07
Apr
The Longstanding Hazards of U.S. Pesticide Exportation Exposed (Again) by Petition to EPA
(Beyond Pesticides, April 7, 2023) A petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implores the agency to halt the practice of allowing pesticides banned in the U.S. to be exported to other countries without any consent from relevant governmental authorities in those nations. The two petitioners—the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)—are focusing on a longstanding practice of U.S. pesticide manufacturers and brokers, who sell toxic pesticide products that fail to qualify for EPA registration domestically to entities nearly anywhere in the world (except where the products are specifically prohibited). As Beyond Pesticides has noted, this is a dangerous and environmentally unjust practice and has for decades urged Congress and EPA to forbid it.
According to the CIEL press release on the matter, the petition was motivated by the reality that banned or voluntarily withdrawn pesticides “are routinely exported to countries that often have limited resources or capacity to assess and regulate chemical risks,” and that the “practice has directly fueled the influx of extremely hazardous pesticides to countries in the Global South, where they disproportionately harm Indigenous peoples and vulnerable and marginalized communities.” The organizations emphasize that, for example, more than four-fifths of countries that import neurotoxic pesticide compounds that are banned in the U.S. are egarded as developing or low-to-middle income, and that in more than three-fourths of those, roughly 30% (or more) of their agricultural workers suffer pesticide poisoning annually.
The petitioners argue that what they are urging EPA to do — “initiate rulemaking procedures to require prior informed consent for the export of pesticides unregistered in the United States” — would help less-well-resourced nations make informed decisions about whether (or under what conditions) to allow such hazardous products into their countries.
The petition notes, “Current EPA regulations and practice on the export of unregistered pesticides are incompatible with the legislative text and purpose of the FIFRA provisions. This becomes even more apparent in light of accepted understandings of ‘notice’ that have developed since 1978, and the fundamental change in pesticide trade since that time. The regulatory, scientific, and public health context with respect to pesticides and hazardous substances has shifted profoundly in the 65 years since FIFRA’s original adoption, and in the more than four decades since the statutory language of FIFRA §17 was amended to its current form.” (FIFRA is the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the statute that governs the registration, regulation, sale, and use of pesticides.)
The petition also calls out the environmental injustice of current practice, and endorses the 2019 conclusions of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxics Baskut Tuncak, JD. He then said that all countries — in order to “meet their obligations to respect, protect, and promote fundamental human rights,” must “adopt laws and policies consistent with their duty under international human rights law to prevent exposure to hazardous substances, protect the most vulnerable and susceptible and prevent discrimination; prohibit the export of chemicals and production processes that are prohibited from use domestically; and prevent the import of chemicals and production processes that are prohibited in the country from which they are exported.”
The petition cites three central arguments underlying its request for new rulemaking:
- The U.S. has binding obligations to provide prior informed consent regarding exports of delisted or unregistered pesticides under treaties which it has signed or ratified.
- The U.S. has a duty to ensure prior informed consent as a matter of customary international law.
- Prior informed consent is a legal tradition rooted in U.S. domestic law.
Absent prior informed consent (PIC), these unregistered pesticides are able to cross national borders and are often deployed “on the ground” with minimal oversight or enforcement of regulations that may exist. CBD and CIEL further argue that PIC is a “widely accepted legal concept that has been defined by many U.S. statutes, including FIFRA, U.S. multi-lateral agreements, and other international treaties and agreements.”
Commenting in 2020 on the global dynamics of this exportation of banned/unregistered pesticides, Mr. Tuncak said, in a statement endorsed by 35 other experts on the UN Human Rights Council, “Wealthier nations often create ‘double standards’ that allow the trade and use of banned chemicals in parts of the world where regulations are less strict. [The] ‘racialised nature of these standards cannot be ignored’ as the dangers [are] externalised to communities of African descent and other people of colour. These loopholes are a political concession to industry, allowing their chemical manufacturers to profit from inevitably poisoned workers and communities abroad, all the while importing cheaper products through global supply chains and fueling unsustainable consumption and production patterns. It is long-overdue that states stop this exploitation.”
