in the stream that runs through my parents’ neighborhood. But if the chemical industry special interests have their way, we all need to be careful about letting our kids play in the local waterbodies, or about fishing in a nearby river, or swimming in a lake.

Right now, a bill - HR 872[1] - is quickly making its way through the House of Representatives that puts all the rivers, streams, lakes and other water bodies in the U.S. at risk of pesticide contamination. This bill seeks to exempt the spraying of pesticides into or near a waterbody from the Clean Water Act. This is madness.[2]

Supporters of this bill want to rely solely on the federal pesticide law -- called FIFRA[3] for short (“fif-rah”) -- to protect our waters from these toxic chemicals. Under FIFRA, the Environmental Protection Agency registers pesticides that can be sold and used in the U.S. if the Agency finds that its use “will not generally cause unreasonable adverse effects on the environment.”

But FIFRA does not protect our waters from pesticide contamination.

How do we know? There are over 1,000 waterbodies in the U.S. known to be impaired by pesticide contamination - and many more are likely polluted but are not tested. The US Geological Survey has found pesticides in every stream sampled in a nationwide survey. Pesticide contamination is rampant: from California to Kansas to Illinois to New Jersey - almost every state across the country has pesticide-contaminated waters.

This is no theoretical concern. Examples of pesticides destroying more than the target pest abound. An irrigation district’s spraying of a pesticide into their irrigation canal ended up contaminating a nearby stream and killing 92,000 juvenile steelhead trout. These chemicals are designed specifically to kill things, and it should come as no surprise that once they enter the water, they wreak havoc on the health of aquatic plants and animals, and they work their way up our food chain and into our drinking water supplies.

When Congress first passed the Clean Water Act almost 40 years ago, its aim was to restore the most polluted waters or protect pristine waters from contamination. One program - called NPDES[4] (“nip-deez”) permits - allowed the Agency to set limits on the amount and type of pollution that can be dumped into a waterbody by taking into consideration things like how the waterbody is used (for fishing or swimming) and whether significant fish species rely on the waters. None of these things is considered by FIFRA. (For curious readers, check out our factsheet for a side-by-side comparison of the differences between FIFRA and the Clean Water Act).

At its core, FIFRA is about getting pesticides to market. The Clean Water Act is about minimizing pollution. We need the Clean Water Act to protect us from FIFRA-registered pesticides.

But those special interest groups have convinced many representatives on both sides of the aisle that it's not necessary, that FIFRA alone can protect us. They have marched in farmers and ranchers bemoaning the burden that this permit would have on them, on agriculture, and on our economy. But they forget to mention that this permit does not apply to the vast majority of ranchers and farmers. (The only farmers this would apply to would be those whose crops actually grow in a waterbody.)

In a few days, on Wednesday, March 30, the House will be voting on this terrible bill. Before they do, your representative needs to hear that you want to be able to use your local lakes and rivers without worrying about being poisoned by pesticides. If you fish, or swim, or paddle or just want clean water, join our friends - like San Francisco Baykeeper - to stop this disastrous bill.

[1] The so-called “Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2011” which should, more appropriately, be called the “Contaminating Our Water With Pesticides Act.”

[2] Even though we’re in the midst of March Madness, that’s no excuse.

[3] Full name, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.

[4] Full name, the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System.

How Do Republicans Show Their Love? Cutting Job Creation Opportunities and Not Cleaning Up Our Tap Water

2011-02-14T22:00:39Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

As I’m writing this blog, there is news of a water main break in Asheville, NC that threatens the main feed for the nice folks up in the Appalachians. People in Richmond, VA were notified to boil their water after a water main break this weekend. A high school in Detroit, MI was closed today because of a water main leak over the weekend.

These problems are plaguing big cities and small towns alike and they need two things: money to fix the pipes and people to do the job.

And yet, when the House majority breathlessly released their budget cuts, they happily chopped $ 547 Million from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. In 2007, EPA estimated that we have over $ 330 Billion dollars in need over the next 20 years to maintain the pipes and water mains running under our streets. That translates into more than $ 16 Billion that we need to keep the water coming out of our tap safe to drink. That also translates into enough shovel-ready projects that would create work for more than 400,000 Americans, including almost 90,000 direct construction jobs.

And yet, the Republicans cut funding to these projects. I thought they cared about jobs. I guess I thought wrong.

The Obama Administration is not completely innocent either: the president’s proposal cuts $ 410 Million from the drinking water budget.

I don’t get it. Times are tough and people are struggling to make ends meet. A trip to the hospital to treat Cryptosporidium poisoning is the last thing anyone wants. So why aren’t we doing what we can to make sure that doesn’t happen to anyone?

We all drink water and bathe in water and cook with water. Don’t we want it to be clean? We should not be further crippling our cities’ ability to provide us with clean tap water. And we should put tens of thousands of people to work to clean up our water. Our health depends on it.

