Our Children at Risk at School

All data available to us today suggest that children face hazards from pesticide use at school that are unacceptable. The GAO report being released today confirms that our federal government is not doing enough to protect our nation's most precious resource, our children.

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Subject:           Jay Feldman's Statement---
 Date:               Thu, 06 Jan 2000 17:45:10 -0500
From:             Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Lyndon Hawkins <hawkins@empm.cdpr.ca.gov>
          State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
          Integrated Pest Management

Lyndon, I thought you might like to read Jay Feldman's Statement:

Statement of Jay Feldman, Executive Director
Beyond Pesticides/National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides
at Press Conference on Release of GAO Report
Pesticides: Use, Effects, and Alternatives to Pesticides in Schools

U.S. Senate
January 4, 2000

Good morning. I am Jay Feldman, Executive Director of Beyond Pesticides/National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, a national grassroots, membership organization that represents community-based organizations and people across the United States and around the world seeking to improve protections from pesticides and promote safe alternative pest management strategies. A key concern among our members is the impact of pesticides on children.

We applaud Senator Lieberman for having asked the GAO to undertake a review that asks a basic question about our children's short- and long-term health:  Are our children safe from toxic chemicals while they are at school?

All data available to us today suggest that children face hazards from pesticide use at school that are unacceptable. The GAO report being released today confirms that our federal government is not doing enough to protect our nation's most precious resource, our children. It was the National Academy of Sciences in its  1993 report Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, that told the nation that more must be done to protect children from pesticides, that the U.S. Environmental Protection (EPA) must move deliberately and agressively.  We were told that children are especially vulnerable to pesticides. Children take in more pesticides relative to body weight than adults and are less able to detoxify toxic chemicals.1 Low levels of pesticide exposure can adversely affect a child's neurological, respiratory, immune and endocrine system.

Of the 48 most commonly used pesticides in schools, the vast majority can cause debilitating and life threatening health effects: 21 can cause cancer, 27 can adversely affect reproduction, 31 are nervous system poisons, 31 can cause liver/kidney damage and 17 can cause birth defects. The standard that EPA has principally used, according to GAO, "that school classrooms should only be treated when students are not present and that all treated surfaces should be dry before the students are allowed to return," is not a safety standard. A pesticide dry on the surface of a desk, lunch table or play area, chair or couch contains residues that result in exposure to the skin, inhalation from residue vapors, ingestion through hand to mouth activity, exposure patterns that continue well past the pesticide drying on the surface. A 1998 study found that one insecticide, chlorpyrifos, accumulated on furniture, toys and other sorbant surfaces up to two weeks after application.2 A separate study involving chlorpyrifos found substantially higher chlorpyrifos concentrations in the infant breathing zone,3 which is close to the floor where air circulation is reduced.

At the same time, GAO found that EPA has little information on which pesticides are used where and in what quantities. This raises serious questions about EPA's ability to evaluate at least two critical elements in determining pesticide impacts on children: aggregate exposures to numerous pesticides with the same toxic mechanism; and, multiple nondietary and dietary exposures to the same pesticide.

The EPA system GAO describes equates to the old standard used for farmworkers which EPA rejected over a decade ago, when farmworkers could reenter the fields after the pesticides had "dried or dusts had settled."  (Unfortunately, we still allow unacceptably high standards of hazard for farmworkers, a topic for another day.)

A survey conducted by Beyond Pesticide/National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides in late 1998 found that the federal government has left children unprotected at school, while states have adopted a variety of requirements which range from providing right-to-know to parents and school staff when pesticides are used, buffer zones around school grounds, and pest management approaches intended to reduce pesticide use. GAO found that 9 states require some type of notification before applying pesticides and 18 states require schools to post sins whenever pesticides are applied. The state protections, although each important efforts unto themselves, represent uneven and inadequate across the country, and school children and staff continue to be put in harms way.

We endorse the measures that Senator Lieberman is calling for today, that swift administrative action be taken to alert parents and school staff to the use and potential dangers of pesticides used at school, and that EPA develop the data it needs to act expeditiously.

In the field of public health there exists the basic notion of the "precautionary principle." It suggests that, where, in the case of toxic chemical use, there are suspected adverse effects and serious deficiencies in safety standard setting, we look for alternatives that eliminate or avoid exposure to the potential hazards. It is here where we can and must talk about forms of pest management that eliminate the use of hazardous pesticides, and only use least toxic materials as a last resort. The original definition of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) embraced this notion of integrating cultural (including temperature control, and maintenance, sanitation), mechanical, biological practices with pesticides as a last resort.

What the General Services Administration (GSA) has done in its 30-million square feet of office space can and should be done for the nation's children. GSA has defined IPM as, "a process for achieving long-term, environmentally-sound pest suppression through the use of a wide variety of technological and management practices. Control techniques in an IPM program extend beyond the application of pesticide to include structural and procedural modification that reduce the food, water, harborage, and access used by pests (GSA, Public Buildings Service, Specification No. BM-5-1, January, 1989, p.1). The IPM policy encourages the avoidance of pesticide use with the requirement: "The Contractor shall use non-pesticide methods of control wherever possible." The policy says that portable vacuums rather than pesticide sprays shall be use for initial cleanouts and that trapping devices rather than pesticide sprays shall be used for indoor fly control wherever appropriate.

Finally, we applaud Senator Lieberman for his decision to co-sponsor S. 1716, the School Environment Protection Act, introduced by Senators Robert Torricelli and Patty Murray. Because there is no federal standard to protect children from pesticides while at school, the School Environment Protection Act (SEPA) is critically important. It will clearly define IPM with specific acceptable materials, ensure the development of school IPM plans, and, if pesticides are used, require prior notification and hazard information for all parents, students and staff. EPA will be required, with the assistance of a 12-member public advisory board, to phase out the most hazardous pesticides in schools. The goal, under the statute, is to provide for a safe learning environment.

When we as a nation decide to protect the most vulnerable among us, our children, we will take the reasonable steps called for here today.
 

References

National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1993;
Calabreses, E.J., Age and Susceptibility to Toxic Substances, John Wiley & Sons, 1986;
Natural Resources Defense Council, Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children's Food, February, 1989;
Spyker, J.M. and D.L. Avery, "Neurobehavorial Effects of Prenatal Exposure to the Organophosphate Diazinon in Mice, " Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health 3:989-1002, 1977;
Paigen, B., "Children and Toxic Chemicals,"  Journal of Pesticide Reform, Summer 1986.
Gurunathan, S., et al., "Accumulation of Chlorpyrifos on Residential Surfaces and Toys Accessible to Children," Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 106, No. 1, January, 1998.
Fenske, R. et al., "Potential Exposure and Health Risks of Infants Following Indoor Residential Pesticide Applications," American Journal of Public Health 80(6):689-693, 1990.
 

Beyond Pesticides/National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides
701 E Street, SE #200
Washington, DC 20003
ph 202-543-5450
Fax 202-543-4791
http://www.ncamp.org
ncamp@ncamp.org

Well Lyndon, when will you begin to protect the children of California by allowing the safe and effective use of alternatives to your dangerous "registered" pesticide POISONS?

Respectfully,  Stephen L. Tvedten
 
 

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