The petitioners also maintain that the production of these banned pesticides — which is ongoing in the U.S. —disproportionately harms domestic fenceline communities that are more often (than those of other demographic groups) located nearby to pesticide (and other chemical) manufacturing facilities. Further, the residents of these “environmental justice” communities, often low-income and/or people of color, may well comprise much of the workforce for production of these compounds, putting them at additional, heightened health risk.
Spokespeople for both organizations offered their takes on the petition’s goals. CBD Environmental Health Science Director Nathan Donnelly commented, “The Biden EPA must end the horrifically immoral U.S. legacy of squeezing profits out of dangerous pesticides we refuse to use ourselves by shipping them off to developing countries. Pesticide companies are exploiting weak laws to dump their most toxic poisons on countries with extremely limited regulatory resources. This system is built on deception and shrouded in secrecy. It’s time to make it more transparent.”
CIEL President Carol Muffett said, “In the half-century since FIFRA’s notice requirements were last updated, the U.S. has dramatically expanded its pesticide exports while falling ever farther out of step with global standards governing those exports. EPA has the opportunity, authority, and . . . obligation to narrow that gap and provide importing countries with the critical information they need to better protect their own people and the U.S. public.”
For its part, EPA notes that although pesticides intended only to be sold abroad need not be registered in the U.S., their sale by exporters must comply with specific requirements under FIFRA, and exporters must submit reports to EPA. Such requirements have mostly to do with exporters keeping track of how much of what is sold to whom and when, as well as a requirement that importers must certify their understanding that the products are not registered in the U.S. In addition, every pesticide, active pesticide ingredient, and any pesticide “device” that is exported must bear labeling that meets FIFRA requirements.
EPA has long used labels as a mechanism to attempt to tweak the parameters along which pesticides are used domestically — changing a labeling requirement as a “baby step” means of trying to limit damage from use. The agency calls the label “a key part of pesticide regulation,” and cites label contents as critical to “safe” handling and use in order to avoid harm to human health and the environment.
Pesticide front-side labels may include: a restricted use pesticide statement; a product name, brand, or trademark; an ingredient statement; a child hazard warning statement; a signal word (“danger,” “warning,” or “caution”); a first aid statement; a skull and cross bones symbol and the word “poison”; and net contents/net weight. The back side includes a precautionary statement, directions for use, storage and disposal instructions, and a warranty statement.
Beyond Pesticides Executive Director Jay Feldman notes that EPA’s label restrictions should not be regarded as adequate for the protection of human and environmental health, primarily because the agency does not exercise sufficient scientific scrutiny in its registration of pesticides. Mr. Feldman cites broader issues relating to the serious hazards associated with U.S. exportation of all pesticides to developing countries. He comments: “Clearly, EPA bans pesticides or negotiates their withdrawal from the market because it is determined that their use results in unacceptable risk factors. Their removal from the market in the U.S. should result in a concurrent ban on exportation. More broadly, the problem extends to all pesticides, since EPA knows that the exportation of registered pesticides to countries that do not have the infrastructure, regulation, training, and enforcement to ensure product label compliance will result in harm to health and the environment. In fact, all legal uses of pesticides in the U.S. are based on EPA risk assessments, however weak or deficient, that establish allowed uses based on risk mitigation measures. EPA then determines that the resulting restrictions necessary to meet its standard of pesticide safety (or allowable harm) are reliant on the enforceability of pesticide product labels. However, it is clear that we allow pesticide exportation to countries without the resources and capacity to ensure compliance, thus, resulting in unacceptable harm by any standard.”
In 2020 coverage of this issue, Beyond Pesticides reviewed a study showing that companies in the United Kingdom and the European Union are also exporting such products, and that the biggest importers were countries in the Global South — Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, and Ukraine. In August 2022, our reporting looked at a BBC investigative team’s discovery that, “Export data from U.S. ports found that over 27 million pounds of pesticides forbidden for use domestically were shipped at an average of 32 thousand pounds per day. In 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that banned pesticides were being produced in 23 U.S. states.”