Please Pass the Salmonella

2011-02-10T21:41:54Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

Our house was hit with a bit of food poisoning last week that served as a timely reminder of why we want to keep our food supply as clean as possible. Luckily, the only real inconvenience was that my husband was stuck eating saltines and drinking ginger ale for a day. Not everyone is so lucky. Salmonella contamination in peanuts, eggs, and cilantro (to name a few) over the past couple of years has killed at least 9 people and sickened hundreds more. Outrage over the widespread contamination of our food supply prompted Congress to pass the Food Safety Modernization Act a little over a month ago. This law marked the most sweeping reform to food safety oversight we’ve seen in decades and smartly focuses on preventing food contamination in the first place.

But with the stroke of a pen, House Republicans may be effectively repealing this law. They have proposed budget cuts of $202 million from the Food and Drug Administration that may prevent FDA from implementing the law and, worse, could render FDA’s already anemic food inspection programs practically meaningless.

FDA’s current food surveillance program is abysmal. High profile cases of Salmonella, E.coli, and Listeria contamination hit the news and serve as a clarion call for cleaning up our food supply. But other contamination that doesn’t get the attention of the public also slips past the FDA all the time.

Pesticide residues on our foods are tightly regulated, but lightly monitored. EPA is the agency that scientifically assesses and sets the limits on pesticide residues that can be on our food (called “tolerances”). EPA takes into account a lot of factors including how toxic the pesticide is, the increased susceptibilities of infants and children to the adverse health effects, and other sources of exposure to the pesticide to determine the safe level. FDA is the agency that enforces those limits, meaning food that contains pesticide residues that either are not approved or exceed the tolerance can be removed.

On paper, this framework protects us from eating toxic pesticides; however, in reality, we just don’t know. A report by the investigative arm of Congress found that FDA reviewers only physically examine 1 percent of food shipments. ONE PERCENT. And a recent paper by Ryan Galt showed that FDA residue testing is missing a lot of pesticides that foreign farmers are using on food that is imported into the US. A lot of these pesticides are not approved for use in the US. But because FDA only checks 1 percent of the food shipments, the chances that it will catch this food is nearly zero.

But it’s not just about the food supply. A lot of consumer products are already avoiding regulation despite evidence that they can cause harm because FDA lacks the resources to tackle them. My colleagues have worked a lot on the chemical Bisphenol A in food packaging which is awaiting agency action. We have also talked a lot about the chemicals triclosan and triclocarban in antibacterial soaps that are making it into the food chain and which should have been regulated over 36 years ago. Taking away desperately needed funding to this agency will only further delay action. Do we really want to reduce FDA’s ability to protect us from toxic contaminants in our food and products? I don’t, but it looks like some of the Republicans do.

Score One for Public Health: EPA Will Regulate Rocket Fuel in Drinking Water

2011-02-02T02:34:10Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

Huge news coming out of EPA’s Office of Water today. After a decade of pushing by NRDC, EPA announced that it has decided to regulate perchlorate in drinking water. While this might not sound like much, it took a lot to get EPA to this point.

The Agency is taking a very important first step to lowering the amount of perchlorate that can be in tap water. The Agency did not set an actual limit on perchlorate in drinking water. That is still to come and will still require more work on our part to make sure the Agency sets a number that protects public health. But today’s announcement marks a big shift for the Agency.

EPA's decision to regulate perchlorate will not only protect our health but reverses bad public policy that has put us at risk for years.

Perchlorate is a component of rocket fuel, and it has been used by defense contractors for decades. It has been contaminating the water in the Colorado River and other water bodies since the 50s and continues to find its way into our drinking water around the country. Those mostly responsible for all the perchlorate in our water, including the Department of Defense, have – until today – successfully stopped our government from doing anything about the contamination. The Bush Administration even tried to foreclose all chances of regulating perchlorate in drinking water. Thankfully, under the Obama Administration, the Agency is taking its job of environmental and public health protection seriously.

Under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, when EPA finds that a contaminant meets three criteria, it must begin the process of limiting its presence in drinking water. Today, EPA found that perchlorate meets all three criteria.

1) Perchlorate may have an adverse effect on the people’s health,

2) Perchlorate is known to occur or there is a substantial likelihood that the contaminant will occur in public water systems with a frequency and at levels of public health concern, and

3) Regulating perchlorate presents a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for those served by public water systems.

Here at NRDC, we have been telling the Agency for at least a decade that perchlorate contamination of drinking water is a huge problem and needs to be dealt with by the Agency. My colleague Gina Solomon has also testified twice before the U.S. Congress about the need to regulate perchlorate. Gina, along with our colleague Jen Sass, have done a fantastic job describing the adverse health effects associated with exposure to perchlorate. And EPA’s decision reflects its agreement with this science.

