According to a report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), entitled, "The English Patients: Human Experiments and Pesticide Policy," results from four experiments testing pesticides on humans have been submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 1992, and EPA regulators believe that more are underway in the United Kingdom. Human subjects are being used increasingly to get around U.S. regulations that require that a safety factor be added when the toxicity of pesticides is tested on animals other than humans. Chemical companies are using the tests to claim that U.S. limits for some pesticide residues in foods are too high.

For decades, pesticide manufacturers have been feeding their products to rats, rabbits, mice and guinea pigs in thousands of controlled laboratory studies, all designed to satisfy government regulatory requirements for pest control chemicals. Studies on lab animals are still routinely conducted for pesticides, but in recent years, in a number of studies that are raising ethical and scientific questions inside and outside government, the products are being tested on humans—primarily in England and Scotland, according to "The English Patients."

Last year, Amvac Chemical Corporation, a California pesticide company, hired a lab in England to conduct three related feeding trials using people to test the toxicity of dichlorvos, a common ingredient in pet collars and pest strips. In one, volunteers drank the neurotoxic insecticide when it was mixed with corn oil. In a 1992 study in Scotland commissioned by Rhone-Poulenc, the French chemical giant, volunteer subjects were paid to ingest the extremely toxic insecticide aldicarb mixed with orange juice. People in both tests suffered neurotoxic effects.

Neither U.S. nor U.K. pesticide guidelines require studies on humans. Officials at EPA informally discourage such studies on ethical and scientific grounds, refusing even to review study methods beforehand. In fact, EPA has no policies or oversight system in place to ensure that humans involved in such experiments are protected.

According to EWG, however, the agency is nonetheless accepting human experimental studies

submitted by pesticide companies, several of which have been used in at least two recent cases to weaken EPA regulatory decisions.

The report states that by substituting people for lab animals, pesticide companies have, in effect, been able to increase the amounts of pesticide that can be used legally on crops or detected on foods, in water or in air. More studies are underway in the United Kingdom, according to EPA scientists, although they do not know how many, where they are being conducted, or for what pesticides. The EWG strongly opposes experiments that deliberately expose humans to pesticides or other environmental toxins in order to determine "safe" or "acceptable" levels of pollution for people. It is asking EPA to conduct a comprehensive study on the use of human subjects in past and recent environmental research, modeled after the landmark 1995 Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Once the study is completed, EWG says, EPA should issue policy and guidelines for public comment on the use of humans in environmental research. The rules must provide for thorough monitoring, EWG says, including consideration of special ethical considerations that distinguish research on humans with toxic contaminants from research for drugs and medicines.

The EWG also recommends an immediate moratorium on human experimentation of the type conducted for dichlorvos, aldicarb and perhaps other pesticides for purposes of pesticide regulation. The group also asks EPA to suspend any pesticide approvals if the agency is unable to affirm that the studies were conducted according to U.S. ethical standards.

Sources: Press release from the Pesticide Action Network of North America, 8/14/98; Science News, "Human pesticide experimentation," Aug. 22, 1998.

Two sets of studies suggest that an herbicide and an insecticide may be partly responsible for the decline in frog populations and for the increased observations of deformities in frogs.

In September, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) released results of a preliminary test that suggested that sulfonylurea herbicides—used on corn, along railway beds and by utilities in Vermont—caused deformed limbs to develop when frogs were exposed to high rates and, in lower concentrations, slowed the rate at which frogs reabsorb tails as they develop from tadpoles. The latter suggests that the herbicides may also affect thyroid activity—and consequently the multiple developmental stages controlled by thyroid hormones. This could indicate that the herbicide may harm humans, as well. These tests reflected laboratory and not field conditions. VPIRG wants the state or federal government to take the studies further.

Meanwhile, Michael Berrill of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, an his colleagues exposed eggs and tadpoles of the wood frog, green frog and American toad to the organochlorine compound endosulfan, simulating conditions that may occur when endosulfan drifts from farms into drainage ditches, ponds and other wet areas where these animals breed.

The eggs hatched normally but highest rates of endosulfan depressed the frogs’ "avoidance behavior" temporarily, possibly increasing their vulnerability to predation.

Tadpoles either died (30 to 100% death rates, depending on the pesticide concentration) or exhibited hyperactivity—whiplike convulsions followed by temporary paralysis. Growth was also slowed.

Endosulfan is commonly used against aphids and other insects, and mites, on many fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, oilseed and cotton. Berrill and his coworkers say that its hazard to frogs and toads "is sufficiently great to warrant its replacement by less toxic alternatives wherever possible."