As if the export of banned pesticides to other countries were not sufficiently concerning, a 2019 Truthout article — “Export of Banned US Pesticides Creates a Deadly Circle of Poison,” by Elisabeth McLaughlin — reminded Americans that the chickens of unethical practices will inevitably come home to roost. To wit, some of the food grown in countries using these U.S.-banned pesticides ultimately returns to American dinner plates, replete with residues of those pesticides.
EPA’s established “tolerances”(maximum residue levels) for pesticide residues on food do not apply to imported foods U.S. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducts annual reviews of pesticide residue on both domestic and imported foods; in 2022, the review concluded that “samples of food imported to the U.S. from other countries appeared to pose a greater risk of containing pesticide residue. Countries documenting the highest number of import violations included Mexico, India, and Pakistan.”
Another reality in this scenario is that pesticides that have been effectively banned in the U.S. continue to contaminate the environment (and soils, in particular) and thus, continue to show up in food plants. Evidencing the persistence of some pesticides over time, the 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual Summary found that now-banned, “legacy” pesticides continue to show up as residue on food plants grown in the U.S., — including DDT, chlordane, dieldrin, and lindane.
In covering this issue in 2022, Beyond Pesticides wrote: “For banned pesticides . . . the fates of agricultural workers thousands of miles away . . . may seem (increasingly) remote. . . . But it is critical to remember that legacy chemicals are ‘gifts that keep on giving,’ whether DDT from the ‘40s and ‘50s, DBCP in the ‘70s, or PFAS chemicals used for the past 90 years (among others). But in addition, the creation and deployment of toxic legacy chemicals are not all in the past; this is a ‘rolling admissions’ situation because we continue to . . . export toxic chemicals whose impacts may show up now, or may show up in a decade or more.”
In her article, Ms. McLaughlin pithily wrote, “When the federal government bans a pesticide, pro-industry loopholes allow agrochemical companies to recoup lost profits by manufacturing the same pesticide for use abroad. . . . This disturbing practice creates a ‘circle of poison’ where we are unknowingly consuming U.S.-banned chemicals in food produced in conditions dangerous to agricultural workers and their families. How can ethical responsibility for hazardous chemicals end at our borders?” She added, “With no comprehensive global regulatory framework to guide policy for transport, storage and use, the U.S. consciously subjects vulnerable agricultural workers overseas to chemicals known to cause harm and death, and widens international dependence of agriculture on pesticides.”
This export by agrochemical entities of pesticide compounds whose use the U.S. will not permit within its borders is an ethical and health outrage, as well as an assault on environmental justice communities in countries around the world. The petitioners’ request of EPA for new rulemaking to prevent this is certainly a useful step, and the agency should comply with it.
Yet the ultimate solution lies in eliminating the use of synthetic pesticides — some of which are registered and toxic, some of which are banned and toxic, and some of which are registered and have not yet been determined by EPA to be toxic enough — in the U.S. and worldwide. Beyond Pesticides has called for the transition to organic agricultural (and other land) management in the next decade. The public can help advance the organic transition by talking about the importance of it to everyone: family, friends, local food purveyors/markets, and local, state, and federal officials (elected and otherwise), and by supporting Beyond Pesticides and other advocacy groups, whether national, local, or international. Find more on how to help with our Tools for Change webpage.
Sources: https://www.ciel.org/news/epa-petitioned-to-halt-export-of-us-banned-pesticides-to-developing-countries/ and https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/environmental_health/pdfs/FIFRA-Petition-Section-17-March-2023.pdf
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
I would bet my life this is the reason so many kids are coming down with intestinal cancer. Also would wager my life savings this is the increased cause of so many having issues such as learning disabilities also. It’s past time we shut down this mess. My health improved once I went totally organic. Stop the madness.
April 12th, 2023 at 3:44 pmWE MUST not be sending poisons to other countries!! If we ban them, then NO ONE should be allowed to send them ANYWHERE! It is a hazard of doing business if a product is deemed bad or it’s use not allowed. The companies making these DANGEROUS poisons MUST NOT be allowed to make $$$$ on them anywhere, ever!
April 12th, 2023 at 4:24 pm