Pesticide roulette

roulette

Pesticides in Missouri

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Crop farming is integral to Missouri’s economy, and pesticides are meant to ease the process. But these substances also come with risks. The level of risk differs depending on who you ask, making pesticide use a dangerous roulette.

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QUESTION 1/6 - laws

Question 1/6 - laWS

Explanation

The U.S. system of regulation differs in key ways from some of its counterparts elsewhere in the world, from its reliance on safety testing conducted by the companies manufacturing the chemicals to its standards that, in some cases, permit the use of chemicals banned

in other countries. Critics believe that the system benefits the sellers of pesticides and endangers the public, while advocates say the U.S. takes a more reasonable and realistic approach to risk.

QUESTION 2/6 - types of pesticides

QUESTION 2/6 - types of pesticides

Explanation

Missouri’s pesticide use act and the EPA make a distinction between three different classifications of pesticides: general use, minimum risk and restricted use (noxious use is not an existing classification).Restricted-use pesticides are understood to possibly cause unacceptable negative effects to the environment and health risks to humans.

Sam Polly, director of pesticide safety education at the University of Missouri’s Extension program, previously worked as a commercial pesticides applicator. Polly recounts exposure stories of his own accidental experience with minimum risk pesticides that resulted in minor issues. When discussing restricted-use pesticides, he shared the story of an applicator who dumped the paraquat he had left over into a coffee cup, planning to deal with it in the morning. But when he later went to dump the coffee mug, muscle memory took over.

“He took a swig of paraquat. I think he lived for 14 days with all the greatest modern medical technology … He just gave up, his body just gave out,” Polly said. “You can’t afford to get one drop on you, much less a glug of it.”

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QUESTION 3/6 - Water testing

QUESTION 3/6 - water testing

Explanation

The Missouri Safe Drinking Water law requires all bodies providing drinking water to the public to submit water quality tests for contaminants listed in both state and federal laws.An exception to this testing is glyphosate, a chemical used in the commercial version of the popular weedkiller Roundup. Water systems using a chlorine treatment received a waiver to exclude them from glyphosate testing because of the speed at which chlorine breaks down the glyphosate molecule. For water systems without chlorination, they receive an initial test for the chemical. If it is negative, then a nine-year waiver is applied.

The controversy over glyphosate gained national attention because of a series of lawsuits alleging a connection between the chemical and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of lymphatic cancer. Versions of the household product sold in stores since 2023 have replaced glyphosate with a combination of other chemicals. Dennis Weisenburger, a retired hematopathologist, has researched the potential connection between non-Hodgkin lymphoma and glyphosate over the past decade. Weisenburger was a part of a case-controlled study that analyzed data from the North America Pooled Project based out of the Occupational Cancer Research Centre in Canada. In 2019, NAPP released an analysis of a study that provided evidence of an association between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

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QUESTION 4/6 - Research

QUESTION 4/6 - research

Explanation

John McLaughlin, professor emeritus with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in Toronto, said the IARC’s approach to evaluating glyphosate focused on peer-reviewed studies from the larger scientific community, while the EPA relied more — but not exclusively — on unpublished studies commissioned and done by the chemical’s manufacturer or commercial applicants.

McLaughlin cited a publication in 2019 that revealed the studies used by the EPA mostly looked at glyphosate in its near-pure chemical form, or technical form, and were 99% negative for a risk from glyphosate. In comparison, 70% of IARC’s peer-reviewed studies had a positive risk from glyphosate while looking more at mixtures of glyphosate resembling products used in the field. The study of pure glyphosate poses a challenge, in that it is not the product commonly being used. “The thing that is important in real-world evidence is to look at real-world exposures,” McLaughlin said. The other key difference in the materials used in the two review processes relates to the exposure method. The EPA primarily looked at exposure via contamination in food, while the IARC’s studies considered more examples of applicators with high rates of direct exposure.

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QUESTION 5/6 - controversy

QUESTION 5/6 - Controversy

Explanation

Robert Tarone worked as a statistician for the National Cancer Institute for 28 years, and has served as an expert witness in U.S. trials related to glyphosate use. He has published peer-reviewed articles criticizing IARC’s process and said that the working group chose to omit data in the final monograph. He said that IARC’s monograph on glyphosate is an “outlier finding.”

One reason that researchers have proposed, Tarone said, is that while the IARC evaluated the hazard level of glyphosate, the EPA evaluated the level of risk. The difference between the two: hazard measures the potential for harm, while risk measures the likelihood in individual populations. In the case of glyphosate, hazard would mean the probability of it causing cancer, while risk would help determine whether cancer is a concern based on average exposure levels for humans. “Hazard is saying: look, at some exposure level, which may be enormous, this agent can cause cancer,” Tarone said. When an Investigate Midwest reporter reached out to IARC for an interview concerning glyphosate, they responded in an email, “We no longer give interviews on this topic.”

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QUESTION 6/6 - art and literature

QUESTION 6/6 - art and literature

Explanation

In 2020, the WHO released guidelines on pesticide legislation to help governments looking to alter or create new regulations or practices. The guidelines touch on a variety of elements from the regulatory to the application process. Recommendations included a pesticide-specific licensing system requiring a separate license for restricted-use pesticides rather than only additional training, a licensing system to encourage the use of low-risk products and tying fine amounts to a neutral parameter like the cost-of-living index or the salary of a civil servant.

Not all of the WHO recommendations would be applicable or possible in the U.S. today, but routine health assessments for pesticide applicators caught Sam Polly’s attention. Implementing a regulation like this could provide researchers and regulatory bodies with additional data to base their decisions on. Polly was hopeful that if this regulation were to be implemented in the U.S., it would begin to address two of the biggest issues in the industry — accountability and transparency. “This is a really lousy way to run a society, suing each other, being suspicious of each other, not working together for a common cause. We all want food. We all want a viable economy,” Polly said. “I don’t think even these pro-chemical people want their grandkids getting cancer, but they’re not thinking it through clearly, and they’re not being accountable or transparent.”

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You have survived the pesticide roulette!

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Source

This game was built based on the "How dangerous is a pesticide? It depends on who you ask" story by Benjamin Koelkebeck and Lillian Metzmeier. Mary McCue Bell contributed to the report.