A young female farm worker picking fruit in Washington’s Yakima Valley came to see Dr. Matthew Keifer after pesticides being sprayed in an adjacent orchard wafted onto her. She arrived with red, swollen eyes and itchy, irritated skin—classic symptoms of exposure to Paraquat, a common weedkiller that can cause kidney, heart, and liver problems.

Keifer suspected the Paraquat had made her sick, but proving those suspicions was impossible: For many pesticides, no tests exist that would show, definitively, whether or not a person been has exposed to the chemical. Had a test existed, Keifer’s patient would have been able to to file a workers compensation claim that, if successful, would have covered the costs of her medical care and given her paid time off while she recovered. Instead, she went without.

“If a person’s illness is judged to be work-related, they enter into a care system with excellent financial support and have access to referrals,” Keifer says. “If not, they’ll be stuck out there in limbo, usually without care.”

Without working diagnostic tools, doctors are left to make educated guesses about their patients’ health by piecing together information about their work conditions and symptoms—a situation that can lead to missed or even wrong diagnoses.

“It’s almost asking clinicians to practice with their hands tied behind their backs,” says Amy Liebman, director of environmental and occupational health programs at Austin, Texas-based Migrant Clinicians Network.

After years of running into this problem while treating orchard workers in Washington’s Yakima Valley, Keifer devised a solution: He wants the EPA to require chemical companies to provide tools that would detect human exposure to their products.

Proponents of the idea say it could help safeguard the health of some of the most vulnerable people in society—farm workers. And it would also let policymakers better understand pesticides’ true impact on public health: It’s hard to effectively regulate a chemical if those in charged with doing so don’t know who’s being exposed or whether existing safety protocols work.

The idea is gaining traction in public health circles. In November, the American Public Health Association passed a resolution urging the EPA to require pesticide manufacturers to develop methods for detecting human exposure to their chemicals. The resolution was authored by Keifer, who serves on the EPA’s Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee, and Liebman. The EPA will hold hearings on biomarkers and other diagnostic tools in October.

Pesticide exposure is a real risk for farm workers and people living in farm towns where pesticides are routinely sprayed on nearby fields from helicopters, small planes, trucks, and backpack sprayers or injected into the soil. Exposure to many of the chemicals used in industrial agriculture, like methyl iodide (which is applied to strawberry fields), is linked to cancer, miscarriage, thyroid disease, and many other life-threatening maladies.

“Exposure is extremely likely, yet we don’t require the chemical companies to provide the tools to diagnose what is almost inevitable: illness,” Keifer says. “This is information that we the public should be entitled to have. What are the long-term health effects of the chemicals [these] companies are putting into the environment?”

Chemicals that wreak such precise havoc on insect bodies inevitably get into human bodies, too.

“Given the fact that that these chemicals are meant to hurt organisms, and that we both share physical processes with these organisms and share an environment with them, it would make sense that we would have a way of diagnosing poisoning with those chemicals,” says Keifer, who left Washington to head the National Farm Medicine Center in Wisconsin last year.

While it is difficult to prove that exposure to a certain chemical causes a certain illness, measuring the presence of a chemical in a person’s body–a process called biomonitoring—is an important step toward understanding the health effects of pesticides, protecting workers from overexposure and helping poisoned workers seek treatment and workers compensation, when possible.

To perform biomonitoring, researchers look for signs that signal a chemical’s presence in the body, called biomarkers. Biomarkers can take various forms—exposure to some chemicals can be tracked by looking for changes in DNA or in the production of certain enzymes. Traces of the original chemical or its metabolites—the byproducts created when it is broken down by the body–can often be measured in body fluids like blood, breast milk, and urine. Unlike environmental monitoring, which measures the amount of a toxic substance in the air, water or soil, and can be used to estimate the degree to which humans are also being exposed, biomonitoring is a more precise way to measure the amount of a chemical a person actually takes into his or her body.

