HOW ‘BOUT THEM APPLES? PESTICIDES IN CHILDREN’S FOOD TEN YEARS AFTER ALAR RICHARD WILES E NVIRONMENTAL KENNETH A. COOK TM W ORKING GROUP TODD HETTENBACH CHRISTOPHER CAMPBELL This report is dedicated to our friends and colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose pioneering research, litigation and advocacy have done so much to rid the food supply of dangerous chemicals like Alar, and make protection of children the central goal of federal pesticide policy. E NVIRONMENTAL TM W ORKING GROUP Acknowledgments Special thanks to Molly Evans who designed and produced the report, to Bill Walker who provided helpful editorial advice, and to Melissa Haynes for coordinating the release of How ‘Bout Them Apples? How ‘Bout Them Apples? was made possible by grants from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Turner Foundation, the SBF Fund of the Tides Foundation, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Pew Charitable Trusts or other supporters listed above. Environmental Working Group is responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation contained in this report. Copyright © February 1999 by the Environmental Working Group/The Tides Center. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Printed on recycled paper. Environmental Working Group The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C. The Environmental Working Group is a project of the Tides Center, a California Public Benefit Corporation based in San Francisco that provides administrative and program support services to nonprofit programs and projects. Kenneth A. 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Contents FOREWORD ......................................................................................... i EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 1. TEN YEARS AFTER ALAR ....................................................... 5 CHAPTER 2. WHAT YOU CAN DO ....................................................... 15 CHAPTER 3. METHODS AND DATA SOURCES ........................................... 19 REFERENCES ...................................................................................... 29 How ‘Bout Them Apples? Foreword The government always in- risk, it would be a massive and Ten years ago this sists the food supply is “safe.” helpless shrug. week the govern- Right up until it bans a high-risk ment’s top pesticide pesticide like Alar that has been One saw a version of that regulator told an on the market, and in the food shrug on a 60 Minutes story that of millions of children, for de- aired ten years ago this week, as astonished Ed Bradley cades. Then the government we go to press. The that the pesticide Alar says the safe food supply is government’s top pesticide regu- was far too “safer.” lator told an astonished Ed Brad- carcinogenic to ley that the pesticide Alar was far qualify for federal It’s nonsense, of course. too carcinogenic to qualify for approval under the There are literally dozens of pes- federal approval under the stan- standards then in ticides on the market today that dards then in place for “new government scientists in large chemicals.” But by then Alar had place for “new measure have concluded are been on the market and in apple chemicals.” unsafe for at least some, if not products for decades. Parents, most, of their registered uses. understandably, were neither re- All of those chemicals—like assured by, nor sympathetic to nearly all of the major pesticides the government’s legalistic re- used in “modern” American agri- sponse when Bradley asked why culture—have been on the mar- it could not take action against a ket for 25 years or more. carcinogenic pesticide its scien- They’re old. They’re toxic. tists were deeply concerned Parents couldn’t ban They render the foods they con- about, and that contaminated Alar from the food taminate unsafe. Kids eat them apples, apple juice and other supply. But they every day. A great many are apple products heavily consumed could do something now under regulatory suspicion, by children. about the apples and and have been for many years. To borrow a phrase from two So what parents rightly did apple juice. bold young politicians of the instead was to stop relying on early 1990s, it’s time for them to the government’s word that the go. food supply was safe. Parents couldn’t ban Alar from the food But they don’t go. If you supply. But they could damned could summarize the well do something about the government’s stance in the face apples and apple juice their kids of overwhelming evidence of were consuming while the gov- ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP i Two years after the 60 ernment dithered, diddled and every level in the legal system a Minutes broadcast, the deferred to pesticide companies. few years later. So resound- Bush Administration In various ways—some quite ingly, in fact, that farm groups dramatic—parents stopped feed- resorted to the creation of an banned Alar. Not ing their kids apples. It was entirely new body of legisla- because parents were traumatic and tragic for the tion—the “veggie libel laws”—in still upset—but apple industry, but was hardly order to stifle media coverage of because the the reaction 60 Minutes in- food safety issues. Oprah fa- chemical posed an tended, or what the Natural Re- mously trounced them in the unacceptable sources Defense Council recom- “hamburger hate crime” trial, on cancer risk. mended, in the pioneering re- the farmers’ home court in Texas search report (Intolerable Risk) just last year. that formed the basis for the broadcast. Equally unfounded was the notion that without Alar, apple Consumer response to their production would be impossible. government’s stark paralysis, in Pesticide companies and farm the face of a clear food risk, groups have shouted such gave birth to the myth that the claims whenever a pesticide has Alar episode was an unfounded been threatened by regulatory “food scare.” Traffickers in the action, going back to DDT. myth—including, to our dismay, Apple production continued a great many journalists—rarely without a blip after Alar was tell the story to the end. banned. The real “food scares” in pesticide policy resemble the The real “food scares” Two years after the 60 Min- one pesticide companies and in pesticide policy utes broadcast, the Bush Admin- farm groups are trying to perpe- resemble the one istration banned Alar. Not be- trate now, as the government cause parents were still upset— turns its attention to the health pesticide companies federal pesticide law has no pa- risks posed by organophosphate and farm groups are rental distress clause—but be- insecticides in the food supply. trying to perpetrate cause the chemical posed an The use of a number of these now, as the unacceptable cancer risk. The chemicals needs to be banned government turns its ban was made politically easier or severely curtailed, as EWG attention to the health by the fact that the manufacturer, documented a year ago. Farmers risks posed by Uniroyal, had voluntarily taken say there is no risk, they have the product off the market in the no options, and that food prices organophosphate wake of the uproar. But the fact will skyrocket. That, too, is insecticides in the remains that NRDC was right on nonsense. food supply. the science—and so was CBS— and it was science that produced This latest EWG report shows an Alar ban. that apples still need a clean-up ten years after Alar. So do many Several things about the Alar other fruits and vegetables. It is episode did turn out to be un- the latest in a series of EWG re- founded. One was the apple ports, dating from our founding grower’s lawsuit. CBS won at in 1993, that focuses on the spe- ii HOW ‘BOUT THEM APPLES? PESTICIDES IN CHILDREN’S FOOD TEN YEARS AFTER ALAR cial risks posed by pesticides in What should parents and other EWG has come to the the diets of infants and children. consumers do while the govern- conclusion that this We dedicate it to our friends at ment makes up its mind? In this government is not the Natural Resources Defense report and at our new, award- going to do its job to Council (NRDC) because their winning web site— work ten years ago on Alar, their www.foodnews.org—we provide protect children from lawsuit to enforce the Delaney some advice. It does not mean pesticides. Clause, and their ongoing advo- dropping fruits and vegetables cacy not only forced a dangerous from the diet—that, too, is apoca- chemical out of the food supply, lyptic, post-Alar rhetoric from the but helped pave the way for a pesticide lobby. stronger pesticide law to protect kids. We’re proud to fight along- What it does mean, in our side NRDC, Consumers Union, opinion, is giving little kids and other public interest col- fewer—or no—apples, peaches leagues today to try to make the and other produce that carry pes- protections in the Food Quality ticides that government scientists Protection Act of 1996 a reality.