Sources: "Interest Group Requests Study of Herbicides," Bangor Daily News, Sept. 4, 1998; "Common Pesticide Clobbers Amphibians," Science News, Sept. 5, 1998.

On September 10, 1998, ministers and senior officials from approximately 100 countries signed the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. The Convention must be ratified by 50 governments before it takes effect. A coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) negotiated and welcomed the agreement and called for its speedy implementation. The coalition included Consumers International (UK), International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations (IUF), Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment, Pesticides Action Network (PAN): Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America Regional Centers, and the Pesticides Trust (UK).

The purpose of the binding Prior Informed Consent (PIC) agreement is to provide governments with information about certain hazardous chemicals and allow them to decide whether imports of the chemicals should continue. To be included on the list, a pesticide must be banned or severely restricted for health or environmental reasons in at least two countries in different regions. Initially the agreement will include 22 pesticides and five industrial chemicals already covered by the voluntary PIC procedure, with the possibility of more being added.

Barbara Dinham of the Pesticides Trust, part of the PAN network, said, "The need is urgent. There is pressure on global agriculture to increase production, and developing countries frequently provide a market for older, cheaper and hazardous pesticides. This Convention will alert governments to health and environmental concerns and help them stop unwanted imports."

The coalition welcomed the agreement to include "severely hazardous pesticide formulations" in the Convention. This will cover pesticides that cause either health or environmental problems under conditions of use in developing countries or countries with economies in transition. In these cases, just one notification that a pesticide will be banned or severely restricted for health or environmental reasons will be enough to alert attention and call on the Secretariat to assist in collecting information needed to determine whether it should be put on the PIC list.

Concerns still exist, however. To be included as a severely hazardous pesticide formulation, the agreement requires that information must be compiled on specific incidents in developing countries, the adverse effects, and the way in which the formulation was used. Experience of NGOs confirms that such detailed evidence is extremely difficult to compile. Incidents occur far from medical facilities and regulatory authorities, and many farmers are unaware of what pesticides they are using, since pesticides are often sold in unmarked sachets.

PIC is jointly operated by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Plant Protection Division and U.N. Environment Programme through its International Register of Potentially Toxic Chemicals in Geneva. Pesticides banned or severely restricted are:

2,4,5-T, aldrin, captafol, chlordane, chlordimeform, chlorobenzilate, DDT, dieldrin, dinoseb and dinoseb salts, 1,2-dibromoethane (EDB), fluoroacetamide, HCH (mixed isomers), heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, lindane, mercury compounds used in agriculture, pentachlorophenol. Severely hazardous pesticide formulations are: monocroptophos, methamiodophos, phosphamidon, methyl parathion and parathion.

Source: Pesticide Action Network North America press release, 49 Powell St., Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94102; 415-981-1771.

The Farmer Cooperative Genome Project (FCGP) is a collaborative effort to return farmers and gardeners to the practice of characterizing and saving seed. With support from the Fund for Rural America and administered by Oregon Tilth, the FCGP explores the feasibility of a cooperative marketing structure that rewards producers for maintaining our nation’s most vital resource base—the seed.

Seeds are the source of agricultural enterprise. The hybrid corn, wheat and rice improvements ushered in a new era of agriculture throughout the world. Unfortunately, farmers have become increasingly removed from the genetic resources upon which they depend. Consolidation of the seed industry, the rush to patent varieties, and recent technological developments all result in a narrowing of the genetic base on which agriculture stands.

Gardeners have been affected, too. Over two-thirds of the nearly 5,000 nonhybrid vegetables varieties offered in 1984 seed catalogs were dropped by 1994. Less than 10% of the seed companies in the world were responsible for over 63% of the varieties offered in 1997. As seed companies are lost, traditional and heirloom varieties of crops are lost— along with thousands of years of breeding effort.

National and international efforts to save seed and other genetic resources are hampered by insufficient funding and by political and economic barriers to information sharing.

Private efforts often lack the guidelines for maintaining populations and reproducing true seed.

Of the world’s estimated two million plants, the U.S. genetic repository, the National Plant Germplasm System, has approximately 450,000 varieties of plants in storage—many at risk. The NPGS lacks sufficient diversity for almost half of the major crops to reduce crop vulnerability. Much of the collection is insufficiently characterized.

Patenting plants threatens our continued access to agricultural resources, as it obliges farmers to pay royalties on every generation of seed; as breeders no longer have free access to genetic resources to develop new varieties; and as consumers end up paying higher prices for food and medicine. To "publish" a variety bars the patenting of that plant. Describing or characterizing a variety and publishing that description in a catalog or on the internet goes a long way toward locking that variety into the public domain.