Biomonitoring isn’t alien to watchdog agencies; Washington and California mandate the biomonitoring of farm workers who apply organophosphates to strawberries, broccoli, lettuce, and other crops. Organophosphates have been linked to ADHD, reproductive health problems and cancer, and the data has been used to remove workers from potential overexposure and evaluate workplace safety practices.

But the EPA has about 19,000 pesticide products with more than 1,000 active ingredients in its registry. Developing biomarkers for each one is a task research chemist Dana Barr, an Emory University professor who spent more than 20 years at the Centers for Disease control developing tools to detect exposure to chemicals, calls “daunting.”

One of the biggest challenges is figuring out the metabolite for each chemical—a key step in developing many biomonitoring tools. Researchers often resort to trying to predict which chemicals will be on the market and what their metabolites might be, but the process can involve a lot of trial and error, says Barr.

Asking chemical companies to provide that information would make it simpler and less expensive to develop biomonitoring tools, Barr says. “I think they know a lot more about they chemicals they manufacture than we know,” says Barr. “I’m not saying they’re purposefully withholding that information; I just don’t think they’ve been asked for it.”

Bruce Hammock, an entomologist who’s spent 26 years developing biomonitoring tools at the University of California, Davis, agrees that requiring pesticide companies to provide this sort of information would streamline his work. His researchers usually go through the sometimes-arduous task of isolating biomarkers for certain chemicals because companies were not willing to release that information.

“In some cases you can guess [the biomarkers] pretty well,” he says, “but other times you’d be surprised.”

The EPA’s rules already require pesticide manufacturers to submit extensive information about their products, including their effects in laboratory animals.

Everyone interviewed for this story, including Thomas Helscher, Monsanto’s director for corporate affairs, agrees that chemical companies already possess much of the information they would need to develop a biomarker for their products. Monsanto makes the weed-killer Roundup, which is widely used in soy farming (not to mention home gardening). Long term exposure to high levels of its active ingredient, glyphosate, could cause reproductive health problems and kidney damage, according to the EPA. A 2010 study linked low doses of the chemical to birth defects in animals.

Helscher said creating tools to detect his company’s chemicals in the human body would be “feasible” in most cases. Still, he cautioned that biomarkers may not always be helpful in detecting agricultural chemicals that pass quickly through the body. “Whether the data from such an assay will be useful will depend on the specific chemical or metabolite,” Helscher says.

Helscher also said Monsanto has cooperated with researchers who were developing biomonitoring tools for some of his company’s products. Still, he cautioned that while biomonitoring can measure exposure to a chemical, it does not diagnose disease.

But even if tests are developed for each chemical available, performing them could still be cost-prohibitive, Barr says. “There are lots of tests that exist, but very few labs have the capacity for testing a broad range of pesticides,” she says.

Still, Hammock, the UC Davis entomologist, says it’s often not necessary to do expensive tests for a broad range of pesticides—just the ones that are being sprayed on the crop at any given time. Researchers are close to developing a dipstick urine test for pesticides that would be similar to a pregnancy test and allow workers to see almost instantaneously whether they’d been exposed to a handful of common pesticides.

Hammock sees potential for cheap, quick tests like these to be used to demonstrate the value of using safety equipment and following safety protocols.

He worked with a group of men who were spraying pesticides in highway median strips in California. The group tested their urine and found that while all showed signs of exposure, two of the men’s blood samples showed pesticide metabolite levels 1000 times higher than the rest of the crew’s. When Hammock went to talk to the men, he realized they’d done reckless things—one accidentally sprayed his car with pesticides, wiped the windshield off with his hand, and then ate a sandwich. The other blew out the nozzle of the applicator with his mouth.

“Being able to say, ‘Look at what we found in your urine versus what we found in your buddies’ urine,’ has real shock value,” he says.

Keifer, a driving force behind October’s EPA meeting on biomarkers, says asking the EPA to use its authority to better protect farm workers who are largely Latino and low-income is largely an issue of environmental and economic justice.

