Excerpted from Reducing Pesticide Use in Schools, An Organizing Manual, by Gregg Small, Pesticide Watch Education Fund

Despite what many government agencies and corporations tell you, pesticide products currently on the market are not safe. There are a multitude of flaws in the way that pesticides are registered and in our political process that allows corporations to influence pesticide policy to allow the continued use of their poisonous products.

Pesticides Known to be Hazardous are Allowed on the Market

Even if we know that a pesticide causes severe health and environmental impacts, including cancer and genetic damage, it may still be allowed for use. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for registering pesticides, determines whether to register a pesticide by weighing the risk associated with its use against the benefit obtained. In other words, the EPA may determine that a cancer-causing chemical may be used despite its public health hazard if its “economic, social or environmental” benefits are deemed greater than its risk.This approach to decision-making has flooded the market with pesticides that are known to be hazardous. According to the U.S. EPA, more than 96 active ingredients known to cause cancer in animal tests are allowed for use.Over two dozen pesticides known to be possible hormone mimicking chemicals which impact reproductive cycles, including many common pesticides like atrazine and 2-4-D, are currently in wide use.

Testing for Health and Environmental Impacts is Incomplete

Although the EPA does require testing of pesticides for a number of environmental and health impacts, the vast majority of pesticides on the market have not been fully tested. As of March 1997, only 148 of 604 active pesticide ingredients had complete environmental and health impact studies as required by law.The passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 requires testing of all pesticides to measure their impact on children and infants, reversing past standards that were based on pesticide impacts to healthy adults. However, it will take many years for these tests to be completed, potentially exposing many at-risk people to continued toxic threats

What We Don 039;t Know Can Hurt Us

Pesticides often contain inert ingredients in addition to the active ingredients that are designed to kill the target pest. Inert ingredients are added to a pesticide product to increase its efficacy. Unfortunately, the public is not provided information about what inert ingredients are included in pesticide products in most cases, despite the fact that inert ingredients may comprise over 99% of the total pesticide formulation and may be significantly more toxic than the active ingredient. A recent study found that at least 382 of the chemicals that the U.S EPA lists as inert ingredients were once, or currently are, also registered as active ingredients. Among the ingredients listed as both inert and active ingredients are chloropicrin, which has been linked to asthma and pulmonary edema and chlorthanonil, a probable human carcinogen.

Corporate Interests Dominate the System

Corporate interests have a stranglehold on pesticide policy in the United States. They control much of the science, public debate and politics over how government regulates pesticides. According to Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle, authors of Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law, and Endangers Your Health, “At the most fundamental level, the federal regulatory system is driven by the economic imperatives of the chemical manufacturers – to expand markets and profits – and not by its mandate to protect public health.”Twelve of the leading chemical companies contributed over $7 million from 1979-1995 to Congressional campaigns.From 1979-1994, Monsanto and Dow, two of the leading chemical producers on the planet, gave $42.5 million to foundations and universities, much of it to research pesticides.An analysis of health studies of four chemicals (atrazine, alachlor, formaldahyde and percloroethylene) found this astonishing fact of studies performed on these chemicals from 1989-1995: