Re: Getting realEERelease the Raw Data!

[Sue.Darcey, Pesticide Report <sdarcey@erols.com>]

Dan --

Your comments about early release of data destroying the credibility
of EPA sounds a lot like what growers and ag chem trade association
people were saying to EPA before the agency made a decision in July
1998 to put the preliminary organophosphate pesticide risk assessments
up on the Office of Pesticide Programs web pages.

That decision was made over the protests of the grower/ag groups,
who predicted that not only would people lose faith in EPA, that
there would be a public panic that the food supply was unsafe, if
EPA posted its "first cut" findings about the toxicity of certain
food-use pesticides on the Internet.

There was even this notorious exchange between the structural pest
control industry (exterminators) and an environmentalist, regarding
release of the risk assessments:

Bob Rosenberg, National Pest Control Association:  "Prematurely
disclosing information about a chemical would be wrong.  We have
to think about the consequences.  For example, if one of those
organophosphates is a termiticide, it's not like apple juice that
you can just stop drinking.  You could create a panic."

Jay Feldman, National Coalition Against Misuse of Pesticides:
"We're not discussing what the public doesn't already know.  Bob,
you just said that you don't want your customer base to know the
risks of a particular termiticide -- are you saying that we're not
prepared to tell the public what we know about what they have
already been exposed to?"

And from a citrus grower:  "There's a certain group out there that
has an agenda, that will misuse the information, as in the case
with ALAR."

Despite these "public panic" concerns and dark predictions, the
agency pressed on, and began putting put the 300-page, draft,
detailed preliminary risk assessments up on the web in August 1998
anyway, for all the world to see.

The results?  Well, environmental reporters and consumer groups
were happy as hell.  I remember writing laudatory headlines in
Pesticide Report, like "Hansen Announces Major Right-to-Know
Breakthrough," and "EPA OPP Lifts Iron Curtain on FQPA Risk
Assessments."

The public response?  One collective yawn.  Even if the general
public learned the organophosphate risk assessments were on the
EPA website, they certainly didn't rush to read them or panic over
them,and as a consequence, stop buying specific fruits and vegetables
thought to be tainted with specific pesticides. And if your average
Joe without a toxicology degree every tried reading one of those
300-page suckers, you could quickly see why -- they are enormously
complicated and difficult to understand.

The risk assessments probably were the greatest boon for groups
such as Consumers Union and Environmental Working Group, who were
able to use the numbers in the risk assessments to put up their
own databases and reports, which were more publicly accessible than
the preliminary risk assessments themselves.

Both these groups were able to get some media attention over their
analyses of the EPA risk assessment data, but at this point in our
history, the public has become so inured to warning from consumer
groups, researchers and the government about what we should and
shouldn't eat (cholesterol, too much fat, too much salt, etc.)that
the only people who used the information were probably those already
concerned about pesticide anyway.

So I don't think EPA's credibility will be destroyed by the release
of raw data on pesticide adverse effects incidents, any more than
it was destroyed by releasing its somewhat raw, first cut,
organophosphate risk assessments.

Sue Darcey, Pesticide Report