How bad does a pesticide have to be before the California Department of Pesticide Regulation locks it up and throws away the key? We’ll soon find out. Last week a scientific review committee released a report on the fumigant methyl iodide, created by chemical company Arysta as an alternative to methyl bromide in strawberry fields.
The report, essentially a peer review of a health risk assessment of methyl iodide done by the DPR itself, praised the department’s rigor. It also said lot of alarming things, though the tone of the paper was so scholarly as to obfuscate the urgency of the situation. We took a whack at translating a few key passages.
“It is abundantly clear from basic chemistry that methyl iodide reacts readily with macromolecules, including with DNA, creating long lasting changes. In DNA, the effects of these methylated additions are mutagenic events that ultimately give rise to cancer.”
Translation: This shit causes cancer! That’s really obvious!
“[L]arge variability in achieved protection is observed even through rigorous respirator application (e.g., under controlled experimental conditions).”
Translation: You can’t guard against it. Even the guy in the lab with the well-fitting respirator got a blast of it in the tests.
“From [farmworker] testimony (predominantly from a group organized by growers), it was abundantly clear that respiratory protection, despite strict regulations on paper, is commonly inappropriate, inadequate, or inaccessible.”
Translation: The farmworkers brought in by their bosses to testify before us last September didn’t know what a respirator was, much less how to use one. Respirators won’t save the farmworkers.
“Based on the data available, we know that methyl iodide is a highly toxic chemical and we expect that any anticipated scenario for the agricultural or structural fumigation use of this agent would result in exposures to a large number of the public and thus would have a significant adverse impact on the public health.”
Translation: Spraying this uncontainable poison around oh, say, a town where people are trying to breathe will make a lot of people very ill.
Dr. Susan Kegley, a consulting scientist with the Pesticide Action Network, says methyl iodide is more acutely toxic than methyl bromide and could cause cancer, thyroid disease and late miscarriages. She was also at the hearing in September 2009 when a group of field workers brought in by their employers, presumably to testify about the sufficiency of the safety training they’d received, inadvertently revealed just the opposite.
“What became clear during the hearing is that the workers didn’t know what a respirator was. It was a very telling moment when they said, ‘What kind of mask did you use?’ And they said, ‘Oh, one of those ones made of paper.’”
The report will help the policymakers at the DPR, which has come under pressure from lobbyists, decide whether to register methyl iodide as an allowable pesticide in California. That decision could in turn affect whether or not the DPR’s federal counterparts at the Environmental Protection Agency will revoke their approval of methyl iodide, granted in October 2007. After public outcry, the EPA announced last September it would reopen its consideration of the pesticide pending the scientific review panel’s report. Stay tuned.
