Palm Beach Post, Christine Stapleton
Published December 19, 2005
Every year, Florida farmers use tons of pesticides not approved for use on their crops.
It's legal and it's done after growers' advocates persuade state and federal officials that a "non-routine emergency," such as a bug or fungus, will devastate a crops unless they are allowed to use the unapproved pesticide.
Critics contend that this practice, known as a Section 18 exemption, endangers the public and enriches chemical companies. They say the so-called emergencies aren't really emergencies and the state agency responsible for protecting the public, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, rarely inspects how growers use the unapproved pesticides.
A Palm Beach Post review of the most widely exempted pesticides under the Section 18 program revealed that the agency has recommended approval of exemptions, even though its own pesticide laboratory wasn't capable of testing for the pesticide. Instead, the agency's records show it works hand-in-hand with growers to obtain the exemptions, even agreeing to delete unfavorable information that could jeopardize the exemption application.
"These Section 18's are a way to permit unlawful pesticide use," said Aaron Colangelo, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council in Washington. "It's got such an innocuous name: Section 18. It's hard to build public awareness about something named Section 18."
Understanding how and why a Section 18 exemption is granted means recognizing that little in the realm of pesticides is black or white. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticides, doesn't define a pesticide as good or bad. Instead, the agency finds that pesticides are tolerable or intolerable. An intolerable pesticide, such as DDT, is banned. Tolerable pesticides are safe at certain levels.
To determine what level is safe, the EPA conducts its own research and reviews research done by chemical companies, often on animals. Among the factors the agency considers: the toxicity of the pesticide and its byproducts; how much of the pesticide is applied and how often; and how much of the pesticide remains on food by the time consumers eat it.
The EPA also takes into consideration consumer habit: for example, how many pounds of strawberries, blueberries or wheat the average American eats every year. It then sets a tolerance, a maximum amount of a specific pesticide residue that a person can consume from all products: fruits, vegetables, grains, etc.
Each pesticide has its own "risk cup," and that cup will overflow if the EPA allows that pesticide to be used on too many crops. That means a pesticide can be approved for use on one crop, say blueberries, but not on another, such as strawberries, because consumers probably would be exposed to too much of that pesticide and the risk cup would overflow.
A Section 18 exemption allows growers to use pesticides that have not been approved for a specific crop. Sometimes, a pesticide has not been approved because the research is incomplete or new research indicates additional dangers. In other cases, the risk cup is already nearly full.
Mike Aerts of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association prepares the paperwork for nearly all Section 18 exemptions in Florida. Aerts said he weeds through the requests, making sure the situation is truly an emergency and that no other pesticide would control the problem.
Aerts, who files from five to 10 requests a year, says the exemptions are legitimate and essential to prevent agricultural disasters.
"We'd love not to have to do Section 18's," he said. "If there was something registered, we'd use it. I'd love to be doing something else."
Still, there are abuses.
The EPA's guidelines require growers to prove that a "urgent, non-routine situation" exists and that no other registered pesticide will work. The pest must be new and not prevalent in the U.S. or a threat to humans or an endangered species or cause significant economic loss.
But some of the "urgent, non-routine situations" occur every year. One fungicide has been granted an exemption for the past six years to treat greasy spot on Florida's grapefruit, a problem so prevalent that L.W. Pete Timmer, plant pathology professor at the University of Florida, calls it "a problem in every citrus grove in Florida. It's universal in citrus."
Richard Wiles, senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group in Washington, said, "They stretch the definition of what an emergency is."
A study the group published in 1999 found 90 exemptions granted to use the same pesticide on the same crop in five or seven years. "There should be a minimum number of years someone could have the same emergency. At a certain point, it's no longer an emergency, it's a routine pest problem."