“Who gets poisoned by pesticides? It’s not the guys who run insurance companies, and it’s not senators,” says Keifer. “It’s poor working guys and women in the field and they are disproportionately affected by the lack of tools to diagnose pesticide poisoning.”

Originally published at The Ration

The idea behind the Environmental Working Group (EWG)’s Dirty Dozen list is a simple one. Many of the growing number of eaters who have been swayed by the benefits of organic food still can’t afford it 100 percent of the time. So, by compiling EPA and USDA data on the amount of pesticides left on foods when they are ready to be eaten (once they have been washed and peeled), EWG created a list ranking nearly 50 conventionally grown fruits and vegetables. The 12 at the top earn the “Dirty Dozen” moniker and the 15 with the least reported pesticide residue get listed as the “Clean 15.”

If you are one of the million plus people who have received a copy of the pocket-sized guide, now in its fifth edition, you know it can act as a kind of decoder ring to help unscramble some of the competing messages about where to put your perhaps dwindling organic dollars.

“People have expressed a lot of gratitude for the guide,” wrote Jovana Ruzicic, a spokesperson for EWG, in a recent email. “They seem to feel relieved at the findings. Knowing that they can make a priority list helps overcome the stress of keeping a family or themselves healthy.”

If you’re shopping with more than your own immediate pesticide exposure in mind, however, lists like the Dirty Dozen are only one piece of the puzzle. Why? Because while the guide tells eaters how much is on the food when it’s ready to eat (this part is crucial) it doesn’t say anything about the amount used in the production of that food.

Then there’s this telling rule of thumb: by and large, the fruits and vegetables that are the most loaded with pesticides have thin skins (peaches top the list, alongside peppers, strawberries, apples, and cherries), while a number of the “cleanest” foods have a thick skin or husk, like avocado or corn — in other words, they’re the most protected.

When asked whether shoppers who use the list might have an impact on agriculture’s bigger picture, EWG’s Ruzicic was straight to the point: “We do not have any data that would support (or not support) the thesis that buying from the clean list would reduce pesticide use.”

Selyne DeYarus of the Organic Center, a research-based nonprofit with a guide of their own called Organic Essentials, acknowledges that what’s missing from the list might be equally important as what’s included.

“There are a lot of implications for the use of these chemicals that may not be direct.” she says. “You’re not as likely to be contaminated by eating an orange as you are a peach, for example, but there may be quite a lot of residue on the peel.” DeYarus also points to what she calls a “trickle down effect.”

“Those toxins still kill mammals and birds when they get in the groundwater and surface water.” And when it comes to toxicity, the health of the environment does have an eventual, if not easily traceable, impact on human health. Then there’s also the health of the people growing the food to consider.

Brian Hill, science director at Pesticide Action Network North America, says that any time a consumer chooses an organic product as an alternative to what’s on the Dirty Dozen conventional list, they are making a choice that positively impacts farm workers and their communities. But he has some reservations about the other end of the list.

Onions, which are listed as the cleanest food on EWG’s list, are an interesting example. According to Hill, three of the top four pesticides commonly used on onions in California are fumigants — gases that are put in the soil before the onions are planted. Fumigants, he adds, drift into the air and “affect the workers and the communities near the fields, but they’re long gone by the time the [onions] reach the grocery stores.” In this state, conventional farms use 700,000 pounds of fumigant pesticides on onions every year.

While the Shoppers Guide to Pesticides might not paint the complete picture, Hill says, there are not many other options for shoppers looking to make quick strategic choices about what to buy organic. For now lists like the Dirty Dozen and Organic Essentials do help keep shoppers from feeling powerless against a tide of difficult choices.

He adds, “there are other ways to become generally aware of how pesticides impact farming, by belonging to one of the organizations working on pesticide problems, for instance.”

The Organic Center’s DeYarus is also hopeful that, like most efforts to make an issue accessible, lists like her organization’s can inspire more first-time organic shoppers.

