Faced with a monumental task and a minimum of human power to accomplish it, the EPA began devising shortcuts for reviewing data, one of which was the organization of products of a similar chemical structure into “batches.” Thus the EPA managed to cut down the number of products it reviewed from the fifty thousand that are actually on the market to the fourteen hundred active ingredients in those products—a practice that failed to consider either the possible consequences of combining these ingredients in one product or the toxic properties of what scientists have called “inert” ingredients. Short of qualified staff that could evaluate complicated data on the effects of a particular substance on laboratory animals, the EPA’s task force resorted to a cursory examination of data that had been submitted to the agency by manufacturers in support of reregistration of their products. Although manufacturers often failed to include any chronic toxicity testing in their “research conclusions,” the EPA staff routinely decided the safety of a product on the basis of the manufacturer’s “research.” This “cooperation” continued in spite of the fact that “in virtually every instance, independent pathologists diagnosed many more cancerous and precancerous tumors in the test animals than did the original manufacturer’s laboratory pathologists.”8
The story of 2,4-D reregistration by the EPA in April 1976 is typical of the EPA’s casual and cursory approach to the reregistration of pesticides.
On April 8, 1976, EPA mailed reregistration guideline packages to manufacturers of 670 products containing 2,4-D for which more than 45 residue tolerances have been granted on such foods as dairy milk, eggs, poultry, meat, corn, apples, vegetables, and citrus fruits. The guidance packages cited a two-year rat and dog feeding study performed by FDA in 1963 as “sufficient” to satisfy the “chronic” safety testing requirements for reregistration. Yet a summary report on the study in EPA’s files stated that there was “increased tumor formation” in the rats… An independent pathologist, who reviewed the raw data on the study at the request of subcommittee staff, concluded that 2,4-D “is carcinogenic in rats.”9
Despite its rather slipshod methods of determining whether a particular chemical should be reregistered, the EPA cannot be held responsible for the quality of the data upon which it must base its decisions. Nor can one hold the EPA accountable for the fact that some of the data it has received is not only poor in quality but fraudulent. According to a federal grand jury’s indictments against four former officials of Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories, once considered one of the most important industrial laboratories in America, the company fabricated results of two cancer studies on the herbicide Sencor and the insecticide Nemacur, submitting the results of “tests” to the EPA in support of registration of those products.
The indictment also accuses the officials of “concealing the fact that TCC (trichlorocarbanilide), an antibacterial agent used in deodorant soaps manufactured by Monsanto Corp., caused atrophy in the testes at the lowest dose tested in mice…”10 “They also fabricated results of blood and urine studies which were never performed on Syntex Corp.’s anti-arthritic drug Naprosyn, according to the indictment.”11 Curiously enough, even though the EPA may have based its decision to register a product or products on falsified laboratory data, this is not considered grounds for removing the product from the market. After receiving permission from the EPA, Mobay, a Pittsburgh-based subsidiary of Bayer AG of West Germany, continued selling Sencor and Nemacur.12
Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories is bankrupt, its deserted laboratories a mausoleum to bad faith. And yet, in spite of the fact that the EPA has declared many similar tests “worthless,” one has to wonder how many products are still on the market because of “data” submitted to the EPA for review by manufacturers who trusted the results of “scientific studies” performed by a “reputable” laboratory.
“You know,” Bonnie Hill says, pausing as though she has just remembered a very important and unpleasant fact, “I don’t really think they will bring 2,4,5-T back. They will probably just let it remain where it is, that is, not pass a ban, but refuse Dow’s request to lift the suspension order. I may be fooling myself, but I can’t conceive of them bringing it back after all that has gone on. I think there will be a lot of very angry and very frustrated people if they do. Because the feeling, the level of frustration, is pretty high now because of what they are spraying. You know, Dow loves to say, ‘Oh, these people are against anything; they’re just against all sprays.’ And I sometimes would say, ‘That just isn’t true, we really are trying to look at these substances one by one and trying to consider each in what we think is a fair manner.’ And I think that is still true for a lot of us, but I also think that a lot of people who live here are feeling very frustrated that people are just coming in whenever they feel like it and spraying with helicopters—we don’t know what—very close to our homes. I think there is a misconception among our Oregon legislators, and maybe people in general, that this is happening in pretty remote areas, but that just isn’t true. In fact, just three days ago, just a half-mile from Alsea, a helicopter was spraying as people were bringing their children to preschool. There was a helicopter spraying just across the highway, and people were pretty upset about that. We just don’t know when they are going to spray, and we don’t know who is spraying, and we don’t know what they are spraying. And I just think that’s a right that we should have. We have a right to know what’s going on in our own backyard. They’ve continued the use of 2,4-D around here, even though a Canadian study has shown it to be carcinogenic; and some of the other things they’re using could be equally or even more dangerous than T for all we know. The chemical companies just keep on making products, and we continue to be their guinea pigs.
“Of course, in spite of all the adverse publicity 2,4,5-T has received, there are people who still argue that we—that is, those of us who would like to see it banned for good—are just trying to wreck the economy or some nonsense like that. Right after the EPA’s suspension order was announced, the governor of Oregon released a ludicrous report about how many billions of dollars and thousands of jobs would be lost if 2,4,5-T were removed from the market. But you could ask anyone in Alsea, a community that’s almost 100 percent dependent on the timber industry, about that. I mean, how many jobs are provided by a helicopter coming in and spraying, and how many jobs would be provided by hiring a crew to go out and cut brush. And believe me, people are willing to go out and do that. You know, these professors at OSU [Oregon State University] say, ‘Oh, you’d never get people to do that kind of work,’ but that’s not true, there are a lot of people around here who would be happy to do almost anything right now—they just want to work. The economic justification for using these substances just really isn’t there, and a lot of people think that’s one reason why Dow wanted to terminate the EPA suspension hearings—they really didn’t want to get into the ‘benefit’ section of the hearings because they don’t have any real evidence that this stuff is really beneficial. They just haven’t done the kind of scientific studies they claim to have done to prove that this stuff is really a benefit to our economy.