Secondly, perchlorate contamination is found in almost every state. EPA sampled the water in just 3,865 public water systems and found that 4% of them – which serve 17.6 million people – contained perchlorate at or above 4 parts per billion (the lowest level that was looked for) or higher. Extrapolated to the whole nation, this means that tens of millions of people are drinking perchlorate-contaminated water. A 2010 report by the investigative arm of the Congress, the GAO, found perchlorate in water and other media in 45 states. Below is a map from that GAO report showing the levels of perchlorate found across the country. (Click on the map for a larger image.)

Even more concerning, the Food and Drug Administration found perchlorate in more than half of the foods that they tested. And perchlorate is found in human breast milk. Perchlorate-contaminated food and water may likely contribute to breast milk contamination. That means the very populations that need protection from exposure to this chemical could be getting a shot of perchlorate every time we feed them.

Finally, Administrator Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, has determined that limiting the amount of perchlorate allowed in drinking water presents a “meaningful opportunity” to reduce the risk to public health. Given the science on the impact of perchlorate on normal thyroid function and the data on the widespread occurrence of perchlorate throughout the U.S., this determination marks the Agency finally coming to its senses.

Some Companies Stop Using Triclosan to Get On Santa's Nice List, but FDA Still Gets a Lump of Coal

2010-12-22T18:21:08Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

‘Tis the season. Our house has been hit with the baby’s first cold. For 5 days, we have been managing the crying and whining (his and mine), but today he seems much better and has started smiling and laughing again. I bet at this point many people would hit the store and stock up on antibacterial soaps made with triclosan and triclocarban to avoid a repeat performance. This would explain why the concentration of triclosan found in children increased by more than 50% between 2004 and 2006. And since the swine flu craziness last year and now the reemergence of whooping cough this year, the levels found in our bodies will probably continue to increase.

And so we have been pushing FDA to act quickly and get these chemicals off the market. Because most companies are going to take the FDA’s lead and act only when the FDA acts.

Today Congressman Markey released responses to the letters that he had written to the CEOs of 13 companies urging them to stop manufacturing and marketing products that contain triclosan. While a few of the companies like Victorinox, Reckitt-Benckiser, and Colgate-Palmolive already have or are planning to phase triclosan out of some or all of their products, most of the companies were relying on FDA regulations to ensure the safety and efficacy of their products. But a year after Rep. Markey last wrote to FDA pushing for the regulation, the agency still shows no signs of movement.

We’ve already been waiting more than 36 years for FDA to do something. So after playing nice with FDA and getting nowhere, we finally sued the agency this summer. If it’s a judge’s order that FDA needs to regulate these chemicals in soaps and lotions, then that’s what we will get for them. In the meantime, we’re hoping that more companies will follow the lead of the Reckitt-Benckisers and stop putting unnecessary triclosan and triclocarban in their products.

Nanosilver Stinks

2010-09-15T18:07:15Z

Mae Wu, Program Attorney, Washington, DC

No one wants to smell bad when they’re playing sports or camping, so everyone should go out and buy antibacterial, odor-fighting clothes. At least that’s what companies like HeiQ Materials Ag are betting on, by making antibacterial clothes and other textiles by treating them with nanosilver. Ignoring the silly idea that you have to smell pretty when you’re sweating, should we be allowing our clothes to be treated with this pesticide?

A month ago, EPA announced its plan to allow nanosilver to be registered as a pesticide for use as a preservative on textiles like clothing, towels, and bed sheets. NRDC submitted comments opposing EPA’s plans because it is illegal, irresponsible, and potentially dangerous to the public.

Silver is a well-recognized antimicrobial; it is very toxic to aquatic organisms (of all the metals, only mercury is more toxic), can bioaccumulate in ocean plants, and is persistent in the environment. Nanosilver – or silver nanoparticles – works because it is designed to release silver ions, meaning people who wear them will be exposed to them, and that when these textiles are laundered, nanosilver will be washed into our waterways.

When a company applies to register a pesticide, it must submit a specific list of data to be used by EPA to determine whether the pesticide can be used without harming humans or the environment. Sometimes, EPA will ask the company to submit additional data; when it does, it can grant the company a time-limited “conditional registration” so the pesticide goes onto the market while the company works on developing this additional data. Then, EPA is supposed to look at this new data and decide whether the pesticide should continue to be registered.

On paper, this process seems to be a fair way to collect newly required data and not punish the company. However, in reality, it is grossly misused. And at least in the case of nanosilver, EPA is using it illegally. As it turns out, EPA is proposing to allow the company to use nanosilver for the next 4 years while it develops and submits a host of missing data. The problem is that some of this data is legally required to be submitted as part of the initial application, not after. In essence, EPA is giving this company a four year free pass to generate data that EPA’s own regulations written 26 years ago have always required to be submitted upfront. For a pesticide that has some potentially devastating effects when released into the environment, and potentially damaging effects when absorbed by humans, EPA should be more discriminating about who gets a conditional registration.