“One can only hope that by spending your money on any organic food item, you are creating more demand,” she says, “which can impact the overall number of acreage that’s farmed organically.”

Related Links

* Environmental Working Group’s complete Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides (contains download-able Dirty Dozen pocket guide)
* The Organic Center
* Pesticide Action Network (includes a pesticide info database)

This article originally appeared in the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) e-letter.

On Friday, leaders from the House of Representatives and the Senate introduced legislation to establish a federal ban on bisphenol A (BPA) in all food and beverage containers. The bills, which are identical, are sponsored by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

BPA—a chemical found in the linings of cans and in polycarbonate plastic, including some sports bottles, food-storage containers and baby bottles—has potential links to a wide range of health effects. The diseases and health effects to which BPA has been linked include an increased risk of diseases or disorders of the brain, reproductive and immune systems.

“The scientific evidence is mounting that BPA poses serious health risks, especially to children, and manufacturers and retailers have already started to pull items from their store shelves,” said Markey, reported Agence France-Presse. “It is time for Congress to act quickly to ban this toxin from all food and beverage containers so that parents can feed their children without worrying that the food contains poisonous chemicals.”

The federal legislation follows the March 3 unanimous decision by the Suffolk County, New York Legislature to ban BPA in all beverage containers for children under the age of three. Today, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy will hold a public hearing on this landmark legislation. Levy has until April 2 to either sign or veto the bill to sign the bill to make Suffolk County the first jurisdiction in the nation to effectively ban BPA.

“This legislation will set a new precedent and sends a strong message to FDA and to industry that consumers, like those in Suffolk County, want change now,” said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, Senior Scientist and Policy Analyst, Consumers Union.

Consumers Union has repeatedly called on FDA to ban BPA materials in infant and children’s products and food and beverage contact containers. Recent studies have linked BPA exposure to problems with liver function testing, an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease and interruptions in chemotherapy treatment. A study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has shown that 93% of Americans excrete some BPA in their urine. New studies also show that BPA seems to stay in the body longer than previously believed.

In August 2008, the federal agency said BPA was safe for humans. But the agency only considered studies that had been financed by the plastics industry. At last month’s Science Board Hearing, FDA tacitly acknowledged the serious health concerns regarding BPA, but the agency continues to maintain the position that no public health safeguards should be implemented at this time.

Steven Stern, the Suffolk County legislator who sponsored the ban in that county, told the Associated Press that the FDA review prompted him to act. “We can’t wait. We don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

Several states, such as Oregon, Washington and California, and cities, such as Chicago, are also considering BPA bans as the FDA continues to research BPA while allowing the product to remain on the market. In 2008, the Canadian government banned its use in baby bottles. Major U.S. retailers, including Toys ‘R’ Us Inc. and Wal-Mart, already have removed products containing BPA from their shelves because of the growing controversy.

Shortly after the Suffolk County Legislature made its decision, six of the largest manufacturers of baby bottles—Avent, Disney First Years, Gerber, Dr. Brown, Playtex and Evenflow—decided they will no longer sell bottles made with BPA. The decision by manufacturers came after Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, joined by attorneys general of Delaware and New Jersey, wrote to the baby bottle companies urging them to stop using BPA because studies have linked the chemical to health problems in infants, including damage to reproductive, neurological and immune systems.

Almost immediately after this decision, gas and chemical giant Sunoco, acknowledging the safety concerns about BPA, announced they would restrict the sales of the controversial chemical in baby bottles and food containers for children under three. “We will no longer sell BPA to [Sunoco’s] customers who cannot make this promise,” Thomas Golembeski, head of public relations, wrote in a letter to two investors, according to the Associated Press.

While scientists continue to assess the health risks of BPA to consumers, the FDA is taking on a bigger risk by taking no action to protect the health and safety of consumers. Given the currently existing body of scientific knowledge about the health risks of BPA to consumers—and the growing consumer and industry movement again this chemical—the FDA should act immediately to protect high risk populations, such as children and babies, while it gathers more data.

Image: thesoftlanding