The FCGP is a three-year project to assemble a farmer-owned seed cooperative. Participants in the effort will learn how to work with the U.S. repository of seeds (the National Plant Germplasm System) and other seed resources; how to characterize or describe varieties; how to grow true seeds; and how to develop plant varieties for preservation and sale. >From the windowbox growing condominium dweller to the production farmer, the FCGP is open to everyone. Gardeners who want to help characterize plants can participate; growers can reproduce seeds and make them available for sale in a cooperative marketing effort. The FCGP has three principles:

1. Growers characterize varieties according to guidelines, including photographs, growth descriptions, susceptibility and resistance to pests;
2. Seeds are grown according to guidelines for seed regeneration that are acceptable to the National Plant Germplasm System and other international seed preservation efforts;
3. Member growers work with at least one other member to ensure that the terms of the cooperative are met.

In addition to facilitating trialing, development and distribution of seed varieties, the FCGP will familiarize growers with seed resources, the art of seed growing and the business of cooperative development.

Twelve female volunteers, ages 34 to 84, consumed a typical Western diet in their own homes for four weeks. They could eat all of the white bread, pasta, pastry, snack foods, convenience foods, meat, fish, poultry, eggs and dairy products they wanted; but they could eat no more than two servings a day of fruits and vegetables, avoiding leafy green and yellow varieties altogether. They switch from that diet to a plant-rich diet for the next four weeks. At least six servings of green and yellow fruits and vegetables were eaten a day; refined products and "designer" foods, such as reduced-calorie and fat-free products, were off limits; white bread was replaced by whole-grain bread, and many other whole grains and legumes were consumed as volunteers desired. In addition, they ate 2 tablespoons each of almonds, hazelnuts, pecans and sesame oil (tahini); a tablespoon of wheat germ oil for cooking or dressing foods; and three 1.5-ounce boxes of raisins from Sun Maid Growers (which funded the study). Eggs were allowed but meat, fish and poultry were limited to 3 ounces per week. No fried foods were eaten, and dairy products had to have 1% fat or less. A cup of ginger tea and two cups of green tea were consumed each day.

Cholesterol levels, which were high to begin with, dropped on the plant-rich diet, and "the diet appears to reduce cholesterol oxidation," according to Gene A. Spiller, one of the researchers involved in the study. Oxidized cholesterol contributes to artery damage.

The volunteers’ antioxidant defenses dropped, too. A copper-containing enzyme, superoxide dismutase, which protects delicate cell parts against oxidation, decreased by two-thirds. The selenium-containing antioxidant enzyme, glutathione peroxidase, dropped by one-third. "Apparently, the volunteers’ metabolism didn’t need as much enzyme activity because the plant-based diet was rich in phytochemicals," says Leslie M.

Klevay of the Agricultural Research Service Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center in North Dakota. Phytochemicals are the components in plant foods that appear to promote health throughout the life cycle. Many phytochemicals, including certain vitamins and minerals, are excellent antioxidants.

So far, research on phytochemicals has focused mostly on one compound or on a small group of compounds, but epidemiological evidence of health benefits comes from diets rich in fruits and vegetables—not from individual compounds. Nutrition researchers can’t say which phytochemicals are important; they probably work together.

"This study, using mixed diets, is a nice way to approach the question," says Klevay.

The benefits of green and black tea are increasingly understood, according to a column by Clair Wood in the Bangor Daily News. Regularly consuming the drinks may lower the risk of heart disease and of some tobacco- and nutrition-related cancers, such as precancerous oral lesions and cancer of the digestive tract. For example, when rats were treated with heterocyclic amines—potent mutagens that form when meat is cooked and that cause colon tumors in experimental animals—and were then given extracts of green or black tea, they had fewer colon tumors than control rats. The decrease in risk from digestive tract cancer comes from a preliminary epidemiological study on humans.

These teas are known to be rich in antioxidants, which counter the damage done when free radicals oxidize cell components. One cup of strong, black tea can provide the same amount of antioxidants as a "generous serving of green vegetables," according to one study cited by Wood. While phenols were the antioxidants thought to be responsible for the health effects of black tea, flavonoids in green tea seem to help prevent heart disease, since these flavonoids have lowered LDL cholesterol in lab animals.

Source: "More benefits of tea coming to light each day," by Clair Wood, Bangor Daily News, Oct. 19, 1998.