EPA's Pestilential Oversight

In its six years of existence, the Environmental Protection Agency has weathered attacks by industry, Congress, the states and consumer and conservation groups. But even thick-skinned EPA officials had to wince at a report issued last week by the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure. The report charged that the EPA had failed to protect the public against poisonous pesticides used to control insects, rodents, weeds and funguses. Said Senator Edward Kennedy, the subcommittee chairman: "I find it incredible that a regulatory agency charged with safeguarding the public health and environment would be so sluggish to recognize and react to so many warnings over the past five years. EPA has failed the consumer and the farmer, as well as the pesticide industry."

Poor Planning. The angry report stems from the EPA's response--or lack of it--to a law passed by Congress in 1972 requiring the agency to re-examine and reregister 40,000 pesticides on the U.S. market by October 1976, which later was extended by a year. Subcommittee staffers admit that the EPA lacked sufficient manpower and funds to complete the job in so short a time. But they charge the agency with poor planning and management, unnecessary delays, opting for shortcuts in evaluating pesticides and making misleading statements to Congress and the public.

The report aims some of its severest criticism at the agency for its decision to accept uncritically the studies and test data provided by the pesticide producers themselves--and for its failure, in many cases, to consider adverse reports and warnings from experts. The EPA, for example, ignored a report in its own files showing that the pesticide 2,4-D caused "increased tumor formation" in rats; as recently as April 1976 it approved what many experts believe to be unacceptably high tolerance levels of the chemical in food products. The agency was also blasted for dragging its feet on aldrin, dieldrin and heptachlor. An EPA review revealed as early as 1971 that there were serious deficiencies in the data that had been previously used to register the pesticides; new tests showed that the substances apparently caused tumors to form in laboratory animals. It was not until 1975, however, that aldrin and dieldrin were removed from the market and the use of heptachlor restricted.

Typical of the agency's shortcomings, says the subcommittee, is the EPA'S failure to act effectively against leptophos, an insecticide that has recently been implicated in an outbreak of nervous disorders among employees at a plant operated by the Velsicol Chemical Corp. in Bayport, Texas. The company, notes the report, failed to inform the EPA of the illnesses for five months. But the EPA ignored equally compelling evidence that the chemical was dangerous. In 1973 and 1974, while the EPA was evaluating leptophos, it received repeated warnings from scientists that the compound was neurotoxic, or capable of causing nerve damage in test animals. One report from Egypt linked the pesticide to the deaths of some 1,200 water buffalo, and a study from an EPA laboratory showed that it could cause leg weakness and paralysis in fowl. Yet it was not until 1975 that the agency acted to ban the import into the U.S. of foods containing any traces of leptophos.

EPA Administrator Russell Train acknowledges that the report contains "some valid criticisms and very good suggestions" and insists that his agency will tighten up its reregistration procedures. The EPA is also planning to take a closer look at other pesticide products, and last week moved against a compound called EPN, which was developed in 1949 and is chemically similar to leptophos. Reason for the agency's unaccustomed haste: a study by an independent researcher indicating that EPN, which attacks the nervous system in much the same way as leptophos, is even more toxic than its close relative.

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