Poisons That Won't Go Away

The EPA announces and proposes but is haunted by the past

William Ruckelshaus, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, laments that the nation seems caught up in a quest for the "chemical of the month." He was referring to once obscure substances, such as dioxin and PCB, that suddenly get catapulted into the public spotlight. Enter October's celebrity poison: EDB.

Scientists have known for a decade that ethylene dibromide, a pesticide and gasoline additive, is one of the most powerful known carcinogens. The bulk of the 300 million Ibs. the U.S. produces annually is used to keep leaded gasoline from fouling auto engines. Because the chemical is added at refineries in a closed system and breaks down during engine combustion, such use is considered safe enough. The danger comes from agricultural practice: growers inject it into citrus grove soils to control rootworms, and exporters fumigate some $29 million worth of fruit with it to meet foreign quarantine laws.

This summer the EPA learned that the chemical had contaminated water supplies in some communities in Florida, Georgia, California and Hawaii. And studies showed that traces of EDB in fruits and vegetables did not decay completely as had previously been thought. Last week, three years after the EPA first circulated draft rules governing the chemical, the EPA announced an emergency ban on soil injection of EDB, only the second such action in agency history, and moved to stop fumigation in 30 days. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) also announced a new, stiffer exposure limit for the estimated 57,000 who risk breathing EDB on the job. Scientists at OSHA have concluded that the current standard is 200 times too high to protect workers from the chemical, one of the most dangerous the agency says it has ever regulated. But then David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, asked OSHA to withdraw its new standard, whose cost to U.S. industry is estimated to be $30 million. OMB asked for more time to study the economic impact of the rule.

At hearings of the House Government Operations Subcommittee, Democratic Representative Mike Synar of Oklahoma charged that John Todhunter, the former head of EPA'S pesticide program who was forced out earlier this year, had delayed regulating EDB as a favor to agribusinessmen. Synar brandished a letter Todhunter wrote in June 1982 to Florida Representative Andy Irelanda, in which the regulator argued the growers' side of the case, stating, "It is important to your state's citrus exporters that EDB not be phased out unless there is an alternative available." Todhunter dismissed Synar's evidence as proving nothing. Said he: "I signed 60 letters a day."